daily fantasy baseball

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 into a 14 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Tuesday slate where we have an incredibly strong pitch slate once again with a ton of big bats, lots of first look value stacks, and the only rain risk looking like some delay potential in Wrigley Field between the Rockies and Cubs.

When stepping back and looking at this slate, there were a few things that stood out to me and they just so happen to work in concert. First, we have another top-heavy and deep pitching player pool which is a trend we have seen the last week that has seen winning builds anchor to top arms on a nightly basis. Secondly, we have a TON of hitting value with 10-11 teams with 3 or more $2K punt bats in their projected line-up which makes the path to pay up for pitching one that makes far too much sense this evening.

Pitching Picks

Corbin Burnes ($10.6K) is the highest priced ace and the one with the most significant demonstrated ceiling of any arm on this slate as he has eclipsed 30+ DK points in 7 of his 21 starts this season and has 3 starts this year in which he dropped 40+ DK points, including a July match-up with the very same Reds team he faces tonight.

If you look at the metrics for Burnes, his ceiling comes from right-handed batters as he sports a 39.7% K rate to RHB versus “just” a 32% rate to left-handed batters. Over the last 30 days, his overall K rate has dropped as a result of his strikeouts to LHB dropping to just 24% which could present an argument against him considering the Reds are likely to throw out 4 left-handed hitters tonight.

On the flip side – he still will have 5 right-handed batters including the pitcher to get to his ceiling and Burnes has actually shown some material home/road splits this season in terms of his K rate – with a 2% increase overall at home and a 41% K rate against RHB in Milwaukee. Assuming the line-up stays more righty focused from the Reds, Burnes to me is the highest ceiling SP1 we have available to us.

The next arm that stands out to me is Jack Flaherty ($9.6K) who is sporting a 30% K rate of his own over the last month with 13 K’s over those 12 innings of work and back to back 23-26 DK points outings. A match-up with the Tigers, who are striking out at a top 10 rate in baseball the last two weeks and rank as the second-highest K opponent for RHP on the season – well, sets us up for a ceiling spot here for the Cardinals righty. The Tigers lose the DH and will have 5 right-handed batters in the projected line-up which sets up ideally for Flaherty and his 31% K rate to RHB this season.

Lastly, assuming the rain cooperates – is the default “pitcher versus Cubs” spot – which today will be Rockies RHP German Marquez ($8.2K). After watching ground ball arms like Carlos Hernandez and Antonio Senzatela combine for 14 K’s against this Cubs lineup the last two starts – it is not hard to see a path for ceiling from Marquez who has far more swing and miss ability than the arms we have seen drop 20+ DK points on a consistent basis against the highest K lineup in baseball the last two weeks and/or month.

Marquez has racked up a 35% K rate the last month to RHB and the Cubs are projected to roll out 4-5 tonight – assuming the rain does not mess with him (40% chance throughout) – Marquez looks like a mid-range ace with a ceiling that could far outpace his price point.

Top Bats and Stacks

As we pivot to the MLB DFS Picks and Pivots bats – I mentioned there is a TON of value on the hitting side of things tonight which makes me really intrigued by the high-dollar stacks you can still pair with a “double-ace” type build.

You guys know the drill by now – the best slate on the board is going to be the Tampa Bay Rays again tonight. Yes, every single night this tends to be the case and every single night the MLB DFS community ignores them – but not us.

The Rays head to Philadelphia tonight where although they lose the DH, they will get a massive ballpark boost in Citizen’s Bank Park and we get the added bonus of being the road team and 9 guaranteed innings of at-bats. We need to watch the Rays roster moves leading up to this game as it is expected they will put Ji-Man Choi on the IL and activate Nelson Cruz which sounds like bad news for LHP opposing starter Ranger Suarez.

The Phillies continue to stretch Suarez out as a starter, ramping up to a season-high 86 pitches last time out which was the good news- the bad news, he walked 4 and gave up 8 hits in just 4 innings of work.

The profile on Suarez is that he is an extreme ground ball arm with a low swing and miss rate who relies on his sinker 50% of the time to hitters and if you have paid attention to Picks and Pivots this year, you know the Rays against sinker ball arms is a spot I LOVE to target.

