daily fantasy baseball

Welcome to the Monday, June 14th 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!

Before we dive into this Monday Slate – a huge THANK YOU to our NASCAR DFS lead here at Win Daily, Matt Vecchio, for continuing to bring absolutely amazing content and advice and help NASCAR novices like me win big!

Main Slate Breakdown

Welcome into this Monday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate where we have some rain concerns across this 13 game slate with some serious offensive firepower and a relatively murky pitching pool to wade through!

Despite the fact we have 26 pitchers to choose from, this feels like a really condensed player pool for arms and as such, I think you need to have a really tight focus on getting your arms right on this slate because my feeling is that more arms will hurt you than help you on this slate.

Tyler Glasnow ($10.7K) is the obvious top dog on this slate with an elite 36% K rate and 17% SS rate and on a one pitcher site like FanDuel, consider yourself lucky you can basically stop there.

On DraftKings, we need an SP2 and honestly this is where much of your night’s success will be determined as I think the most likely ownership is that people go high low with Glasnow and a cheap SP2 to fit in better bats.

I think there is a strong argument however to pay up for our SP2 with a floor/ceiling combination for LHP Sean Manaea ($10.1K) against the Angels in Oakland. Now, there is massive sticker shock here with Manaea, as he has seen his price spike from the mid $8K range last start to being nearly on par with Glasnow salary wise.

The reality is, Manaea’s performance this year has warranted the price hike, especially at home where the lefty has historically seen better results and 2021 is no different. Manaea in Oakland sees his K rate increase 2-3% while the hard contact rate drops and the GB rate increases.

The match-up tonight against the Angels is an exploitable one especially without Mike Trout available and it is one that Manaea has already navigated with success twice since Trout was sidelined in mid-May with an injury.

Manaea has faced the Angels twice, once on the road where he threw 5 innings of 1 run ball and struck out 6 on his way to 17 DK points and once in Oakland where he went 6.2 IP with just 1 ER allowed and K’s with 24 DK points.

In both cases, the swing and miss stuff was there and we have seen other LHP have similar success recently against the Angels where Yusei Kikuchi struck out 8 and Justus Sheffield struck out 7 batters.

Now putting up 20-25 DK points at over $10K of salary is frankly an over pay and I get that but honestly that perceived floor for Manaea may be worth the investment on a night where there are more potential landmines behind Glasnow than arms we want to play.

The other aspect of a Glasnow/Manaea pairing that is appealing is that the salary constraints when it comes to building your bats, really are not there as you have $3.7K per batter for the rest of your line-up and there are some stacks on this slate that seem significantly under-priced.

The first one that stood out to me today was the Cincinnati Reds against LHP Eric Lauer who is getting the start for Milwaukee as they move to a 6 man rotation in the middle of 16 straight games with no off days.

Lauer has extreme splits and splits that do not work in his favor today against a right-handed heavy Reds teams as he has surrendered a massive .300 ISO mark and 52% HC rate against right-handed batters this season.

This Reds line-up is constructed perfectly to attack these splits as they will have only two LHB in the line-up with Joey Votto and Jesse Winker, so loading up the righties here is the most direct path in this MLB DFS stack.

Lauer’s pitch mix no matter how you slice it has been hit hard by RHB this season as his fastball (.206 ISO), cutter (.520 ISO) and changeup (.400 ISO) have all operated as batting practice offerings in 2021.

Nick Castellanos and Eugenio Suarez are the primary options here that both have massive power metrics against LHP and both have similarly high marks against the cutter/fastball combination that Lauer depends on.

Tyler Stephenson ($3.9K) may have limited sample numbers here with just 40 plat appearances against LHP but his .351 ISO and 55% HC rates ranks behind only Casty this season for the Reds right-handed batters.

The bottom of the order gives you a nice wrap-around stack with Scott Heineman and Kyle Farmer who have .400 and .200 ISO marks respectively with 45-50% HC rates and with the Reds being the visiting team we get guaranteed 9th inning at-bats for this bottom of the order.

You didn’t think I would end Picks and Pivots without the public recognition of today’s holiday – yes, it is in fact Lester Day and we get a dirt-cheap Pirates stack against LHP Jon Lester to help us pay for the big arms on Monday.

