Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Tuesday 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
Welcome my friends into an 11 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate which has a little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing. At first glance, this slate has a ton of chalk potential with a Coors Field game that has the Dodgers with a near 7 IRT that will surely draw ownership and due to the pricing on the big bats – will likely determine a similar type of build for those who choose to jam in all the expensive Dodger bats. As such, we can find easy paths to be different – and I think give ourselves an edge if the chalk busts.
Pitching Picks
On nights like tonight where we have a big team total in Coors Field, it is going to force people to sacrifice somewhere and that typically ends up being at pitcher – especially on nights where the high-priced arms are not traditional studs like we have this evening. Tonight, I think we will see heavily concentrated ownership in the mid-range (my initial lean is Jordan Montgomery chalk-fest at $8.3K against Texas as an example) and that could give us a really interesting path to paying up to be contrarian.
Brandon Woodruff ($10.4K) is the defacto ace on this slate and with a 30%+ K rate and 16% SS rate the last month, he sits firmly among the league leaders and the metrics are everything we typically anchor to when picking our SP1 and while I am not going to talk you off him – I do not see him as a priority play here tonight with the Brewers on cruise control.
Kevin Gausman ($10.1K) is my GPP favorite arm on this slate and just a few hundred below Brandon Woodruff who I expect to gain far more attention. (Yes, GravMatt – our Discord Giants fan – I finally wrote up an SF player – you happy?)
Gausman has been an elite strikeout arm the last month, sporting a top 10 K% and a 16.4% swinging-strike rate that ranks 4th in all of baseball. Gausman is an arm that was a 30%+ K rate starter the first half of the season but he really took a step back in August with his lowest K output at just 23% and much of that was due to a sharp decline in the effectiveness of his split-finger which is the key to his ceiling.
This view from Baseball Savant really shows the significant ebbs and flows of Gausman’s split-finger which was routinely pushing 50-60% swing and miss rates in the first half of the season before a MASSIVE drop in August. What we have seen though in September is a bit of a re-birth with 42, 43 and 51% swing and miss rates in 3 of his last 4 starts including a 7 K outing against the same Padres team he faces tonight where 5 of those 7 K’s came off the split-finger.
If you look at the metrics for Gausman compared to Woodruff as an example – he matches or exceeds him in every K metric whether you cut it season-long or last 30 days. The difference to me – is the Giants have something to play for with just a 1 game lead on the Dodgers for the NL West while the Brew Crew has a 10.5 game lead in the division and has no reason to push their star right-hander. If/when Gausman comes in at a fraction of the ownership of Woodruff tonight – I think we should pounce at the GPP pivot that could give us a ceiling game with his split-finger back to being an elite put-away pitch.
You want to go even more off the board – how about a pitcher in Coors Field? The spot for Julio Urias ($9.9K) comes with the potential for a high K output against a Rockies team that has offered ceiling games with strong left-handed arms in recent weeks. We have seen Ranger Suarez (6K’s and 20 DK points), Alex Wood (6K and 23 DK) and Framber Valdez (8K and 26 DK) all with strong outings – but the one caveat – all of those outings were on the road and not in Coors Field.
Now the risk for Urias won’t be hard to find – a start in Coors, plus you go ahead and click on his player name on DraftKings and the first notes talk about “limiting innings and a drop in velocity.” Remember, we get a lot of NFL DFS players coming into MLB mid-week – they are going to read that and simply skip ahead.
Here is my counter – the limit they announced post-game was 5 innings – and now step back and realize, that has pretty much been Urias outing every single start. Over his last 10 starts, Urias has gone EXACTLY five innings in 5 of those 10 starts and his lines in those starts are strong – 12, 18, 19, 22 and 27 DK points. So does this “limit” actually matter for him? I would argue no.
Now, it certainly gives him less wiggle room – any sort of bad inning and he has a smaller runway to make it back up with strikeouts so that is a fair counter but I would also say that even the slightest increase in innings/pitch count unlocks a massive ceiling. Look at the recent games where he went 5.2, 6, and 7 innings and put up 25, 26, and 30 DK points – all of which he did under 100 pitches.
Lastly – I simply cannot overlook Alek Manoah ($9.5K) against the Rays – and yes, I am aware I am recommending back-to-back arms against my favorite stack but I would be crazy not to. Listen, the game log watchers will point to the 10K and 40 DK point outing and maybe they just assume the same outcome against the same opponent – but there is more to this than simply repeating game logs.
Manoah made a significant pitch mix change last time out, throwing his slider 40% of the time which was the most he had thrown in any start this year and my goodness was it just filthy. A whopping NINE of his ten strikeouts came on the slider – seriously, think about that – the upside is just off the charts if this approach remains the same.
On a slate where my gut says – most live mid-range with Montgomery and if they do pay up it is likely Woodruff – I think we can gain an immediate edge by simply pivoting to arms like Gausman, Manaoh and/or Urias.
Stacks on Stacks
The Dodgers are in Coors and have a 7 IRT – they are going to be chalk. The end.
Do you know how many times Antonio Senzatela has gotten blown up this year in Coors? Once. Literally, only one start did he give up more than 4 runs and 9 of his 13 home starts have been 3 runs or fewer – this is chalk, I am not going to eat.
You guys know the Picks and Pivots deal by now – we don’t let recency bias impact our decision making and so tonight, we go right back to the Toronto Blue Jays in Tampa Bay. Did you enjoy getting the hottest offense in baseball the last two weeks at 5% ownership last night? Well, let’s do it again!
RHP Drew Rasmussen is a ground ball heavy arm with a low K output and a 50% HC rate on the season, with a 50%+ mark to right-handed batters. He also is being limited in his starts – throwing less than 60 pitches in 5 of his last 7 starts and never topping 75 pitches.
I bring this up because it means getting into the Tampa pen which right now is one of the worst in baseball. Over the last 14 games, the Rays pen has a 5.5 ERA which ranks 7th worst in baseball, giving up the 4th most runs and the most HR’s of any relief staff in the bigs during that stretch.
Here is where it gets interesting – the best arms in this pen are likely not available tonight. Collin McHugh pitched two innings last night and Andrew Kitteredge is on the IL so all of a sudden you see a path where you get a starter who will not go deep and then the potential for a bad back-end pen game against a Jay offense clinging to a half-game lead for the second wild-card spot.
The wrap-around stack with $2K Jake Lamb again at the bottom looks perfect for a road team with 9 guaranteed innings of at-bats and gives you a path to affording all the big bats you want at the top of the Blue Jays lineup.
The Jays correlated so well with the Astros last night – why not do it again?
The Astros get to face LHP Packy Naughton and this team is just LOADED with value right now and we could see multiple punts in this Houston lineup again with Martin Maldonado, Jose Siri, Chas McCormick and/or Jake Meyers.
That wrap-around Astros value-stack last night was a key part in many winning builds here at Win Daily as the Maldy/Chas/Siri trip ripped it up for 48 DK points and cost you just $6.3K for ALL THREE BATS. Why are we not going right back to this value tonight?
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
Tonight’s MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate has some serious GPP intrigue as the chalk will likely pop off in a very concentrated way around Coors Field and the Dodgers. These are the kind of slates where we can find really low-owned pivots to get completely different GPP builds with massive upside and they become the tournament nights that build your bankroll in a major way.
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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