The two heavy hitters against the sinker are Randy Arozarena, who has a team-high .579 ISO and 80% HC rate against the pitch type, and Mike Zunino who has a .321 ISO mark of his own. It does not stop there either – all of Nelson Cruz, Yandy Diaz and Manuel Margot have 50%% hard contact rates against this pitch type.

The second aspect of this stack I love is that Suarez we know will not go deep which means we can attack a Phillies bullpen that is bottom 10 in all of baseball since the All-Star Break. So playing a game script here – you have the sinker mashers knock Suarez out early and then you get a full 9 innings in Citizen’s Bank Park against a Phillies pen that over the last 14 days has a 5+ ERA, a 1.5 HR/9 rate, double-digit walk rate and an elevated 45% fly-ball rate – all marks that sit in the top 10 in baseball.

With the Rays having “just” a 5 IRT, sitting just below the top teams – this could be a spot like we had on Sunday where we get the full Rays stack for essentially no ownership and you know as well as I do – that is a recipe for GPP success this season.

Going double aces and a Rays stack means finding value but again – that is NOT an issue on this slate. In fact, we have multiple spots that I think we can target and it was great to see our Discord firing off before 7AM EST today with many of these teams as targets.

The Orioles against RHP Dylan Bundy are loaded with value and face a struggling righty with a 54% HC rate allowed and a near 6 xFIP the last 30 days. The Nationals against LHP Jesus Luzardo as the right-handed value bats look like ideal punt plays considering Luzardo’s struggles the last month with RHB – noting a .235 ISO and 46% HC rate allowed.

There is one additional one that really piques my interest that I only really stumbled upon because I was actually looking initially at the arm- and that is the Royals against RHP Luis Garcia.

Garcia has been one of the best K arms in baseball the last month with a 30.2% K rate that ranks in the top 10 among pitchers with 20+ innings but it has come with an extreme boom or bust makeup with a corresponding 49.3% hard contact rate and a .200+ ISO mark to hitters from both sides of the plate.

Garcia has had the ability to rack up K’s but it is coming with a price with 5 HR’s allowed and 16 runs given up in his last 5 starts including 3 runs allowed and an HR allowed to the same Royals team he faces tonight. Kansas City is another dirt-cheap team with 7 of their 9 batters at $3K or below and their punt bats have a ton of position flexibility on DK which makes mixing and matching them as a mini-stack a great GPP path alongside the Rays tonight.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

Tonight’s MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate sets up exactly how we like it here at PnP – we have a clear double-ace build with the top stack in baseball and tons of mini-stack value options to make the paths to ceiling come without sacrifice.

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 Monday 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 6 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Monday slate where we look to get the all-clear for weather in what sets up for a perfect GPP slate in my opinion. Personally, I love these smaller Monday slates of 6-7 games where the player pool is large enough to be different but small enough where you can really dive in and think through the strategy of your builds.

From a pitching pool perspective, there are frankly only three names I have any interest in – Lance Lynn, Alex Manoah, and Antonio Senzatela.

Lance Lynn ($9.9K) and Alex Manoah ($8.5K) are arguably the two highest ceiling arms on the slate but the matchups against the White Sox and Blue Jays bats are not ones we typically go out of our way to attack.

Lynn has faced the Blue Jays once before this season, back in the beginning of June, where he struck out 9 batters, giving up just a solo HR, on his way to 29.4 DK points. Interestingly enough, his opponent that game was also Manoah who struck out only 4 batters on his way to just 13.7 DK points.

What is interesting is that if you look at recent trends, Manoah has actually flashed more ceiling than Lynn (with significantly less steady of a floor) as he has gone for 30+ DK points twice in his last six outings but the underlying metrics for Lynn are better with a 30% K rate and just a 29% hard contact rate allowed over the last month.

Senzatela ($6K) feels like the default SP2 as he takes on the Chicago Cubs in Wrigley Field and for all the reasons we were on Carlos Hernandez yesterday, are why we should go to Senzatela today.