The Pirates are never a team we wake up and get excited to stack but the top 4 in this order specifically, offer some serious pop against LHP with every single one having .225+ ISO marks against southpaws this season including Adam Frazier, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Brian Reynolds and Jacob Stallings.

We have documented this multiple times but the cutter to RHB has been Lester’s undoing with a .576 ISO mark against him and that was the exact pitch that Manuel Margot took him deep on in the first inning of the Rays game his last time out.

The pitch data is limited for the Pirates hitters, but Stallings does stand out with a 60% HC rate against that pitch type and a massive 350 foot average distance traveled against the cutter.

The one issue with the Pirates/Reds correlation is that we have two catchers we want to use in Stallings/Stephenson but with Stephenson have 1B eligibility on DK – you can actually slide him there to use a dual catcher line-up which will make your stack incredibly unique. Now if only Eugenio Suarez still had SS eligibility to we could put him and Hayes in the same build!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

Stepping back and looking at this Monday Night MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate, we will need to be mindful of some wet weather in the northeast and I think most importantly, we need to see how ownership plays out.

On DraftKings, the SP2 decision and the fact we have all these big dollar offenses, including a game in Coors Field, may lead to chalky punt SP2 builds and I think that could be where we get different – paying up for our second arm alongside Glasnow while taking advantage of cheap stack with the Reds/Pirates.

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!

Welcome to the Friday, June 11th 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 into a Friday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we have a monster 13 game slate staring us in the face with a plethora of aces, big dollar stacks, and some weather threatening once again the game in DC with Max Scherzer on the mound for the Nationals.

Any time we have a slate with this much top-end pitching, I think you need to understand that your builds are anchored first in this strikeout heavy upper echelon of arms. As Adam Strangis laid out in today’s Starting Rotation, the fact we have Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, Lucas Giolito, Brandon Woodruff and Shohei Ohtani all on the same slate – you are anchoring to a subset of arms here all with 30%+ K rates and 13% swinging strike rates.

I would argue strongly that every single build you make tonight on DK has two of these arms in your build – period. Full stop.

Well let me take it a step further, every build should have Jacob deGrom in it first – and then, you pick which SP2 you want from the rest.

I say this all the time in Picks and Pivots but K’s are King and anytime we get this many elite K arms on a slate, I want to build around that certainty and ceiling as you simply cannot miss on arms when it comes to MLB DFS. I am far more willing to take the high-end arms when we have them and take chances on the high variance of batters.

The thing is – you really do not even have to look all that hard to find powerful stacks tonight that fit within the salary constructs of a “double ace” build. This is even more so the case if you opt to use Shohei Ohtani ($8.1K) as your SP2 alongside deGrom – as you have two of the best strikeout arms in baseball and still just under $4K per batter to spend on your hitters.

So where do we look for bats tonight?

Well, you clicked on this article and it is a day ending in “Y” so that means, as usual, we can go right back to the Tampa Bay Rays who never see their prices change on DraftKings, they never are owned and all they do is hit for power.

LHP Keegan Akin will take the hill in Tampa tonight and this is a lefty that has just a 17% K rate against RHB with a 44% fly ball rate and 49% hard contact rate allowed. Akin relies heavily on his change-up to RHB nearly 30% of the time and this is a pitch that has resulted in a 61% HC rate from right-handed batters this season.

All of Manuel Margot, Mike Brosseau and Mike Zunino hit the change-up from lefties well with a combined .200+ ISO mark and 40%+ HC rates. The issue for Akin is that he essentially is a two-pitch pitcher against right-handed heavy teams and his change-up actually grades out as a below-average offering so when all you have is a low 90’s fastball and a change-up AND you give up a ton of hard contact, this feels like a spot where the Rays could just put the hammer down with their right-handed heavy lineup.

Staying in this game, the Orioles makes for an intriguing mini-stack to attack the HR tendencies of LHP Ryan Yarbrough. Listen Yarbrough is coming off his best outing of the year against the Yankees and this is a ballpark downgrade for the O’s but the pricing on DK specifically has really over-adjusted in my opinion with 5 of the 9 projected starting batters on Baltimore priced below $3K.

Yarbrough for all his merits has one very clear issue – the HR ball – having surrendered 2 HR’s to the Yankees and 3 HR’s in each of his previous games against Toronto and Baltimore. As my man Jared, our FanDuel DFS expert here at WDS, pointed out in Discord – Yarbrough has given up these 8 HR’s and amazingly they are all solo shots!

