Welcome to the Thursday 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Early Slate Breakdown

We have a split slate Thursday across the MLB DFS landscape here today and it begins with a four game slate that starts at 1:05 PM EST. Personally, I love slates like this because it is far more about thinking through strategy than simply picking the best plays which is ideal for GPP players like myself.

The first decision point you have to make is on Aaron Nola ($10K) – the lone true ace on this slate. Nola has had a up and down year thus far with 4 of his first 5 starts resulting in games where he failed to even hit 20 DK points. The one game he went over? Well that was against the same St. Louis Cardinals team he faces today after dominating them for 10 K’s in a CGSO and 48 DK points.

The reality is, this is not simply a case of game log watching – the Cardinals in many ways are the ideal opponent for a guy like Nola. Nola has always been an arm that dominates right-handed batters and that has held true since the start of last season with a 34.4% K rate to RHB which is 8% more than his mark to lefties. The Cardinals really have no way to alter from being a right-handed dominant line-up as their core bats are Goldy, Arenado and Dejong.

What is interesting, however, if you go back to that 10K outing – it was actually the lefties that propped up Nola’s day as he struck out Matt Carpenter three times, Justin Williams twice, and Dylan Carlson once.

There is no doubt that Nola will be the chalk arm on this slate and while the splits match-up works in his favor, what is interesting is thus far in 2021 his K rate to RHB is far lower than what we saw last season – just 22%. In fact that is not that far off from his 26% mark in 2019 so it is fair to wonder if 2020 was an aberration and if someone like Matt Carpenter is out of the lineup today for the Cardinals, does Nola have that same 10K upside?

I think we can make the argument to fade Nola and we can double down on that leverage by also picking on big bats from St. Louis. Now, this is not a 5 man stack of fringe players – if we are doing this – it starts and ends with the big boys like Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado.

The other way to get leverage here – take the arm on the other side of this game with Kwang-Hyun Kim ($7.3K) and look to get that 4 point swing on DraftKings with the win bonus. From a metrics perspective, Kim does have some merit – with a 32% K rate and 14% swinging-strike rate in two starts this season and he is fresh off a 8K outing against the Reds offense.

Kim may get the added bonus today of Bryce Harper getting the day off after leaving last night with a facial injury and while the CT scan was clear post game, a day game after that seems like the ideal spot to give Harper a day off and well this Philly line-up looks far less intimidating without him in the middle of it.

If Nola is chalk spot #1 – my guess is the Yankees are chalk spot #2 for what seems like the 10th consecutive day against Orioles pitching. Against RHP Jorge Lopez, it makes all the sense in the world as you can make a strong case that Lopez is the worst arm on the slate – giving up nearly 45% hard contact this season while surrendering 6 HRs in his first 17 innings of work this season.

My take here with the Yankees on this short slate is the same approach I took with the Minnesota Twins yesterday afternoon – they are so far and away the best stack on the early slate with the most power upside, that I am willing to eat the chalk – go five deep in my stack and get different elsewhere.

The one spot that I hope does not gain traction today – the starting debut of LHP Shane McClanahan ($5.5K) who is a straight-up filth factory.

The Rays top prospect throws a 100 MPH gas…

…. and has a nasty slider to play off it.

Seriously – filth.

Imagine only paying $5.5K for that kind of stuff? This kid has electric K ability and his dirt cheap price is going to make stacking those big Yankee bats as easy as 1,2,3,4 and 5.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Main Slate Breakdown

The Main MLB DFS slate on Thursday may say it is 5 games – but with Detroit/White Sox getting PPD last night and playing a double-header today – DraftKings has removed it from this slate and thus we are left with another 4 game slate!

Much like the early slate, we have one clear ace with Trevor Bauer ($11.3K) on the hill against the Milwaukee Brewers. The difference here is where you can make the case for a Nola fade on the early, you cannot and I will not make that case for Bauer on the main slate.

Bauer has a 38% K rate this year with a 14% SS rate, facing a Milwaukee projected line-up with a 31% K rate against RHP and so yeah, lock him in and we will find other ways to be different.