In the last two weeks, of the 14 starters to face the Cubs, half of them have eclipsed 23 DK points with 11 of the 16 going for double-digits including Hernandez who struck out 8 batters over 7 innings on his way to 29.6 DK points.

Senzatela is everything we talked about with Hernandez yesterday, a high ground ball arm, giving up low ISO who has the run prevention floor, and the added K ceiling with the match-up. The only real reason to avoid him today is ownership as we saw Hernandez pushing 40-45% ownership yesterday in single entry GPP’s and on a smaller slate today I think Senzatela could eclipse 50%!

So how do we play this?

The Senzatela ownership really is going to help drive some of my decision-making today because I think that if the ownership mirrors what we saw with Hernandez yesterday, we have to re-think whether he is “needed.” In 20 starts this season, Senzatela has gone for single-digit DK points in half of those starts – so are we really ready to play a super chalk SP2 who fails to get double-digit DK points half the time?

The sneaky play here may be to go “double aces” with Lynn/Manoah despite the less than ideal match-ups and shoot for ceiling games from both. Look back at yesterday, a slate that was similarly blah from a pitching perspective however we saw four arms go for 30+ DK points with Adam Wainwright, Vladimir Gutierrez, Sandy Alacantara and Carlos Hernandez.

At some point, pitching still sets the cash line and on a short slate like this, if Lynn/Manoah have ceiling games, you could be way ahead of the field. The other mid-way option – simply split the difference and go high/low with one of Lynn/Manaoah and pair them with Senzatela as your cheap SP2.

UPDATE – The first pass of ownership is out and- um, excuse me? Alek Manoah is 60% projected? OK, well that takes him out of consideration for me, and the Chicago White Sox just became the ultimate leverage on a boom or bust arm that has been lit up twice in his last eight starts.

If we look at the bats on this slate, we really don’t have a ton of stand-out spots, with only the Astros sporting an IRT over 5 which adds to the GPP intrigue of this 6 gamer. We have aces in bad match-ups and no offenses to pay for – what a world!

The one spot that really intrigues me tonight is the Yankee/Braves game in Atlanta where Jordan Montgomery and Huascar Ynoa will take the mound. Ynoa is an arm I want to attack tonight with the Yankees, despite the loss of the DH, because the underlying metrics and pitch data suggest this could be a spot he gets worked.

Ynoa in his short career has been a reverse splits pitcher with a .220 ISO mark to RHB and a 1.87 HR/9 rate which makes the Yankees bats really appealing to me on this slate especially considering the pricing as they are largely under-priced.

Ynoa is basically a two-pitch pitcher with a 96+ MPH fastball and slider that he throws nearly 50% of the time to right-handed batters so finding the Yankees bats that hit the slider and high-velocity fastball well is the priority. Aaron Judge stands out as the key bat in both cases with massive ISO/HC rates against both pitch types with a .437 ISO and 75% HC rate against the high-velocity fastball and a .212 ISO and 46% HC rate against the slider.

Both Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez have similar .200 ISO marks against both pitch types and while the lefties may not necessarily be the “way to attack” Ynoa – it is hard to overlook the slider data with both Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo sporting .250 ISO marks against the slider from RHP.

While the HR power has not been there for the lefties against Ynoa, what is sneaky is the 49.1% hard contact rate allowed and while Ynoa is a GB-specific arm, the Yankees have the left-handed bats like Gallo and Rougned Odor with extreme flyball tendencies to balance it out.

On the flip side of this game the Yankees are throwing out Jordan Montgomery and I am sorry – but in what world is he a $10K pitcher on the road against the Braves?

While Montgomery is not an arm that gets lit up, he has given up a 46% HC rate to RHB the last 30 days and this Braves lineup is LOADED with right-handed batters that have a .230 ISO and 46.7% HC rate against southpaws this season.

Jorge Soler’s numbers in the last 30 days are just insane against LHP with a .590 ISO, 50% HC rate, and a 62% fly-ball rate with an average distance traveled of 370 feet. My goodness.

Ozzie Albies has quietly been red-hot as well against lefties with a .211 ISO and 50% HC rate – again with a 50% fly-ball rate which is key against a ground ball arm like Montgomery.