So what does that tell us – this is not a spot to all-in stack the Orioles but instead you are going home run hunting with a mini-stack.

Yarbrough throws two primary offerings to RHB – a cutter nearly 50% of the time and a change-up that he tosses 35% of the time. Against the cutter, Trey Mancini (.444 ISO), Ryan Mountcastle (.500) and Freddy Galvis (.296) all stand out. Against the change, Maikel Franco (.256) and Pat Valaika (.438) jump off the page where their power metrics.

The nice part about this Orioles line-up is that really outside of Mancini, the rest of these right-handed batters noted above are all super cheap and it allows us to get the big name arms we covet.

The other spot here tonight that stands out for cheap bats in Minnesota against RHP Jose Urquidy.

The Twins have a near 5 IRT tonight and you have FIVE batters in the projected line-up priced at 2.6K or lower on DK which gives you an opportunity to stack here like we did last night with seemingly an abundance of value.

Urquidy is actually a reverse splits arm, giving up a .223 ISO to RHB versus just a .112 ISO to LHB and he is coming off his worst start of the year, his second start since coming off the IL with a shoulder injury, in which he allowed 6 ER and gave up 2 HR’s in just 4 innings against Toronto.

Urquidy relies heavily on his slider, nearly 33% of the time to RHB and this is a pitch they have hit hard – with a .333 ISO mark this season. Josh Donaldson is the bat from the right side that really jumps out as he has a .307 ISO and 43% HC rate against this pitch type from RHP.

The value really comes from a few specific bats – the combination of Trevor Larnach ($2.1K), C Ryan Jeffers ($2.5K) and 2B Nick Gordon ($2.6K) who are projected to bookend Nelson Cruz in the middle of the Twins lineup and give you some really interesting stack options that will allow you to get guys like Cruz or Donaldson alongside these cheaper pieces of the stack.

The hitting environment in Minnesota tonight looks to be elite, with 80-90 degree temperatures and 11 MPH winds blowing out and the fact you can stack this team with a combination of big bats like Cruz, Donaldson and Polanco by using the punt value in Jeffers, Larnach and Gordon – it gives you a really balanced and elite stack.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

Stepping back and looking at this Friday Night MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate, the outlook for me is simple and it starts with pitching. Even with the Nationals game likely a washout, we have no shortage of arms and it starts with Jacob DeGrom as our SP1 – with really my decision for SP2 likely coming down to Woodruff or Ohtani based on salary needs.

The nice part about both paths is that we have so much value in our bats to choose from across the spots in Minnesota, Baltimore and the Win Daily favorite – Tampa Bay.

Mix and match, stack it up – let’s start this weekend off with a bang!

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!

Welcome to the Thursday, June 10th 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 Thursday of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we have 4 games starting on the Early Slate at 12:35 PM EST and with all games kicking off by 1:10 meaning we should have all the lineup news we need before lock.

These daytime slates are always tricky to write up because these tend to be the days where lineups are littered with bench players getting the start on “getaway day” and so lineup release could have a drastic impact on ownership. We actually saw this yesterday on the three-game slate where the Giants line-up came out really weak and it pushed Kyle Gibson’s ownership up and over 50% as a result.

What we know we have on this slate is strong pitching with multiple options that offer us high K ability and do so at a bargain price relative to their ceilings.

The best pure strikeout arm on this slate may be Freddy Peralta ($9.4K) who has a dominant 37% K rate and 15.7% swinging strike rate this season. Peralta has the highest ceiling on the slate based on his ability to get swing and misses and go deep into games as he has put up 30+ DK points now in 3 of his last 4 starts and has thrown 100 or more pitches in 3 of those 4 outings as well.

Zack Wheeler ($9.7K) has has flashed similar upside with two double-digit K outings in his last three trips to the mound and with a 31% K rate and 13% SS rate. The match-up against the Braves is not the easiest one as the top 5 in the Atlanta offense have serious pop, but with only Albies/Freeman on the left side – I tend to worry less about guys like Swanson/Riley since Wheeler has been able to dominate RHB this season with a .091 ISO and 53% GB rate.