The SP2 discussion is gross on this slate but I do think there is potential for Martin Perez ($6K) against the Texas Rangers. Listen, this is not news to anyone who has played MLB DFS this season but we can attack the Rangers any time out as they are a boom or bust K happy squad that as you can see from this chart on Statmuse – they have given up massive ceiling games while also resulting in floor games.

Perez to me is an ownership play – if he is chalky, I want none – if he is lower owned, I am all over it. It is that simple for me when you see the range of outcomes is this wide.

The pivot at SP2 for me is Antonio Senzatela ($6K) who will take on Arizona in Chase Field. Senzatela is a pitcher that seemingly gets a bad rap as his underlying metrics are never good but by and large, this is an arm I think we can use in DFS.

On the season he is averaging just 7 DK points per game but look at the game logs as that is wildly skewed by two outings against the Dodgers where he combined for -11 points, giving up 11 runs in just 5 innings.

His best start of the season – oh well look here, against this same Arizona team where he racked up 24 DK points with 8 shutout innings in Coors Field. When Senzatela is at his best, he is a ground ball machine and we saw it in that game with 16 GB outs – similar to his 13 GB out trip against the Mets in Coors Field where he got to 16.5 DK points.

There is far more of a demonstrated path to success for Senzatela here tonight than we have with Perez and my guess is he comes at far lower ownership.

Not only is Bauer the best arm on the board, but the Dodgers stack against LHP Eric Lauer is where I am going to plant my flag tonight. The Dodgers lineup is death to lefties and Lauer having a .270 ISO mark allowed to RHB and a near 20% walk rate, does not breed much confidence. The Mookie Betts, Justin Turner and Will Smith trio is at the top of my priority list for this slate and from there it becomes more of a mix and match game with how I stack the rest.

The other stack I love tonight – which may be where I get different from the field – is the Colorado Rockies against Luke Weaver.

Weaver so far this year is giving up a massive amount of hard contact – at over 50% – as essentially a two pitch arm with a fastball/change-up combination that accounts for 95% of his pitches this season. This fastball heavy approach is simply not going to cut it and we have seen that the last to games against Atlanta and Washington where they tagged Weaver for a 54% HC rate while only allowing Weaver an 8% SS rate.

The price point on Charlie Blackmon ($3.5K) here is something I think we have to enforce and the $2K punt du jour of Sam Hillard gives you a dirt cheap play in this mini-stack that allows you the path to a Bauer/Dodgers main slate stack!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

We have two four game MLB DFS slates today to attack that seem like GPP perfection where we can really dig in and find ways to be different.

With Aaron Nola and Trevor Bauer the lone ace arms on each slate today, the question becomes how we attack them in our lineups while still getting the high priority power bats that will dictate your cash position. Let’s get it today!

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 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Main Slate Breakdown

Welcome to a 10 game MLB DFS slate here on Wednesday which sadly, starts after Jacob deGrom takes the mound for the Mets, depriving us of a deGOAT day here in Picks and Pivots. The good news though is the temperatures across nearly every single ballpark are spiking and with that likely means some big time offensive production to follow!

When looking to build my MLB DFS lineups tonight, I think as far as pitching is concerned – there are really four arms that stand out – Tyler Glasnow, Carlos Rodon, Alex Wood, and German Marquez.

Since the start of 2020, these four starters are the top four arms on the slate in terms of swinging strike % – all sitting in the 12-14% range – and it seems like Vegas has the pitchers in a similar tier with their opposition all sitting in the bottom 5 of projected runs scored tonight.

Pricing on our batters is likely to determine how you prioritize these arms – whether you go high/low with one of Glasnow/Rodon and a pitcher in San Fran or you can opt for the pitcher’s duel route and take Wood versus Marquez in arguably the best pitching environment on the slate.

One note on Wood and Marquez – it looks like CB Bucknor will be calling the balls/strikes tonight and for those of you unfamiliar – there is almost no umpire outside of Bill Miller who is more of a pitcher’s umpire – in fact, Bucknor on average calls 17% more strikes than the average umpire which is second-most among active umpires.

There is one other arm I want to mention for GPP’s and one that Adam did not in his Pitching Breakdown, so I wanted to plead my case – and that is Vince Velasquez ($6.5K) against St. Louis.