This Yankees/Braves game stack correlates really well from a position perspective and with the Yankees being priced in the mid-range, it allows you the ability to load up on the key bats from this game on both sides!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

This is a great MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate tonight with a ton of GPP appeal as ownership could really open up some fascinating low-owned paths. Today is the kind of slate where you get a general early build and we use ownership to sharpen our focus as we head toward lock.

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 Sunday 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 Sunday’s MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate where we have 10 games – well, I guess we are scheduled to get 10 games. The Yankees/Twins game has already been postponed due to Hurricane Henri and it looks likely Boston/Texas follows and there are consistent rain concerns for the Atlanta/Baltimore game as well which clouds (pun intended) this slate a bit at first glance.

So, remember all those slates this week with strong top-end pitching to choose from? Those were fun weren’t they? Well, sorry to rain on your parade (MORE RAIN PUNS) – but today’s pitching is straight garbage.

The reality is, there is not a single arm on this slate that I feel like I have to have and if/when we lose Nathan Eovaldi, John Means and Touki Touissant to rain – well, this slate gets even worse. Without having high strikeout ceiling plays that I think could set the cash lines, I am fine pivoting to a different strategy today where I focus on cheaper arms with strong run prevention in plus match-ups.

All that brings me to Wrigley Field where we have the wind blowing in at 10 MPH for the Cubs/Royals and Alec Mills and Carlos Hernandez on the mound.

Hernandez ($5.9K) gets the best match-up arguably of any pitcher today against the Cubs who lead all of baseball in strikeout rate over the last two weeks at 31.4% and we have seen this spot deliver time and time again for opposing SP’s.

In the last two weeks, a span of 13 starts, opposing starting pitchers have avered 20.1 DK points per start with 10 of the 13 going for double-digit DK points and 6 of the 13 putting up 23+ ceiling type games.

Hernandez got touched up last game against Houston but prior to that he was in excellent form, with 15, 22, and 23 DK points against the Yankees/White Sox and he did that with a high ground ball rate and generating soft contact. So where Hernandez has been more “run prevention”, when you add in the Cubs swing and miss ability – you get a boost to his ceiling off an arm that is now $5.9K and was over $6K the past two starts.

On the flip side of this game is Alec Mills ($6.6K) who is the definition of run prevention type MLB DFS play with a low K rate, high ground ball profile that is typically more floor than a ceiling. Over the last month, among SP’s with at least 20 innings – he ranks top 10 in soft contact rate at 23% and he is doing this with a near 50% ground ball rate and in Wrigley Field this season those numbers get even better with a spike to 55%.

Now the Royals are not a K-heavy team but they align perfectly with Mills pitch approach as over the last 14 days they rank bottom 3 in all of baseball in team ISO and top 3 in baseball in GB rate. So we get a pitcher who thrives on soft contact and ground balls against an offense that is hitting ground balls and making weak contact – oh and could also be without Salvador Perez today due to injury.

We will need to wait for lineups today, but if the Royals are without Salvy AND go right-handed heavy (while losing the DH in Wrigley) – I think this becomes a spot where Mills cruises to 15-20 DK points with the wind helping him in the friendly confines.

Now going with “double punts” means we get all the bats we could want and I would suspect anyone employing that strategy will load up on the Blue Jays and their slate high 6+ IRT.

For everyone that has chased the shiny run totals of the Braves knows that Vegas totals do not always equal DFS success.

So go ahead and play the Jays today – because with a 4.5 run total, who exactly is going to play the best offense in baseball? Yep – that is right – it is a Tampa Bay Rays day (when isn’t it).

Reynaldo Lopez has been excellent recently and part of me thinks – he becomes the cheap SP route for DFS players today which makes me even more excited to stack against him. The reality is, he has a 95% left on base rate and a .148 BABIP – screaming luck city – and has to face the best offense in terms of power metrics in all of baseball the last two weeks.

In his career, Lopez is a fly-ball pitcher with a sub 20% K rate and while his K rate has spiked in just 25 innings this season, that has come on the back of right-handed batters with lefties only sitting at 21% this year. Guess what the Rays have in droves – left-handed power.