The fact that we can get two elite K arms under $10K on DraftKings to anchor our builds today seems like the ideal path on this slate and even before we get official line-ups, I think there is enough value to make this work with ease.

The Dodgers against Mitch Keller look to be the early slate hammer with a 5+ IRT and with Max Muncy expected back in the line-up, you can focus first on the left-handed batters against Keller as he surrenders a 54% HC rate and .218 ISO to LHB this season.

So go ahead and start with Cody Bellinger, Max Muncy and Gavin Lux as the primary core plays based on the splits but you can expand to the right-handed batters like Mookie/Turner/Pollock to round out arguably the best stack on the board. Betts actually profiles really well against Keller as he sports a .242 ISO and 41% HC rate against the slider which is Keller’s primary weapon to RHB.

The fact is – you can 5 man stack the Dodgers with Wheeler/Peralta and you still have $3K left for your mini stack around them – seems far too straight forward and I have a hard time arguing against this path at first glance.

Main Slate Breakdown

The 6 game Main Slate has similar high K arms that are going to dominate our builds with Max Scherzer and Trevor Rogers standing out as an elite pairing on DraftKings.

If you look at the metrics, Scherzer and Rogers rank 1-2 in K rate and SS rate – as Mad Max leads the slate with a 36% K rate and 16.7% SS rate while Rogers 29% K rate and 15% SS rate is not far behind.

The fact of the matter is – I am not even worried about looking elsewhere because the pricing on the bats/stacks I want are so under-priced that I simply do not need to pivot off the top arms.

The Twins/Yankees game is the ideal stacking spot on this main slate with RHP Michael King and LHP JA Happ taking the hill and you may be thinking – how on Earth can I stack the Yankees and Twins with Max and Rogers?

Well my friends, welcome to some serious mis-pricing. You want bargains? We got ’em!

The Twins have multiple punts projected in their line-up tonight with C Ben Rortvedt ($2K), OF Gilberto Celestino ($2K) and OF Trevor Larnach ($2.2K). The Yankees meanwhile have 1B Chris Gittens ($2K), Clint Frazier ($2.3K) and Miguel Andujar ($2.6K) all sitting in the same range and now all of a sudden – you have all the salary you could need.

You want Judge/Stanton/Donaldson/Cruz etc – go get ’em – because we have the opportunity here to game stack this spot with high dollar plays as a result of multiple punt plays that make this build far too easy!

Go ahead – give it a whirl. You will like what you see.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

We have two slates of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots action and both slates have a similar look and feel in that we have stud strikeout arms we can anchor to on both slate and the pricing is soft enough that we are still able to get the elite bats/stacks from the Dodgers, Twins and Yankees.

Sometimes you take the path the slate gives you and today, I am not overthinking it.

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!

Welcome to the Wednesday, June 9th 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 to Wednesday’s MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we have a 12 game Main Slate that sets up perfectly for GPP play with some really intriguing strategic decisions sitting before us.

The decisions really start and end at pitcher because for all the strong names – there are seemingly more reasons NOT to play guys than to roster them. My man Adam Strangis does an incredible job with today’s deep dive in Starting Rotation so I do not want to simply regurgitate his analysis but rather, to expand on it in the context of our roster builds.

The three highest-priced arms on this slate in Gerrit Cole, Lance Lynn and Alex Manoah all have elite swing and miss ability which we need when building our MLB DFS lineups but they have serious questions marks that could make them under-owned.

Adam did an amazing job of outlining Cole’s issues and match-up and that video/interview from yesterday I think will be mainstream enough to impact his ownership. Listen – the metrics would tell you Cole is the best K arm on the slate by a considerable margin – the narrative though is what is going to keep people away. If Cole is chalk you can make a clear case to fade, but if he does not get the ownership he should – it could be an elite GPP spot.

The next two here are where I think it could get really interesting as Lance Lynn and Alek Manoah face off against each other and two strong offenses in Toronto and Chicago.

Let’s start with Lance Lynn ($10.4K) – from a pure metrics perspective, you could argue that he sets up well with 6 projected right-handed batters in the Jays line-up which plays to Lynn’s splits with a 32% K rate to RHB versus just a 21.7% rate to LHB.

