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 rainy Wednesday of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we start off with a 3 game early slate that actually has some interesting GPP options for us to explore.
The first key decision that we have to make that will determine our build type and likely our cash position is what we do with Yu Darvish ($9.3K) who is at his lowest price since June against an Arizona team that he struck out 12 against a few weeks ago on his way to 33.4 DK points.
There is no doubt that Darvish has the kind of ceiling that would win us a slate, especially one this small, but it is fair to question his recent form and the dip in his swing and miss stuff. The fact of the matter is, this is a 35-year-old arm, with one start since coming off the IL with back tightness and the last start against the Dodgers should give us some pause.
In that game, Darvish relied on his fastball more than normal but what is most concerning is how much his velocity was down across the board. Against the Dodgers, his fastball was down 1.5 MPH, both his cutter and slider 1.1 MPH, and his split-finger down over 2 MPH. All of this resulted in the Dodgers squaring him up pretty well, with a near 50% hard contact rate allowed in that game.
I talk about this all the time but small MLB DFS slates are always more about strategy and after Blake Snell dominated in this spot last night, I wonder if people see the price drop on Darvish and just blindly click him in. The reality is, there has been more floor than ceiling with the Padres right-handed the last 10 outings and with a recent IL stint due to back tightness and the drop in velocity, I am fine fading him if/when he is chalk because I do think we have viable pivots.
The duo of Kyle Freeland and Jake Odorizzi is where I would move to if you are fading Darvish as they sit right at the $7K price point and I believe they both have paths to match/exceed him today.
Freeland ($7.4K) has been incredible the last month with a 30% K rate and a 33% K rate to RHB specifically which could pay off in a big way against a Texas Rangers team that is likely to go nearly all right-handed against him. In terms of recent form, Freeland has gone for 23, 25, and 27 DK points in his last three outings with 23 K’s over 19 innings of work.
Odorizzi ($6.7K) has also found recent success including a 8K, 26 DK point outing against the same Mariners team he faces tonight and as a sizeable favorite (more on that in a minute), he has a solid path here against a Seattle team with the 4th highest K rate in baseball over the last two weeks. If Houston gets out early, it will allow Odorizzi to pitch comfortably ahead and attack the zone and I think a easy 5-6 inning win gets him to value at this price tag today.
The flip side – if we look at pure metrics, Odorizzi has a 15% K rate the last month with a 48% HC rate to LHB and a .260 ISO to RHB and so while the path to “get there” is clear – he also has the least amount of wiggle room to claw back his DFS output with K’s if things go poorly.
My general take on this early slate for pitching is – well, going to be ownership-based. Kyle Freeland feels like the only arm that I would use regardless of match-up but I think you can make strong cases for/against both Darvish and Odorizzi at potentially elevated ownerships.
No matter which route you go with arms, it requires you to nail your hitters, and today there is one stack I want to plant my flag with – that is all Houston Astros against RHP Logan Gilbert.
Logan Gilbert has hit a very clear rough patch with 19 ER’s allowed in his last 3 starts including a 2 HR, 9 ER drubbing by the hand of the same Astros lineup he faces today. Right-handed batters have smacked him around to the tune of a .361 ISO mark over the last month and with the Astros getting Alex Bregman back, the lineup just becomes incredibly deep and that much harder to navigate through.
In these recent struggles for Gilbert, he is having to go to his fastball far more than he was initially and while the fastball is a great pitch for the lefty at 94+ MPH, the Astros specifically are a team that feasts on the fastball with almost every projected hitters sporting some combination of a .200+ ISO and/or a 40-50% HC rate against his velocity.
To right-handed batters, Gilbert is also using his slider more – at over 35%, becoming essentially a two-pitch arm over the last month and both pitches are surrendering a .330+ ISO mark to RHB over that time.
So how do we prioritize the Astros stack? We want the right-handed batters first and foremost that hit the slider and high-velocity fastball well and that is very clearly the trio of Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel. After that trio – I think you can go a few different ways, pairing the big LH bat in Yordan Alvarez with the righties and/or using some of the value with guys like Jake Meyers or Martin Maldonado to get cheap fill in pieces.
The fact that the Padres have the highest IRT on this slate at 5.2 which is well above the Astros 4.5, it may keep people off this as their main stack but the recent form of Gilbert says he is the arm we should attack early and often with our pitching pair.
Main Slate Breakdown
The MLB DFS Picks and Pivots main slate is scheduled for 11 games, but with the Mets/Marlins already postponed and the gave in Washington looking like it could have the same outcome- this could become a 9 game slate before long.
The trend continues for me in MLB DFS as we head into the home stretch – we are seeing strong top-heavy pitching slates almost daily now and going double-aces when the slate dictates is exactly the path I want to follow. We saw it last night again that winning build anchored to two high K arms and with Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole all on the slate tonight – we would be foolish to deviate off this path.
As Adam outlined in Starting Rotation, with clear pitch concerns for Rodon and the same for Chris Sale against the Rays (a team I simply don’t pick on) – it almost leads you by default to a Mad Max/Cole build and with Cole at a laughable $9.9K on DK – going double aces is a path you can go down without much trouble at all.
Going with two arms with near 35% K rates over the last month in Scherzer and Cole still gives you $3.6K+ per batter on DK and while we have some pricey bats we may covet, I would also argue that there are far more reasonable spots we can attack to make this build type work.
We head to Toronto tonight where there are a few things at play – first the Blue Jays coming off a night as a chalk stack that flopped and now they get a start against RHP Matt Harvey which screams bounce back. On the other side of this game the Orioles will get to face LHP Steven Matz in a game that only a Mets fan could love. Maybe we get Jason Isringhausen and Bull Pulsipher coming out of the pen tonight and we can all relive “Mets pitchers that were supposed to be good.”
The Dark Knight has not been bad in his recent turns but he also has been far from good. The underlying metrics point to a 55% hard contact rate overall with a .286 ISO and 50%+ fly ball rate to the left-handed batters.
The Blue Jays are expensive but there are ways to make this stack work by using a wrap-around technique with the punts of Kevin Smith and Reese McGuire. Also, we need to keep an eye on the lineup because George Springer left last night with a leg injury and there is simply no way there are going to rush him back if he is not 100% after a lengthy injury absence.
So let’s just say we get Jerrod Dyson ($2.1K) in the lineup with punts like Smith and/or McGuire and all of a sudden this Jays stack becomes far more balanced and easy to do. So now all of a sudden a Jays stack with 1-2 punts wrapped around Vladdy Jr., Bichette, Semien and the Jays OF/DH bats.
The way Vladdy is seeing the ball right now he is the scariest fade on the slate and I think you simply have to find a way to use the value I mentioned to make sure you can afford him.
The other side of this game is really interesting to me because of the pitch profile against LHP Steven Matz. Matz is a heavy sinker ball arm, throwing it nearly 60% of the time and while he has done so effectively with little hard contact allowed- this Orioles team is one that hits that specific pitch well.
In fact, all of Ryan Mountcastle, Trey Mancini, Pedro Severino and Anthony Santander have 200+ ISO marks, 40%+ HC rates, and averaged batted ball distance over 300 feet against that pitch type. Now Mountcastleplays the same position as the aforementioned Guerrero, but with Mancini’s OF eligibility – I think there is a path to work him in as something with serious pop.
The way I would play this game stack is as follows – the Orioles you are going power hunting and hoping you get the HR calls right but the Blue Jays you play as a more traditional stack in the hopes their ownership is deflated after disappointing last night.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
We get a full day of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots and in both slates we get strong pitching to anchor to which I think needs to be our default build type each and every day!
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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