The risk is real with Vinny, let’s not overlook that – but this is a pitcher with elite K ability as he has a 31% K rate and 12% SS rate since the starts of 2020. That K rate on this slate would rank behind only Tyler Glasnow and there are some pitch mix changes in VV that are worth our attention.

When tracking his pitch types, I noticed serious trend changes from 2019 to 2021 and there is a great article on FanGraphs which outlined this starting last year with a visual that I thought would be helpful above. The biggest change with VV is that he has all but abandoned his slider since 2019 which is good because it ranked as his worst pitch and was getting ranked on average as a pitch type that was actually providing NEGATIVE 10 runs of value.

Instead VV has moved to a fastball/change/splitter approach and it was one he stuck with in his first start in Colorado where he had a 13% SS rate and nearly 30% CSW%.

That change-up is really what has my attention, especially against a right-handed heavy Cardinals team and no single player profiles well against it. No batter on St. Louis has a .200 ISO against that pitch type and the contact rate is 70% or below with elevated whiff rates.

In GPP’s – K’s are king and Velasquez has the pedigree to pay off, as long as you understand the floor is very much in negative town!

Building Our Bats

The bats are really your decision point tonight and my goodness, we have a ton to choose from. With so many mediocre to below-average arms in the player pool, it is no surprise the offense seems plentiful and you better hit right on your big bats with bad arms on the mound and warm temperatures in seemingly every ballpark.

There are two spots that jumped off the page for me tonight with power bats in pristine hitting conditions as we get the Blue Jays against Erick Fedde and the Padres with the roof open in Chase Field against Taylor Widener.

My guess is – the Jays become a popular stack tonight after their onslaught last night of Max Scherzer but as long as the Yankees continue to be on the slate, my hope is they continue to be chalk and give us paths to easy pivot stacks.

Erick Fedde in his career has always been a reverse splits arm that has struggled more with RHB and since the start of last season, the trend has been clear with a .220+ ISO mark and over 2 HR/9 allowed to opposing right-handed batters.

The park in Dunedin is playing as a massive hitter’s park and the beat reporters for both teams last night were mentioning how the ball was just jumping off bats and getting extra carry. This feels like another spot where the Jays go nuts, and while it would be awesome to get George Springer back in the line-up – there are enough spots to attack here even without him.

Fedde relies primarily on his sinker – a pitch that all of Cavan Biggio, Rowdy Tellez, Randal Grichuk, Marcus Semien and Lourdes Gurriel hammer with .200+ ISO marks and 300+ feet average distance traveled.

Don’t worry though – if he moves to his curve – Bichette and Vladdy Jr. join the party with .300+ ISO marks and – 350+ feet average distance traveled. Just imagine – we are days away (and maybe it happens tonight) from George Springer re-joining this line-up and holy Moses, they are going to be a death wish for opposing pitchers.

The general gist – the Blue Jays lineup is good. Erick Fedde is not. There will be home runs hit – we should play the guys who can hit baseballs far.

The other spot on this slate I love is the San Diego Padres against Taylor Widener. Widener is a talented arm with live K stuff, but when you have a fly-ball pitcher giving up 45%+ hard contact to both sides of the plate against this kind of line-up with the roof open in Arizona, yikes.

Widener’s biggest struggles have come from the left side with a 2.5 HR/9 rate and .288 ISO but let’s not pretend like the 1.7 HR/9 and 47% HC rate on the right side are not begging for problems as well.

This Padres line-up is just loaded with power- literally, every single batter 1-6 in the line-up has a .200+ ISO mark against RHP since 2020 and all of Tatis, Machado, Hosmer, Myers and Cronenworth have 45%+ HC rates.

This is a spot, much like the Blue Jays where the power bats are what you are going to covet and these two teams (Toronto and SD) actually correlate really well on DraftKings when you start to stack them together.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

We have a strong MLB DFS slate here on Wednesday with a small player pool of elite K arms which will make the pitching decisions far more condensed and allow us to attack the big bats with warm temperatures across the league tonight. Building around big stacks like the Blue Jays/Padres alongside those K arms is a path to GPP upside tonight as we go strike out heavy and home run huntin’!