Lynn relies heavily on his cutter to right-handed batters, over a third of the time, and every single bat RHB in the Jays lineup has a .150 or lower ISO mark against that pitch type. Lynn thrives on limiting that hard contact/power and with a .093 ISO and just a 28% hard contact rate to RHB, this is actually a spot I think he could do well in.

I know picking on the Jays is not something we ever want to set out to do, but the truth is, SP’s have had success and high K output in this spot recently.

• Carlos Rodon – 20 DK and 8 K’s
• Luis Garcia – 29 DK points and 8 K’s
• Zack Greinke – 27 DK points and 3 K’s
• Pablo Lopez – 19 DK points and 9 K’s

Those are four of the last five arms to take on the Jays and so there is a path here for Lynn to have a ceiling game and I simply do not think there will be any appetite to pay $10K for him against Toronto’s line-up which makes him really interesting for tournaments.

Alek Manoah ($9.7K) was super chalk last game against the Marlins and proceeded to go out and get his teeth kicked in by Miami after his electric MLB debut against the Yankees where he struck out 7 batters in 6 innings.

If you played him last game, every reason still exists today – the elite pedigree, the insane swing and miss stuff and guess what – all those who played him likely won’t today because they remember the Miami HR derby. So now I can get all that K ability at a fraction of the ownership? Sign me up!

Now, maybe people see the White Sox and have the same reaction they did with Lynn – but the reality is, Chicago has been a team we can and should attack with right-handed pitching!

The projected line-up tonight has just a .168 ISO mark against RHP since the start of last season, with a 50% GB rate and a 24% K rate so there are frankly more reasons to attach them then I think people will realize.

Right-handed arms have seen success against the Sox this year – both at the ace level and in the fringe range. True top-tier arms like Cole, Gray and Bieber (2x) have gone for 25+ DK points with 7-8 K’s per game so the ceiling is there for the Jays young right-hander.

Even mid-range arms have seen success with guys like Zach Plesac (24), Brad Keller (21), Brady Singer (19), Casey Mize (19) and Trsiton McKenzie (18) all having strong games.

The reality is, Manoah is an arm with a 40% K rate in the minors who had one bad start – one – do not let that overshadow the ceiling this kid has!

My preferred path tonight is to anchor to one of these top-end K arms and pair them with Casey Mize ($6.8K) as my SP2 as Adam mentioned, he is simply far too cheap.

Now – if we pay up for at least one high-end K arm, how can we get high-powered stacks to build around them?

Let’s see – checks notes see a left-handed pitcher who gets smoked by right-handed batters and a team that is not priced up (again). Can you guess?

Yeah, hello Tampa Bay Rays against LHP Patrick Corbin!

Literally, every reason we went here yesterday is back on the table as Corbin is giving up a .251 ISO and 44% HC rate to RHB this season with 2.5 HR/9. So all the same cast of characters is back in play with Randy Arozarena, Manuel Margot, Mike Zunino, Yandy Diaz and Mike Brosseau getting the splits advantage.

If you watched that game like most of us in the WDS Discord did last night, this was a game the Rays had an opportunity to just carry us to the top but they left 12 men on base and had multiple HR’s go just foul including a grand slam from Margot that Kyle Schwarber caught over the wall on the foul side of the pole.

Literally feet difference in the other direction and that stack drops a massive number last night.

Tonight they get an elite starting spot and because they knocked Lester out early on Tuesday, you get one of the worst bullpens here tonight that was forced into extended duty and has to turn around and do it again this evening.

I am not going to wax poetic here – you guys now the deal by now – the Rays will be single digit owned, they can strike out with the best of them but they also have crazy power up and down the line-up and I am going right back to them tonight as a core stack.

The other spot I love here tonight is similar – taking the right-handed Reds bats against LHP Brett Anderson.

Anderson has given up a .216 ISO and 54% hard contact rate to RHB and has to face a Reds line-up in Great American Smallpark that is getting healthier and is loaded with RHB.

Nick Castellanos and Eugenio Suarez are prime plays in a mini-stack here – both of whom absolutely destroy the sinker from LHP which is what Anderson throws about half of the time. Casty has a .370 ISO and 70% HC rate while Geno has a .250 ISO mark and 73% HC rate and both players have 90% contact rates with an average distance hit over 315 feet. Yikes.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

This slate for me is one where I think our MLB DFS Picks and Pivots tournament outlook can give us an advantage, especially as we pick our arms at the top end as we could see ownership really help us find a low-owned SP1 up top.