Lopez uses the slider as his primary offering off the fastball to left-handed batters and they have hit it to the tune of a .333 ISO mark since the start of last season. If you look at the Rays lineup – all of Brandon Lowe, Austin Meadows, Ji Man Choi and Wander Franco have .200+ ISO marks against that pitch type with Meadows leading the charge with a .455 ISO and just a 15% ground ball rate. Against a fly ball pitcher like Lopez – I am calling a Meadows dong today.

On the other side of this game, the Rays are expected to start Chris Archer – yeah, he is still around. Archer is likely going to be limited here, as he got up to just 71 pitches in AAA so I fully expect some initial rust before the Rays get into their pen and that is where the White Sox have really done their damage in this series – scoring 3 runs to come from behind on Friday and pushing in two more last night after Luis Patino left the game.

These two teams correlate really nicely together which makes me really intrigued by a full-on DraftKings game stack of the White Sox and Rays as these are two of the most boom/bust offenses in baseball right now. They both rank in the top 8 in baseball in team ISO and slugging the last 14 days (with the Rays being first in both marks) hitting 25 and 24 HR’s respectively (#1 and #2 in baseball during that time) where the White Sox ranks first in hard contact rate (40%) with the Rays sitting firmly in the top 5.

From a recent metrics standpoint – you are getting two of the hottest offenses in baseball and if this game produces offensive fireworks, we could get into the bullpens early and see some serious crooked numbers on the National TV game of the day!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

We set up today with a solid MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate and one where I think we can make serious GPP waves as we attack a high-powered game stack and some cheap arms with match-up boost to unlock their ceilings!

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 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 MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Saturday where we start our day with a 9 game slate that kicks off at 1 PM EST but has 4 of the games starting at 4 PM EST or later. I bring this up any time we have these day-time slates because it is very likely that half the slate will not have lineups out by lock so I would correlate your stacks with start times and either front load your builds or backload them for maximum flexibility.

Much like we saw on Friday night, we have a loaded pitching pool at the top-end, and with so many strong high strikeout arms available to us, I think the opportunity cost is once again far too high to get cute and move away from the obvious. That means anchoring to the Picks and Pivots “Double Ace” life and going with both Max Scherzer and Gerrit Cole.

Mad Max ($10.9K) gets the scuffling New York Mets in LA and after seeing fellow ace Walker Buehler drop 18 K’s on New York the last two starts, Mad Max should have the potential for a ceiling here after his last start against the Mets was far more floor with “just” 7 K’s in a 6 inning beatdown. Cole ($10.4K) came back from a bout with COVID and proceeded to drop 9 K’s and 30+ DK points on the Angels using just 90 pitches so assuming an increase in pitch count, it is hard to argue the ceiling is not even greater here today against the Twins.

Now, telling you to play the top two priced arms is not exactly groundbreaking but context is key and the context today is the bats are simply too cheap which means I can get two elite stacks around these aces FAR too easily.

If we are talking elite stacks you best believe we are leading with the best offense in all the land – yeah homey, it is a double ace and Tampa Bay Ray day!

The Rays get a home match-up against LHP Dallas Keuchel and the right-handed batters for Tampa should be salivating over facing a lefty with a .287 ISO and 50% HC rate allowed the last 30 days.

I got a text last night from Adam Strangis who was busy writing today’s Starting Rotation and it simply said “Wait until you see Zunino and Arozarena’s profile against the sinker.”

My man gets me.

Keuchel throws the sinker 37% of the time to RHB the last 30 days it is being hit to the tune a .220 ISO and when you see what Randy Arozarena and Mike Zunino do to the sinker – well, I think we found some serious home run calls. Zunino has a .321 ISO which seems insane until you see Arozarena and his – wait for it – .579 ISO and 80% hard contact rate. Seriously – just enjoy the Randy Arozarena HR alert on your phone knowing it was never in doubt.

The Rays ability to flip a line-up now and attack lefties with the acquisition of Nelson Cruz in the middle changes everything – they become an easy team to stack now against southpaws and the pricing is simply too cheap for all the righties here today.