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 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Main Slate Pitching Picks

We have a monster 13 game MLB DFS slate here on Tuesday with not a single weather concern to worry about and frankly, a really intriguing GPP slate.

From a pitching perspective, this is an incredibly top-heavy player pool with Mad Max, Buehler, Giolito and Javier up top, and as the President of the “Double Aces” roster club, this seems like the obvious place to start. As he always does, Adam Strangis does an incredible job of his pitching deep dive in today’s Starting Rotation and so I would implore you to read it for more on how to prioritize these elite arms.

However, there are some bats I really want today – and so finding value arms could be a way to differentiate from the builds that go top-heavy with their pitching picks. So let’s go dumpster diving!

One of the first spots we need to go seemingly every slate these days is to find the pitcher going against the K heavy Texas Rangers and then use them. Today – the lucky winner is Jose Quintana ($6.5K) – who will make his second straight starts against Texas after an 8 K outing where he racked up 21.7 DK points and as you can see from our friends at Statmuse – left-handed pitchers have had consistent success against Texas this season.

What is amazing to me about Quintana’s last start is that while he had 8K’s, he really did it without getting a ton of swinging strikes, in fact he had just an 8.4% swinging strike rate. What Quintana did really well was get called strikes early in the count, in fact he had a 75% first strike rate which was markedly up from his 50% rate over his first two games and that was in large part due to a serious change in his pitching approach.

Quintana used his fastball nearly 63% of the time against Texas after not using it more than 50% in his first two starts and where he was change-up heavy through his first two starts at 25%, he all but abandoned that against the Rangers, throwing it just 6% of the time, and instead relied heavily on his curveball which he threw a season-high 24% of the time.

I also found this interesting – the Angels made the decision after his first two starts to change Quintana’s position on the rubber for that starts against Texas – moving to the first base side of the rubber after he set up on the third-base side the first two outings. This article from the OC Register really dives into the reasons why, but this quote to me was telling.

“We give these guys the information because we want them to buy in and he made the decision on his own,” pitching coach Matt Wise said. “Sliding back over to the first base side makes it easier to command the breaking ball. And his fastball we think plays a little bit better over there. So he bought in. He was pretty excited about it when he’s has been getting off the mound recently.”

Jeff Fletcher via OC Register

So to me this is not just one tweak in his pitch mix, or the single decision to change his position on the mound – it appears this was a cumulative effort to change his approach and against Texas it worked incredibly well as he gave up just 2 hits and racked up 8 K’s – so I am ready for a repeat here today.

After Adam and I hit on the Matt Harvey play at 1% ownership yesterday against the ice-cold New York Yankees – can we go right back to the well and attack Bruce Zimmermann ($6.1K) against the same Bomber bats?

Listen, the Yankees are a talented offense – there is no doubt – and at some point the “back of the baseball card” will prove itself out but this team is lost right now at the plate, failing to make any sort of consistent contact and racking up swings and misses.

Today they face LHP Bruce Zimmermann, who has racked up some solid K metrics early in 2021 with a 12% SS rate and much of that is due to a change in approach this season, with a heavier reliance on his curveball – which as you can see below, is filthy.

You can see a serious maturation with Zimmermann in 2021 with increased velocity on his fastball and more swings and misses on his slider.

And last but not least – his change-up, a key cog to attacking right-handed heavy line-ups like the Yankees – is another dangerous out pitch for him.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Big Bat Stacks:

Now I spent all the time digging into a double punt strategy with Quintana/Zimmermann for a reason – we want bats, and we want ones that can carry us to a big MLB DFS score.

The first stop today is going to be in Chicago where the White Sox take on RHP Jose Urena and the awful Tigers bullpen. Now Urena’s always been a clear splits pitcher – struggling against LHB and limiting his issues to RHB, which at first glance may not seem like the spot to attack since the White Sox are a right-handed heavy team outside of Yasmani Grandal, Yoan Moncada and Adam Eaton.

However, past Urena, we have the worst bullpen in the bigs – giving up the most runs and most HR’s and I absolutely love this visual from Keith Lott to show how teams pitching staffs chart. It is not simply about attacking the SP but the bullpen behind them – and so when we get a bad starter like Urena and a league-worst bullpen behind him – it becomes an elite spot to attack.

