Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Tuesday, June 8th edition of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we dive into the top fantasy baseball plays and slate strategy to help you take down tournaments all season long at Win Daily Sports!
If you are new to MLB DFS Picks and Pivots, the goal of this article is not simply to list out the “best plays” but rather to walk through the context of the slate and help you identify the best arms and stacks to build around for MLB DFS tournament play. We will use DraftKings pricing as our anchor and help you get a head start on your winning builds!
Main Slate Breakdown
After just a two-game MLB slate on Monday where are back here with a full 15 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate and let me tell you – it is glorious.
While we have a massive player pool to choose from with our arms, what stands out to me on this slate is the pairing of Shane Bieber and Tyler Glasnow due specifically to the pricing on a pair of the league’s best arms.
We have seen recently how DraftKings got super aggressive with their pitching pricing but today, you see it swing back the other way with Bieber and Glasnow the only two arms priced in double-digits. Both of these arms were $11.2K just a week or two ago, so you are getting these arms at a 10% discount compared to their most recent market rates which seems like something we need to jump on when you consider their metrics.
This duo ranks among the leagues best when you look at every single strikeout metric we anchor to when in our MLB DFS builds where K’s are King!
Both arms have a 35.6% K rate which put them at 6th and 7th in MLB this season, while their 17.2% and 16.7% SS rates rank 3rd and 4th and their 34.4% and 33.4% CSW rates rank 3rd and 5th respectively.
Said another way – you can get two of the top five strikeout arms in baseball on the same MLB DFS roster tonight and oh by the way, you have $3.7K per batter for the rest of your lineup.
Now, locking in double aces into our builds may not normally be the route folks go as they want to get the big dollar offenses but if you step back and look at this slate, the “obvious” offenses are not well – so obvious.
With only two teams with implied run totals (IRT) over 5 on this slate, the large majority of teams are sitting in this 4.5+ range which means that we could see ownership on bats largely spread out and allow us to attack low-owned stacks.
Now – let’s stop burying the lede here people.
As the great movie Wedding Crashers once said – there are two things the great state of Maryland does – Crab Cakes and Football. There are also two things that Picks and Pivots does – we stack against Jon Lester and we stack the Tampa Bay Rays offense.
Well, what happens when Jon Lester faces the, oh my God – wait for it – yep, the Tampa Bay Rays.
*Insert head exploding emoji here.
Since the beginning of 2020, the book on Lester has been that he surrenders high ISO marks to RHB, with a .203 mark and he does so while giving up HR with a 1.88 HR/9 mark to RHB last season and a 1.44 HR/9 mark this year.
The Rays can get right-handed heavy when they need to be and this is typically the most cost-effective way to stack Tampa Bay because the secondary right-handed pieces are all priced fairly including Manuel Margot ($3.1K), Yandy Diaz ($3.2K), Mike Brosseau ($3.2K) and Mike Zunino ($3.9K).
Since the start of last season, the Rays have three batters from the right side in their line-up with .200+ ISO marks including Brosseau & Zunino as well as the lone high-priced bat in Randy Arozarena ($5.5K).
If we dig into pitch type, you will see why I continue to beat the drum on attacking Lester who throws his cutter has his dominant pitch to right-handed batters a third of the time and the batter metrics against it – well, are not kind. How does a .553 ISO, 48% hard contact rate and just a 12% whiff rate sound?
If you are building this stack, Arozarena is a must have with a .429 ISO against this pitch type and the splits advantage and I would argue that going with the right-handed batters is likely the most “direct” route where you can stack (in order of preference) Arozarena, Brosseau, Margot, Zunino and Diaz all together to attack the splits preference.
Where you can really get different (although considering the Rays are never owned maybe we don’t need to veer from the direct route) – we can look to some of the L/L spots with Brandon Lowe or Austin Meadows.
Lowe actually has a .200+ ISO mark against LHP since the start of last season and has a .200 ISO mark against the cutter which Lester throws nearly 40% of the time to lefties which gives him a nice on paper match-up.
Meadows meanwhile has been one of the best hitters in baseball this season, leading the league in RBI’s and sitting top 10 in HR’s but doing almost all of that damage against RHP.
So this is a case where you can argue the pitch profile of Lowe or in the case of Meadows, you are likely making the argument that the Rays get to Lester (which is what you want in a stack) and then he gets the splits back in his favor against the Nationals bullpen which ranks among the worst bullpens in baseball over the last 14 days with a 5.44 ERA.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
If you step back and look at this slate, it sets up to be an ideal MLB DFS Picks and Pivots approach with a double-aces anchor and a 5 man power stack against a pitcher with regression squarely on the table.
I think depending on the value/secondary stack you use – you really can mix and match this Tampa Bay Rays stack to fit whatever build you want. You can live with the right-handed bats only who are all fairly priced in the $3K range outside of Arozarena or you can opt to pay up for a L/L premium bat like Meadows or Lowe to round out the stack.
Either way – double aces. All the Rays.
See you at the top.
Good luck tonight all! Let’s keep that hot streak rolling! Come join the Win Daily Sports Team – grab a Gold Membership and take advantage of all the tools, articles, and expert coaching we can give you to make you a consistent winner in DFS.
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