Speaking of far too cheap – what did the New York Yankees due to the DK pricing team to get such disrespect? Six of the nine projected Yankees bats are under $4K today so while yes Kenta Maeda is a good pitcher, it’s not like they are facing Tom Seaver today DraftKings.

Over the last 30 days, Maeda has given up a .190 ISO to left-handed batters and .222 ISO to right-handed batters with lefties generating over 40% hard contact and with a 2 HR/9 rate on the road to both sides of the plate this year, the Yankees are an elite HR stack in Bronx for FAR too cheap today!

One play that jumps out to me today is LHB Rougned Odor as Maeda has really ratcheted up his splitter usage to lefties over the last 30 days to nearly 50% which is a far jump from his 30% season-long metrics. Odor against the splitter has a .235 ISO and 46% HC rate and looks primed for a $3K bomb in the heart of this Yankee stack.

As I mentioned in the open – we want to correlate the timing of our stacks and with the Rays/Yankees being the first games on the slate, we will have a confirmed lineup and the ability to drive confirmed correlation prior to lock. Double aces – Yanks/Rays – done.

Main Slate Breakdown

The four-game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Main Slate looks to be a condensed version of the early slate and even the Friday Night slate in that we have a top-heavy pitching pool that I believe we need to anchor to.

Eduardo Rodriguez ($9.3K) gets the best match-up of any of the SP1’s against Texas and with his 36% K rate the last 30 days, he comes into this game in elite form and is an absolute must-have building block for me tonight.

The decision of who to pair him with though is where things get interesting with Aaron Nola and Joe Musgrove facing each other in San Diego – clearly the two best options but I wonder if the default build is to pair E-Rod with a punt arm so people can load up the big Braves bats again versus Matt Harvey.

Nola’s 29% K rate the last month outpaces Musgroves 25% rate but is hard to argue that Musgrove’s match-up is “safer.” I talk about this all the time, but on small slates, ownership helps guide my strategy far more than simply picking best plays so if either of these “pivot” SP1’s off E-Rod are going to give me leverage on the field – I am going to anchor to a double ace build again.

One of the reasons I can do that, is much like last night, Coors Field is flat out mid-priced and so why not go the same route that led us to cash with ease on Friday Night?

Take a look at the projected line-ups in this game- Christian Walker ($2.7K), Drew Ellis ($2.6K), Asdrubal Cabrera ($3.1K), Sam Hillard ($2.3K), Connor Joe ($3.6K) – did DK forget this game was in Coors?

I still cannot believe this game stack was single-digit owned in GPP’s on Friday Night and while it certainly won’t happen on a four-game slate – the fact the Braves and Red Sox have 6+ IRT’s could continue to siphon ownership away and once again we can employ a cheap Coors stack to our advantage.

Say it with me – on short slates, we play strategy and not optimal plays.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

Nothing better than a full day of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots and today the slates are set up really nicely to continue with a building type that has delivered every single day this week- double aces and cheap power stacks.

Keep an eye on Discord and our projections/ownership in the optimizers as ownership will be a key decision point as we head toward Main. Let’s keep killing 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 Friday 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 loaded Friday Night MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate with 14 games on tap and literally – every single thing we could ask for. We have aces galore (finally), we have a game in Coors Field and we have 13 of the 28 teams with 5+ IRT’s.

What does it all mean? Well, my first take – you better not miss tonight because the opportunity cost of getting a pitcher or stack wrong is going to be huge this evening with so many options on both ends.

The mantra of “cannot miss” is one I am going to reiterate over and over again on this slate because of the depth of the player pool and the size of the slate – if you find yourself putting in a player at any spot “because they fit” – challenge yourself to do better. Just getting there – won’t get there tonight.

Any time I see a slate where my inclination is “we cannot get cute” – that means living in the “Double Ace” route and this slate is the type where it sets up perfectly to employ with all of Walker Buehler, Robbie Ray, and Chris Sale and their massive K ceilings.