I will prioritize both Yasmani Grandal and Yoan Moncada with a focus on their splits as both have .200+ ISO marks against RHP and have .225+ ISO marks and 40% HC rates against Urena’s primary pitch – the splitter. However, after those, do not be afraid to take power bats from the right side as no pen in baseball is giving up more HR’s or more hard contact to opposing batters.

The other spot I am going right back to today – the New York Mets.

Part of this is about attacking Garret Richards, a pitcher with a 7+ xFIp, a walk rate of 15% which is higher than his 14% K rate and one who is giving up 44% HC rate. The other part of this is that the Mets bats are starting to wake up and watching them over the weekend, especially Sunday, you saw a team that was getting on base and hitting for power.

Richards is essentially a one pitch pitcher right now – literally, like one pitch. Against Toronto last outing, he threw his fastball 73% of the time – what is this little league?

For a pitch that generated just a 9% swing and miss rate, not sure exactly why he thinks the ole #1 is what he should rely on – but hey, if you want to throw 93MPH fastballs that batters don’t generate swing and misses on nearly 75% of the time, God bless ya!

I am sure this won’t surprise you – but the Mets hit the fastball with that velocity quite well – frankly what competent Major League team would not. Every single batter other than Jeff McNeil has a .225 ISO mark against the pitch type with Pete Alonso and Michael Conforto both with .500+ ISO marks against it.

Richards is struggling with command, and so combine that with his inability to get swing and misses and you see a scenario where the Mets get runners on base, and then hammer Richards for crooked numbers. I am calling it right now – Nimmo lead-off walk, followed by a Polar Bear bomb in the first inning.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

On a slate with so much top-end pitching, I certainly thought I would end on double aces but with my focus on the big bats in Chicago and New York, I am going to take the approach of using cheap arms with K upside tonight that will unlock a unique GPP path and also likely give us continued leverage off some chalky stacks that are ice-cold!

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 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Main Slate Breakdown

After a big day Sunday for our MLB DFS Picks and Pivots, we are back with an interesting slate on Monday that at first glance feels like it could end up REALLY chalky.

The slate has some obvious starting points with Corbin Burnes as the clear SP1 ace, a far too cheap Shohei Ohtani as an SP2 and the New York Yankees bats with the highest implied run total on the slate against Matt Harvey.

This feels like the clear cash game route and my guess is, even writing this as a first look, this is how the ownership ends up working out.

For me – Corbin Burnes is a non-starter – I play elite K arms as my DK anchor every single day and Burnes is one of the best in the league with an insane 47% K rate this season and a 20% swinging-strike rate. End story – dude is my SP1 – get cute elsewhere.

The next decision points however are not so cut and dry!

The Dark Knight versus The Bronx Bombers

The first spot though I am totally out on as chalk is the Yankee bats against Matt Harvey. I am sorry, but this ownership is going to be entirely name value driven because there is almost no metric that supports going after the Yankees and frankly – going after Harvey and the Orioles bullpen.

Against RHP this season, the Yankees rank bottom 5 in runs scored, team ISO and team HC% while ranking dead last in all of baseball with a .189 batting average.

Now tack on that the Baltimore bullpen ranks top 5 in ERA this season and sits in the top 10 in soft contact rate and GB % and what exactly are we targeting?

Oh, I see – you are going after Matt Harvey – that has to be it right?

Yeah I get it – Harvey has a 5.12 ERA and he was horrible last season in KC, so let’s stack against him. What if the truth is Harvey is not has bad as you think, and actually the advanced metrics would tell you this is a league average arm that has been on the bad luck side of the beat to start?

Harvey has a SIERA and XIP of 3.9 which is a full run+ lower than his season ERA and those makrs are almost identical to the league average marks on the season across baseball at 3.93 and 3.96 respectively.

Harvey has an unsightly .333 BABIP which is significantly over the league average of .282 and considering he has allowed just a 3% hard contact rate on the year – feels like a whole lot of bad luck thus far.

