Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Wednesday, June 16th 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 in to a split slate MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we have 6 games on the 2PM EST Early Slate including a Coors Field affair with a near two touchdown IRT that will rule the slate dynamics!
To be perfectly blunt, small slates with Coors Field are not my favorite – I think you basically have to play them all in or all out as the ownership will be so widely concentrated.
So the question becomes – to Coors or not to Coors?
What stands out to me on the game in Colorado today with Blake Snell and Kyle Freeland on the hill, is how the pricing sets up here, specifically how the Rockies bats are so cheap and help you easily afford the core big Padres bats.
The simple reality is, we have two left-handed arms that have been rocked by right-handed batters this season pitching in Coors Field against right-handed heavy line-ups and if you have to pick a lane today, I saw we go all in and game stack!
Kyle Freeland has given up a .335 ISO to RHB (and a .412 mark to LHB) while Blake Snell has surrendered a .200 ISO mark with a massive 52% hard contact rate and this game is projected to have 13 of the 16 position players batting from the right side.
The reason this game is so appealing – and it may sound odd to start on the Rockies side, but what is with this Colorado pricing? Five of the eight projected starters for the Rockies are priced at $3.2K or lower on DK with pure punts like Connor Joe ($2K), Elias Diaz ($2.5K), and Brendan Rogers ($2.9K) all offering you insane value for a game in Coors Field with 100-degree daytime temperatures and a beatable lefty on the mound.
The value that sits on the Rockies side of this game is what directly allows you to click the big bats on the San Diego side that are Coors Field must-haves from the right side in Manny Machado ($5.6K), Fernando Tatis Jr. ($6.1K), Tommy Pham ($5.8K) and Wil Myers ($4.4K) while Eric Hosmer ($4.9K) & Trent Grisham ($4.6K) remain in play in the L/L match-up with Freeland’s struggles with lefties this season.
I love the idea of using Hosmer/Grisham here in Padres stacks as people may think more traditionally with Freeland’s splits and not realize that he has surrendered 6 HR’s to LHB over his last 18 innings of work spanning back to last season.
Taking this one step further – not only does the Colorado value allow you to game stack Coors, but it allows you enough salary flexibility to still pay for a high K SP1 like Freddy Peralta ($10.3K) who has a massive 37% K rate and 15.5% swinging strike rate on the season.
The sticker shock for Peralta is real, but frankly, it is warranted. Take his name out for a second and realize you are getting an arm with the second-highest strikeout rate in baseball behind only Jacob deGrom. His swinging-strike rate and CSW% rate both rank in the top 10 in all of baseball and the simple fact we can game stack Coors Field and get one of the best strikeout arms in baseball in the same build – is well, a path that seems far too straightforward to pass on a small slate.
Main Slate Breakdown
The 8 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Main Slate starts and ends with you clicking on Jacob deGrom at $11K as your SP1.
No, seriously, like go do that now.
I’ll wait.
As Adam Strangis said in Starting Rotation, deGrom right now is like Russell Westbrook in NBA DFS – until the sites price him out of play, you just lock him in and figure out the rest every single slate.
I am in lockstep with Adam with how this slate looks to play out and I suspect our Matchup Tool, which is one of the best tools in our Win Daily Sports suite will also help underline just how clear this slate is – as we continue to attack Jordan Lyles with opposing bats.
Among qualified pitchers this season, Jordan Lyles ranks among the worst arms in baseball with a 1.6 HR/9 rate that is the 6th highest in the league, and his 39.4% hard contact rate allowed is the single worst mark in all the land. Flip it around and his 11% soft contact rate is the third-lowest of any pitcher – meaning no matter how I slice the data, Lyles is poo. (for you Ghost).
I am sure Lyles is a perfectly nice guy, and hey listen – he has actually pitched “well” recently with minimal damage allowing 3 or fewer runs in 7 of his last 10 starts, so the blowup potential maybe doesn’t materialize as much as the metrics would indicate.
All that said, on a short slate like this with more good arms than bad, I think you have to attack the spots the metrics highlight and that means building around the Houston Astros batters.
Lyles is overly reliant on a low 90’s fastball to LHB that has surrendered a .304 ISO and 50% HC rate allowed and he throws it over 50% of the time. To right-handed batters you see much of the same with a .315 ISO and 51% HC rate against his fastball but he does throw it a tad less, at just 40%.
Not surprisingly, the Astros batters all profile well against a low 90’s fastball because well, they are Major League Hitters. All of Altuve, Brantley, Bregman, Alvarez and Tucker have .200+ ISO marks against that pitch type.
Oddly enough, the one bat that actually stinks against this fastball velocity is Carlos Correa with a .162 ISO and just a 26% HC rate which is crazy low and while I would still say he is a fine play in the stack at a weak SS position, I thought it was odd to see a major league hitter with such a poor profile against a low veocity fastball.
Much like the early slate where the “clear path” is to anchor to Coors/Peralta – the main slate has the same basic outline with deGOAT and the Astros 5 man stack at the center of our builds.
What it means is finding cheap secondary stacks and SP2’s to make it work but I think we continue to have to path due to the punt pricing of the Baltimore Orioles bats.
I am not sure what Baltimore did to the DK algorithm but why exactly are 6 of the 9 projected hitters in this line-up once again all priced under $3K?
When you consider that Aaron Civale has a .202 ISO mark and 41% HC rate allowed to LHB with a 1.8 HR/9 rate and this Orioles line-up has 5 hitters batting from the left side (STRONG SIDE – sorry had to do it), why exactly is Baltimore still so cheap?
Civale relies heavily on his cutter to LHB, nearly a third of the time, and Cedric Mullins ($3.4K) stands out with a .227 ISO mark and 48% HC rate against that pitch type. Interestingly enough, for you BvP truthers, Mullins is also 2 for 3 off Civale with 2 HR’s which both came back on June 5th when Civale faced the O’s and gave up 3 HR’s in total including a duo to Mullins – one off the fastball and one off the sinker – which by the way Mullins has .225+ ISO marks against both those pitch types as well.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
We have a double dose of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots today and the two slates play very similarly for me today in how I plan to attack my GPP builds.
We have clear high-level ace arms in Peralta/deGOAT on both slates with high K upside that we simply need to anchor to and we can do so easily while still getting the best hitting stacks on each slate including Coors Field and the Houston Astros. Any time we have that kind of build staring at us in the face – I think we take the most direct route to the cash line and beyond!
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!
