Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Tuesday, May 4th 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 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!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Main Slate Breakdown
Welcome to the Tuesday edition of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we look to break down the 12 game Main Slate here tonight on DraftKings! At first glance, this slate is a strong one, filled with aces, big dollar stacks, some weather risk in a few spots, and a 7 inning doubleheader with the Dodgers/Cubs playing a Tuesday twin-bill.
The first stop on any MLB DFS slate is pitching and there is no better deep dive than Adam Strangis’ Starting Rotation – which goes pitcher by pitcher – and is 100% FREE Today at Win Daily Sports!
What stands out to me on this slate is the top end duo of Jacob deGrom and Trevor Bauer and I am putting them together because I believe this is the ideal slate to work a “double aces” approach for a few reasons.
First and foremost, deGrom and Bauer stand out in a tier among themselves on this slate in every meaningful K metric with the top K rates and swinging strikes rates and their double-digit demonstrated strikeout ability allows you to build a floor/ceiling combination that frankly, no other pair of arms allows for you to do.
Secondly, the pricing – deGrom and Bauer are expensive but they are not even remotely cost-prohibitive – leaving you $3.5K per batter for your stacks which as we will touch on in a moment – still give you some serious upside stacks with bargain pricing.
Lastly is the slate context and this is arguably the most important. Listen, you do not need me to tell you Bauer and deGOAT are the best arms on the slate but the reality is, the true pivots are either in bad spots are over-priced in my opinion. And why exactly are we paying down at pitcher? To afford which big bats?
Well, as of this writing there is not a single team with a Vegas IRT of 5 or more and while the Red Sox against Michael Fulmer and the Tigers league-worst bullpen may get there – if there is only one obvious top-end offense to pay for, doesn’t that just mean everyone who pays down for risky pitching is doing so with the same offense in mind?
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Double Aces and Cheap Stacks
If we are taking a double-ace approach with Jacob deGrom and Trevor Bauer as noted above, we are working within the constraints of a build in the $3.5K per player for our bats and there are two teams that stand out as elite point per dollar plays that actually correlate quite well together.
First and foremost is the Kansas City Royals who take on LHP Sam Hentges and the Indians in Kansas City. Hentges is a pitcher that had never pitched above AA ball, struggling to a 5+ ERA and double-digit walk rate in the minors and in his first 5 innings out of the pen at the major league level this year, he has given up 4 runs and 3 HR’s, all to right-handed batters.
Hentges has topped out at only 53 pitches, so there is a very real early exit possibility before the Cleveland bullpen takes over. Now overall, the Indians pen has strong season-long metrics, although they do rank top 5 in HR’s allowed overall, the bullpen has a near 2 ERA as they have relied heavily on the trio of Bryan Shaw, James Karinchak, and Emmanuel Clase.
The issue for the Cleveland pen is they are taxed with no starting pitcher going more than 6 innings the last 4 games and the trio noted above has now pitched 3 innings per game on Friday, Sunday and Monday which means the best arms in the Cleveland bullpen are likely unavailable today.
So this Kansas City offense now will take the field against a pitcher who has only thrown 5 innings above AA and then follow it up with an overused Indians bullpen without their top options – hello Royals stack!
Any KC stack for me starts with the combination of Salvador Perez and Whit Merrifield, giving you an elite upside combination at C/2B, and pairing them with Jorge Soler and Hunter Dozier gives you the top two Royals bats against LHP with .235+ ISO marks against southpaws since 2019.
Now the Royals stack because of the Salvy/Merrifield duo means we need to get cheap in our secondary stack and that is where the Tampa Bay Rays come into play against RHP Alex Cobb.
Over the last season +, Cobb has given up a 45% hard contact rate with just 11% soft contact allowed which considering his low swing and miss ability, could mean the Rays get to him for some serious early crooked numbers.
Cobb relies on a splitter/sinker combination to left-handed batters nearly 75% of the time and their are some interesting Rays that profile extremely well against that pitch mix.
Yoshi Tutsugo at $2.2K on DraftKings is the player that really jumps out to me as he has a .217 ISO and 40% HC rate against the sinker and a .375 ISO and 38% HC rate against the splitter which makes him an ideal punt at just over the minimum price.
Kevin Kiermaier ($2.3K) and Willy Adams ($2.6K) are projected to bat right in front of Tsutsugo tonight, giving you a dirt cheap 5-6-7 Rays mini stack that as the visiting team gets the added benefit of 9th inning guaranteed road at bats.
The Angels bullpen over the last two weeks has been among the league worst, giving up the third most ER’s in all of baseball, and ranking in the bottom 10 in ERA and HR’s allowed. I bring this up because Cobb has failed to make it out of the third inning in two straight starts, giving up 7 ER in 4.2 innings, and if that trend continues you get to that Angels pen which was forced into early action last night after Jose Quintana could only make it through 3.2 innings of work.
The Royals and Rays have similar paths to success tonight against hittable starters who have struggled to give their teams length, resulting in spots against over-worked bullpens that will give our stacks the chance to shine against the lesser arms in their respective pens.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
We have a massive slate here tonight and one that I think sets up well for our MLB DFS Picks! We have a clear path tonight in my mind to go “double aces” with Jacob deGrom and Trevor Bauer and lock in the two best arms on the slate and the ones with the highest DFS ceiling as a result of their lofty K outputs.
Doing so means attacking cheaper stacks but the combination of Royals/Rays gives us a path to attack big bats, poor starters, and even worse bullpens behind them.
I hope you enjoyed this FREE preview of our MLB DFS content today at Win Daily Sports – grab a FREE discord account below and jump in now to get personal 1 on 1 coaching with our DFS experts across all sports!
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @2LockSports and be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD ACCOUNT account here at Win Daily Sports. Gain access to our Projection Models and jump into our Discord where we will have our experts talking plays across every sport and slate!