If you dig into the advanced metrics, what has really worked against Harvey is the contact rates of the opposition inside and outside the zone. The Z Contact % which measures contact made in the zone is at a 92% rate for Harvey this year which is significantly above the 85% mark in baseball and his O Contact % (contact made outside the zone) is well ahead of the 61% mark in baseball.

If we look at the Yankees bats in those specific metrics, they have a 81% contact rate inside the zone and a 57% rate outside the zone – BOTH marks rank bottom three in baseball this season.

The Yankees team BABIP of .245 also ranks 2nd to last in all of baseball – setting up for the ultimate question tonight.

Are the Yankees due for some movement back to a league-average offense or is this a spot where Harvey, who has seen his share of bad luck to start 2021, gets the perfect get right spot against one of the worst statistical offenses in the bigs?

Not only do I think you argue the full-on fade of the Yankee bats, but I think Matt Harvey ($5.6K) becomes a legit SP2 GPP option on this slate.

The reality is, starting pitchers have been a place to target the last two weeks against the New York bats as we can see from our friends at Statmuse.

Of the last 7 right-handed starters to face the Yankees, 6 of them have gone for 15+ DK points, while 6 of them have pushed for 20+ points. Now, Harvey is clearly not at the level of Bieber or Glasnow but look at what Michael Wacha did against the Yankees just a few days ago – 33 DK points on 9K’s?

Do you realize Wacha has not even cracked double-digit DK points outside of that start? So there in lies the upside, the lightning in a bottle of taking an arm who is due for positive regression against an offense that ranks as one of the worst in baseball this season.

One of these spots will get right tonight – I am happy to take the leverage with Harvey and bet on it being him instead of eating the chalk on an ice cold offense that makes Michael Wacha look like Tom Seaver.

Will the real Ohtani please stand up?

Shohei Ohtani at $7.7K on DK tonight against the K happy Rangers seems like chalk city for our SP2 after he struck out 7 Rangers in his last start but there are some serious red flags here.

Through two starts, Ohtani has 14K’s in 8.2 IP but that has come with a whopping 11 walks. His 1.04 ERA does not quite match his 4.5 xFIP as a result of an 80% LOB rate and at some point, the walks have to come back to bite him.

Listen K’s are king in DFS so I understand he appeal of a 34% K rate but when that comes with a 27% walk rate – there is some serious risk in inflated pitch counts and one big swing with runners on, making this a spot where Ohtani gets blown up.

I think you can play this spot with leverage and use the Rangers as a boom or bust secondary stack against Ohtani. The path is simple – walks and base runners, leads to a mistake and a home run in Texas hitters ballpark. So go ahead and take shots on the big power bats like Joey Gallo and Nate Lowe and you can expand that with Isaiah Kiner-Felefa who has just a 16% K rate in the lead-off spot and gives you a nice option in front of the big bats to optimize your mini stack.

Now the real pay off could come in this game stack on the other side with the LAA Angels against Jordan Lyles and a Rangers bullpen that ranks 2nd to last in team ERA with the most HR’s allowed to opposing batters on the season.

The Angels line-up is one to watch tonight as we could see a wildly different team to what we saw over the weekend as Mike Trout is expected to return from injury while both of Anthony Rendon and Max Stassi are expected to be activated off the IL prior to the game.

All of a sudden, this line-up feels like stack city against arguably the worst starting pitcher on the slate in Lyles and the worst bullpen on the 9 game MLB DFS slate.

One thing I want to watch today is the umpire assignments – if we get a hitting heavy home plate umpire today for this game, it could be the type of GPP game stack that goes completely crazy!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

The only thing I really know early on today is that I want Corbin Burnes as my SP1 but after that, I think there are some serious paths to leverage what I would consider bad chalk on this slate.

Today has the makings of a day where the MLB DFS crowds follow blindly and ignore the advanced metrics and rather than eat the bad chalk – we attack with leverage and use the data to support a path to pivoting off the field!

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 Sundayedition 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Main Slate Breakdown

Well, I was not expecting to have time to write or play MLB DFS here on Sunday but a rainout of my son’s soccer game is allowing me some Sunday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots and I am all for it!