Buehler ($10.5K) is the top-priced arm on the slate, coming off a 10 K performance against the same Mets team he just faced in New York and honestly, I am not sure why his price would have gone down $100 from that start. The Mets are just scuffling right now and look lost at the plate collectively – frankly, Walker gets them at the perfect time at home to drive for another ceiling game.

Robbie Ray ($9.9K) is next on the list against a Detroit Tigers projected line-up that has a 27% K rate against LHP this season and while Ray’s K rate has dropped the last month of action, it has been a result of LHB as his K rate versus righties still sits at 27% over the last 30 days. With the Tigers projected to roll out 9 right-handed batters, this could be a spot where Ray jumps back to his 30+ DK point ceiling performances.

Chris Sale ($9.7K) is next on the list and as Adam Strangis laid out in Starting Rotation, it is hard not to see a scenario where he ends up as chalk with arguably the best on paper match-up of any of the aces against Texas. I think ownership will help dictate how we rank these guys as the day goes on and the nice thing about this trio is that they are all priced so similarly that you can easily mix and match the double ace builds using two of these guys with the same basic lineup construction.

Now – going double aces means you have under $4K per batter for the rest of your build and with SO many good offensive spots to attack, getting the high ceiling bats with the double ace approach is not going to be easy. I will be honest – I struggled to make it work all morning because as much as I want the Braves, Yankees or Blue Jays – well, it is just not something that works within your salary constraints.

That does not mean however that we have to go full-on bargain hunting – remember, we cannot afford to miss in our selections tonight, so this is not the spot to get cute and stack the Pirates because we think they “could get there.”

Stepping back and looking at the salaries for the projected lineups tonight – it finally hit me, I can go double aces and stack the best hitting spot on the slate – that’s right Coors Field and Double Aces!

The pricing on the Arizona Diamondbacks specifically is really what unlocked this but the truth is, the Rockies are largely under-priced as well and the correlation of these two in a full-on game stack works almost too well on DraftKings.

Rockies LHP Austin Gomber has been a strong arm all season and one that I know Adam has been all over with much success as a low owned GPP pivot this season – and the truth is, his ability to limit hard contact with a high ground ball rate doesn’t make him the “ideal” arm to stack against.

The flip side is if you dig into Gomber’s pitch profile over the last 30 days you start to see some cracks in the armor as the lefty’s change-up which he throws over 30% of the time to right-handed batters is getting hit to a .320 ISO and 58% HC rate.

The Arizona right-handed batters against the changeup from lefties really stand out when you overlay those recent struggles as all of Ketel Marte, Carson Kelly, and Asdrubal Cabrera has .200_ ISO and 40%+ hard contact rates against it. Not only has Gomber struggled with that pitch type but he’s using it more and more, up from just 22% over the full season so if this trend continues – I think we have a chance to jump on it.

Interestingly enough, you are seeing a similar trend with batters from the left side where the slider he throws nearly 45% went from being a pitch that batters could not make contact with to a .286 ISO and 50% HC rate over the last 30 days which would all of a sudden give you some cheap L/L options in this stack like Pavin Smith and David Peralta.

The Rockies side of this game is equally interesting against LHP Tyler Gilbert who is coming off his no-hitter and will have to face a Colorado lineup with 6 of the 8 batters projected from the right side. On the year, all of Connor Joe, Brendan Rodgers, Trevor Story, CJ Cron, and Garret Hampson have .200+ ISO marks against LHP and even better – only Story is priced like a true Coors bat over $5K.

If you look at the projected lineups for this game, you will see we have 7-8 sub $4K bats with some pure punts like Christian Walker and Drew Ellis at $2.5K and those are the types of plays that you can mix in, while still getting the priority bats to make this full-on game stack with double aces, work with ease!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

When stepping back and looking at this MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate my advice is simple – shoot for the ceiling at every single spot in your build. Every single one.

With so many strong high K arms and half the slate with 5+ IRT’s you need to hit across the board tonight and when I see slates like that my advice is always going to be to find a way to go double aces at pitcher first and foremost. Now, doing this and still being able to stack Coors Field and a 12 IRT was not something I expected I could pull off but if the lineups come out as projected, the paths are numerous to make that build work.

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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