Going high-low at pitcher will give us a path to big time bats and that is where a Rays/Reds stack comes into play against two left-handed arms in Corbin/Anderson who give up boatloads of power to right-handed bats!

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!

Welcome to the Tuesday, June 8th 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

After just a two-game MLB slate on Monday where are back here with a full 15 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate and let me tell you – it is glorious.

While we have a massive player pool to choose from with our arms, what stands out to me on this slate is the pairing of Shane Bieber and Tyler Glasnow due specifically to the pricing on a pair of the league’s best arms.

We have seen recently how DraftKings got super aggressive with their pitching pricing but today, you see it swing back the other way with Bieber and Glasnow the only two arms priced in double-digits. Both of these arms were $11.2K just a week or two ago, so you are getting these arms at a 10% discount compared to their most recent market rates which seems like something we need to jump on when you consider their metrics.

This duo ranks among the leagues best when you look at every single strikeout metric we anchor to when in our MLB DFS builds where K’s are King!

Both arms have a 35.6% K rate which put them at 6th and 7th in MLB this season, while their 17.2% and 16.7% SS rates rank 3rd and 4th and their 34.4% and 33.4% CSW rates rank 3rd and 5th respectively.

Said another way – you can get two of the top five strikeout arms in baseball on the same MLB DFS roster tonight and oh by the way, you have $3.7K per batter for the rest of your lineup.

Now, locking in double aces into our builds may not normally be the route folks go as they want to get the big dollar offenses but if you step back and look at this slate, the “obvious” offenses are not well – so obvious.

With only two teams with implied run totals (IRT) over 5 on this slate, the large majority of teams are sitting in this 4.5+ range which means that we could see ownership on bats largely spread out and allow us to attack low-owned stacks.

Now – let’s stop burying the lede here people.

As the great movie Wedding Crashers once said – there are two things the great state of Maryland does – Crab Cakes and Football. There are also two things that Picks and Pivots does – we stack against Jon Lester and we stack the Tampa Bay Rays offense.

Well, what happens when Jon Lester faces the, oh my God – wait for it – yep, the Tampa Bay Rays.

*Insert head exploding emoji here.

Since the beginning of 2020, the book on Lester has been that he surrenders high ISO marks to RHB, with a .203 mark and he does so while giving up HR with a 1.88 HR/9 mark to RHB last season and a 1.44 HR/9 mark this year.

The Rays can get right-handed heavy when they need to be and this is typically the most cost-effective way to stack Tampa Bay because the secondary right-handed pieces are all priced fairly including Manuel Margot ($3.1K), Yandy Diaz ($3.2K), Mike Brosseau ($3.2K) and Mike Zunino ($3.9K).

Since the start of last season, the Rays have three batters from the right side in their line-up with .200+ ISO marks including Brosseau & Zunino as well as the lone high-priced bat in Randy Arozarena ($5.5K).

If we dig into pitch type, you will see why I continue to beat the drum on attacking Lester who throws his cutter has his dominant pitch to right-handed batters a third of the time and the batter metrics against it – well, are not kind. How does a .553 ISO, 48% hard contact rate and just a 12% whiff rate sound?

If you are building this stack, Arozarena is a must have with a .429 ISO against this pitch type and the splits advantage and I would argue that going with the right-handed batters is likely the most “direct” route where you can stack (in order of preference) Arozarena, Brosseau, Margot, Zunino and Diaz all together to attack the splits preference.

Where you can really get different (although considering the Rays are never owned maybe we don’t need to veer from the direct route) – we can look to some of the L/L spots with Brandon Lowe or Austin Meadows.

Lowe actually has a .200+ ISO mark against LHP since the start of last season and has a .200 ISO mark against the cutter which Lester throws nearly 40% of the time to lefties which gives him a nice on paper match-up.

Meadows meanwhile has been one of the best hitters in baseball this season, leading the league in RBI’s and sitting top 10 in HR’s but doing almost all of that damage against RHP.