As Adam so expertly laid out in today’s Starting Rotation – the pitching on this slate is really strong, especially in the mid-range – and so focusing here with K arms at reasonable price tags, will allow us the opportunity to spend up still for big bats.

I think both Adam and Jared in his FanDuel MLB Aces and Bases column nailed the pitching especially with a far too cheap Danny Duffy ($8K) who literally checks every single box we could ask for as he has elite K metrics, swinging strike metrics and faces the single best match-up for a LHP with the Detroit Tigers on tap.

The Tigers have the highest K rate this season against LHP with a 32.7% K rate and rank dead last in team ISO at .090. Each of the last four lefties to face the Tigers have gone for between 22 and 27 DK points with 6-9 K’s including Mike Minor, Tyler Anderson, Cole Irvin and Sean Manaea. NOw tack on the fact that Duffy gets a massive pitcher’s umpire behind the plate in Chris Conroy, who calls 14% more K’s than the average HP umpire – and all signs point to a big game for Duffy.

The other lefty with a ceiling spot on tap is Eduardo Rodriguez ($8.2K) as he takes on a Seattle line-up with a 27.1% K rate against LHP since 2019 and as a team they rank as the 7th highest K rate in 20201 against LHP with a 28.3% rate.

Not only do they K a lot, but they make a lot of weak contact, ranking 4th in baseball with a 22.6% soft contact rate while simultaneously ranking bottom 5 in hard contact rate at just 25.6%. We have seen talented arms like Julio Urias (40 DK and 11 K’s) and Carlos Rodon (29 DK and 9 K’s) hit ceiling games against the Seattle team and I am going right back to it here with E-Rod.

This Duffy/E-Rod pairing is going to allow us to spend up for the big bats today which likely starts for many with the Boston Red Sox as the top stack of the day against LHP Nick Mergevicius.

However, there is another stack against a lefty I want – and I want in a big way.

Yes, kids – it is Patrick Corbin’s turn in the rotation and he faces, wait for it – the New York Mets.

After Corbin’s disaster start against Arizona, we went right after it against with St. Louis and Corbin trolled us with a strong start, but there are some underlying data points here which lead me to think it was a Lester-like mirage.

Corbin has a 100% left on base rate, just a .250 BABIP and did not walk a single batter after walking 7 in his first 6 innings of work. Corbin also saw a nearly 40% swing mark outside the strike zone which was a 10% improvement on the first two starts and much of this was a reliance on his slider which he threw 42% of the time against the Cardinals.

The thing is – the slider is a pitch that this Mets team can handle – especially from the right side. JD Davis has a .406 ISOwith a 52% hard contact rate and a average distance of 349 feet on 23 batted balls – aka if Corbin throws JD a slider, homeboy is hitting that thing to tire shops on Flushing Ave.

James McCann has a .333 ISO mark and 33% HC rate with a team-high 71% contact rate against that pitch type. Peter Alonso and Francisco Lindor – both have 40% plus hard contact rates against the pitch type with Alonso have an 80% fly ball rate against it.

The first two starts, Corbins slider graded out as his absolute worst pitch and even with the improvement last game, it still ranks among the bottom 10 in all of baseball this season.

This up and down trend is not unique either for Corbin – as this pitch type ranked as his most volatile last year and when he did not have the command on his slider – those games graded out as his worst with 5 runs to Baltimore, 3 runs (on 10 hits) to the Mets and his worst start against Miami where he gave up 14 hits, 2 HR’s and 7 runs to the Marlins.

My point here – is that the blow up potential for Corbin is VERY real and there is nothing about that last start that makes me think he solved anything. In fact his reliance on that volatile pitch walking into today against the Mets, may make him use it even more and this Mets line-up can hit it and hit it hard.

Stack or die baby.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

Loving this Sunday MLB DFS slate today with the strong mid-range pitching and what it still allows us to do for our bats. I think today going with a Duffy/E-Rod SP core and stacking the Red Sox/Mets bats is the path to GPP upside and I look forward to talking it up in Discord with you all today!

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 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Main Slate Breakdown

We have ourselves a monster 14 game MLB DFS Main Slate here on Friday Night with some rain risk primarily in St. Louis and a whole lot of ace level arms to sort through in our MLB DFS plays.

