Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Wednesday 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!
Early Slate Breakdown
Welcome into a split slate of Wednesday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we get a 3 game afternoon slate to whet our appetite for the day! This slate is going to be an interesting one strategy-wise because we have solid pitching up top that will likely mean we get really concentrated ownership and similar build types- so the key is how do we get different?
With the Cubs/Rockies game being PPD last night, that means German Marquez gets the same spot we all wanted yesterday and he gets it in a 7 inning double-header which gives him even more potential ceiling. Pairing Marquez with Lance McCullers ($10.3K) is likely the chalky path on DK but it is hard to argue it and I think eating the chalk on pitchers with demonstrated ceiling is the right way to go and we find a way to be different with our bats!
The Detroit Tigers are not an offense we typically lead with but when its 90 degrees with 8-10 MPH winds blowing out and Jon Lester on the hill, well you get all the Detroit bats you can handle!
The Tigers will go with an all-right-handed lineup which is how you want to attack Lester and his .210 ISO and 40% HC rate to RHB. What you want to focus on is getting right-handed batters that hit both the cutter/sinker well since that makes up roughly 40% of Lester’s pitch type against righties and they are the two pitch types giving up high ISO/HC marks.
Jonathan Schoop is the premier must-have bat in this stack with a .300 ISO against the sinker and a .560 ISO mark against the cutter and his 1B/2B eligibility on DraftKings makes him an ideal building block due to his position flexibility.
Lester has really altered his pitch type the last month, going far more sinker-heavy but it has come with some troubling metrics overall – a 49% HC rate, an 11.3% K rate, and a bloated 11% walk rate to match. It looks like Carlos Torress will be the home plate umpire today and umpire data matters for a guy like Lester who counts on getting the low/fringe strike calls due to his lack of swing and miss stuff. Torres in his home plate career, allows 11% more runs to score than the average umpire with a 7% boost to slugging % and all that comes with a lower than average strikeout rate.
With the hot temperature, the wind blowing out, recent trends working against him and a hitter’s umpire – today could be a serious beatdown for our old friend.
Now I would assume the IRT’s of the Astros and Cardinals will make them popular plays early but remember, strategy matters more than anything on small slates so I think going off the wall and stacking the Rockies against Kyle Davies is the right secondary play!
If we look at the last 30 days, no pitcher on this slate has been worse from a power metrics perspective than Davies who has given up a .433 ISO to LHB, a .406 ISO to RHB with a bloated 57.4% hard contact rate. In his last two home starts, he gave up 4 HR’s to the Padres and 3 HR’s to the White Sox so even in a 7 inning game – this Rockies team has the potential to win you a GPP if Davies is serving up batting practice.
Davies is a sinker/change-up arm so finding the bats that do the most damage against those pitch types is key since it accounts for essentially 90% of his pitch mix.
Trevor Story has a .298 ISO and 46% HC rate against the sinker and almost identical .267 ISO and 44% HC rate against the change-up which makes him my favorite play on this Rockies side.
The key with the Rockies is finding the HR bats you want to target in your stack – because this is a 7 inning offense, I want to target the bats with the best power profile and use them as a 3 man mini-stack alongside the Tigers.
Main Slate Breakdown
The 10 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Main Slate is well- a pitching bonanza! You can literally make a strong case for 10+ arms on this slate and with so many good pitchers, it is not a shock at all to see just 3 teams with IRT’s over 5. I think what we are likely to see as a result is some serious offensive chalk (looking at you Angels) and the pitching ownership being largely spread out.
I am not going to try and simply reiterate what Adam broke down in Starting Rotation because he really nailed the way to look at the top/mid-range arms. However, I want to add on one arm that is on my DFS radar this evening and that is $5K Miami starter Edward Cabrera.
Any time a consensus top prospect with 90+ strikeouts in just 60 innings of work gets a call up from the minors – we better take notice and this kid’s stuff is SERIOUS.
Cabrera has a high 90’s heater with sink that can touch triple digits and he has really perfected his change-up and slider that acts like a curve with its the sweeping break. You are looking at a dynamic talent for just $5K and with so many arms, he may get overlooked tonight just because of the name-value we have at the top tier.
The name of the game tonight in MLB DFS GPP play is getting offenses right because, with so many strong arms, the reality is – getting pitchers right is almost a pre-cursor tonight and it is what your bats do that will set you apart.
There are two offenses that jump out to me tonight that correlate really well on DraftKings – the Cleveland Indians and the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Indians are going to get a date with Rangers LHP Jake Latz, a “prospect” that has spot-starter type ceiling – basically just a minor league arm that is being pushed into duty here. Latz is a 25-year-old lefty who has pitched only 9 innings above AA and ranks as the Rangers 50th best prospect – again, this is a depth-type guy with no real pitch profile to be wary of.
The Indians are a line-up with serious pop against lefties and it all starts in the middle of the order with Amed Rosario, Jose Ramirez and Franmil Reyes. Over the last month especially, this trio is raking against lefties with both Rosario and Reyes sporting .250+ ISO marks with Franmil leading the team with a 60% HC rate while JRam leads the squad with a .425 ISO mark.
The Phillies meanwhile take on the Tampa Bay Rays and yes I know, I did not write up the Rays for once – see, I have some depth! Rays lefty Ryan Yarbrough has really hit a rough patch the last month against RHB specifically with .388 ISO allowed and a massive 65% FB rate which in Citizen’s Bank Park could spell disaster.
Yarbrough relies heavily on the cutter to RHB, throwing it over 40% of the time and it has been hit to the tune of a .733 ISO and 56% HC rate with an average distance of 353 feet the last month- not great Bob.
The right-handed trio of Rhys Hoskins, JT Realmuto and Andrew McCutchen all have 40%+ HC rates and 300+ average distance traveled metrics against this pitch type wits Hoskins having a massive fly-ball batters profile which sets up perfectly against Yarbrough’s tendencies. Hoskins is going yard tonight – book it.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
There is nothing better than a full day of MLB DFS and Picks and Pivots is ready to roll! On both slates today, we have strong pitching and I think the bats are what win us the day as we need to find ways to build around the arms with ceiling while not sacrificing hitting upside.
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.
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!