So this is a case where you can argue the pitch profile of Lowe or in the case of Meadows, you are likely making the argument that the Rays get to Lester (which is what you want in a stack) and then he gets the splits back in his favor against the Nationals bullpen which ranks among the worst bullpens in baseball over the last 14 days with a 5.44 ERA.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

If you step back and look at this slate, it sets up to be an ideal MLB DFS Picks and Pivots approach with a double-aces anchor and a 5 man power stack against a pitcher with regression squarely on the table.

I think depending on the value/secondary stack you use – you really can mix and match this Tampa Bay Rays stack to fit whatever build you want. You can live with the right-handed bats only who are all fairly priced in the $3K range outside of Arozarena or you can opt to pay up for a L/L premium bat like Meadows or Lowe to round out the stack.

Either way – double aces. All the Rays.

See you at the top.

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!

Welcome to the Saturday, June 5th 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!

Early Slate Breakdown

Welcome into a split slate MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Saturday where we kick-off the day with a 9 game Early Slate at 2PM EST.

Much like we saw last night, I think pitching is what dominates these slates and anchoring to two high K arms is going to be a must especially early with Brandon Woodruff and Lucas Giolito.

These two arms as Adam Strangis outlined in Starting Rotation give you the ability to build around two stud arms with 30% plus K rates and elite swinging strike rates and you can do so at a discount relative to what we saw last night night as even with this duo paired up you have $3.8K per batter for the rest of your build.

Another day of Picks and Pivots and another slate where the “Double Ace” build and a Rays/Reds stack seems to fit perfectly.

The Rays get LHP Kolby Allard against the Rays and any time I see a pitcher with a 45% fly-ball rate and 45% HC rate, it sets up perfectly for a power-hitting team like Tampa Bay especially in a hitters park like Texas.

Allard’s issue this year has been the RHB with a .222 ISO allowed with a 51% hard contact rate allowed and the Rays have 3 right-handed batters with .250+ ISO marks against southpaws since the start of last season in Randy Arozarena, Mike Zunino, and Mike Brosseau.

I am not sure what it is about the DK pricing but anytime I look to pair the Rays/Aces build it leads me to the Reds as a secondary stack because they seem wildly under-priced every slate.

Today they get to take on RHP Johan Oviedo who has given up a .200+ ISO and 43% HC rate to batters from the right side with a slider that has been particularly hit hard to the tune of a .239 ISO and 43% HC rate. Eugenio Suarez ($3.8K) is still too cheap and profiles really well against Oviedo as he has a .215 ISO against the slider and overall has a .236 ISO mark against RHP since the start of last season.

We again can take advantage of some cheap Reds still with Tyler Stephenson ($2.8K) and Mike Freeman ($2.4K) who give you flexibility at C/1B and SS to help align with a Tampa stack all while still having enough salary to anchor to two stud arms up top.

Main Slate Breakdown:

The Main Slate for this MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate is about as straight forward as I can remember any slate being this year as the DraftKings pricing is just – well, wrong.

Here is the summary – you can lock in Jacob deGrom & Kevin Gausman and a full-on Coors Field stack and it is simply too easy.

Seriously – you can get the best pitcher in baseball, pair him with another elite 30%+ K arm and you still can up and down stack the A’s and Rockies. It is going to be chalky, but it is the right path and I have a hard time arguing against it.

The fact that the A’s bats are this cheap against a lefty is criminal – guys like Chad Pinder ($3.7K) and Stephen Piscotty ($2K) being this cheap opens up the clear path to this build and even the Rockies side offers you value with Alan Trejo ($2.3K) being near minimum price.

All this value to start gives you the path to the big bats on both sides and I lean towards the right-handed power on the Colorado side as all of CJ Cron, Garret Hampson and Joshua Fuentes have .200+ ISO marks against LHP since the start of last season.

Honestly – I am not even going to try and argue another path on a 6 game slate as we have such a clear and obvious build staring us in the face so eat the chalk, live in the single entry GPP’s tonight and just take the free square build.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

Both of these MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slates today have a similar look and feel in that we can pay up for both arms with ease while still getting elite power stacks around them and frankly – I do not see a reason to move off that path.

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!

Welcome to the Friday, June 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!

Main Slate Breakdown

Welcome in my friends to a Friday Night of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we have a monster 15 game slate staring at us with some seriously aggressive pricing on our arms, a game in Coors Field and what looks to be an all clear from a weather standpoint.

I am going to take a little different approach today in how I layout Picks and Pivots to try and give some slate context into just HOW I build.

In our Discord community, we spend a lot of time talking about how to build lineups and one of the questions I get asked often is “do you build with pitchers first or hitters first?”

Well, the answer is – it depends.

However, let’s use today’s slate as an ideal example because I think this Friday Night slate is an ideal of example of where pitching will control your roster make-up and decision process.

Before I even peaked at Adam Strangis Starting Rotation for this slate, the initial path seemed clear to me – a Max Scherzer and Shohei Ohtani pairing as a SP1/SP1 build on DraftKings.

The rationale is simple and it is one we preach in MLB DFS Picks and Pivots all the time – K’s are King – and any time you can get two arms with 30% or higher K rates and 14% or higher swinging strike rates, you have the opportunity to get two high ceiling arms as the anchor of your build.

I also think pricing dictates this combination due to how aggressively DK priced up their arms tonight. If I am going to pay $10K or more for an arm on this slate, I am not going to do so with guys that frankly are over-priced and in bad match-ups when I can take the one arm at this top range in Scherzer who A) has the high K ceiling and B) has the match-up with a depleted Phillies team to get the highest possible K output from Mad Max.

The pricing on Ohtani meanwhile at $7.6K seems like the one “outlier” as he actually saw his price decrease by $200 since his last start despite going 6 innings, 93 pitches with 5 K’s and as Adam outlines, the velocity was back.

The ultimate takeaway here is that it feels like I am almost forced into a Max/Ohtani pairing at pitching as a result of the pricing/match-ups across the board and so when I answer “it depends” to the question initially asked – you can start to see why slates dictate that answer.

So now what? You have a Scherzer and Ohtani pitching duo and you have $3,875 per batter for the rest of your build on DK.

Let me give you a view in to how I approach my builds.

The first thing I do is I go and look at the projected starting lineups and I simply get a feel for the pricing to understand what (if any) stacks are doable within the pricing constraints that I have. There are many DFS players that I have talked to over the years that say they do not look at pricing at all until they do their research but I have always taken the approach that pricing dictates builds and so understanding what player pool I have within the salary constructs is Step #1 after I have locked in my two arms.

What I noticed tonight when I simply toggled on pricing was that we had very few stacks that worked within that mid-range pricing – meaning, DK also has aggressively priced the bats. Although there was one team that stood out in this process and that was the Cincinnati Reds against LHP Kwang-Hyun Kim.

What stood out to me in this spot was how the Reds pricing was largely deflated, with only three starting bats over $3K and even the “top bats” like Eugenio Suarez ($3.7K) and Nick Castellanos ($3.9K) were largely discounted.

Past those two – you have a 4-8 in the line-up that is all sub $3K with some serious punt options with Tyler Stephenson, Kyle Farmer, Jonathan India, Alex Blandino, and Scott Heineman.

Now Kim has been solid this year with a 2.61 ERA but his near 5 SIERA tells you regression is coming and his 43% HC rate to RHB could give us a really nice path to value here tonight with the right-handed Reds being so under-priced. Add in the fact they are the visiting team and we get 9 guaranteed innings of at-bats to pool from and you start to see how this team becomes a key cog in our building process.

Now, we mentioned that the stacks were expensive tonight – and so how do you get a build with a 5 man high-dollar stack and still rock Max/Ohtani?

Well, that is where finding a cheap stack like the Reds unlocks the path!

Let’s assume for a second you want to mix and match this Reds mini-stack – using pure punts like Farmer, Blandino, Heineman and/or Stephenson and even using Suarez or Castellanos – you know what you can build from there?

Anything you want!

As an example – you can take this approach with the cheap Reds bats, alongside Scherzer and Ohtani, and wait for it – you have enough salary to build a 5 man Oakland A’s stack with their slate-high 6 IRT in Coors Field.

Bet you did not think at the start of this you could find a way to get Scherzer and Ohtani with a Coors Field stack – but here we are!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

This MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate on Friday Night seems pretty cut and dry to me at first glance despite the massive slate size and much of that is due to the need to simply lock in Scherzer/Ohtani as a 1-2 punch at pitcher.

From there you have options – even more so if you use a cheap Reds right-handed mini-stack which opens up a path to anchor to the 5 man high-priced stacks of your choosing.

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!