Now – my man Adam Strangis does such an incredible job every day breaking down the arms in our Starting Rotation piece – literally, there is not a better read in the industry. I bring this up before I talk about pitching because he went in depth in ways on this slate that frankly, I would not have even thought to.

The main reason for me, is that I opened this slate and saw Jacob deGrom and Tyler Glasnow both at reasonable price points and my mind went to how do I get both and the bats I want?

Now, this is not to say the other arms are not viable, of course, they are. However, my strategy when it comes to my MLB DFS Picks is a consistent one as it relates to arms. When we have slates without obvious options, I am willing to dig deeper and take risks (see Justin Dunn last night) – but when we have arguably the top two strikeout arms in baseball on the slate, why would I not anchor to them when I can fit them both and still have $3.6-$3.7K per bat for my lineup?

We see it over and over again, picking bats for MLB DFS is incredibly variant on a night to night basis and so tonight with 14 games on tap, 28 teams in the player pool – it would seem like the perfect spot to draw from that large pool of talent to find stacks that work around the double aces.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Stacking Around Double Aces

I am sure Steven Matz is a nice guy – listen, as a Mets fan, I have a soft spot for him and even more so his grandfather – a lifelong Mets fan who had the most perfect reactions to Matz first game as a member of his childhood team.

So I am not picking ON him per se – this is more a result of years of watching Matz struggle with consistency for the Mets and then to see this red-hot start for the Blue Jays and wonder, is it real or will the Jekyl/Hyde Matz I have seen rear its ugly head sooner than later?

One of the reasons I LOVE MLB DFS is because the analytics behind it and the ability to really deep dive is unlike any other sport we have. You can get lost in data and there are tons of great FREE sites like Baseball Savant which allows you to dig into pitch data like you see above and compare year over year offerings for pitchers.

If you look at Matz’s pitch data, there are subtle changes – relying on the splitter a tad less and utilizing his slider more, at a higher velocity, which has become a nice swing and miss pitch for the lefty.

One of the biggest differences is Matz is really limiting hard contact – drastically so – just 23% this year which is a stark comparison to his 40% mark last year and 37% mark the year before.

On the flip side – there are MASSIVE red flags that Matz has been more lucky than anything else.

First – he has an 89% left on base rate and a .190 BABIP mark – the league average of which is 72% and .283. Secondly, there is a HUGE difference in his O-Contact% this year compared to his historical data points and the league overall.

O-Contact% is essentially defined as the number of times an opposing batter makes contact with pitches outside the strike zone. The league average this season is 62%, nearly identical to the 2020 mark of 61.4%. Matz meanwhile has career marks of 65.7% since 2015 – largely in line with the metrics we noted league-wide.

This year however, he is at just 48.6% – a mark in baseball that would align him with guys like deGrom, Glasnow, Kershaw and Bauer.

I am not telling you that Matz is a bad pitcher, but the truth is – his career marks would tell you he is league average and his history would also tell you he has blow up outings where the long ball becomes a massive problem for him.

Tonight against the Tampa Bay Rays – Matz steps into another boom or bust spot, as the Rays are a heavy K team with a 25-26% K rate in the projected lineup, but they are also one with 6 hitters sporting .200+ ISO marks and 40%+ hard contact rates against LHP since 2019.

If you look at the Rays bats from the right side against the sinker/change-up, the two that profile the best are Mike Brosseau and Manuel Margot while Austin Meadows looks like an elite L/L play here. Meadows has a .333 ISO and 45% HC rate against the sinker with a .333 ISO mark and 67% HC rate against the change which represents nearly 95% of the pitch mix for Matz against LHB.

I do not expect the Rays will be a popular stack today in the slightest as I do not think folks are ready to pick on Matz quite yet and with a game in Coors, we know where the hitting ownership goes, but if regression season begins tonight – well, we could get a low owned stack that has the metrics to take some serious advantage.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

This is an amazing slate – we have elite high K arms and a game in Coors Field which is going to mean some concentrated ownership in spots but I also think it will give us the opportunity to attack some low owned GPP difference makers.

My guess is that most go with EITHER deGrom or Glasnow with a cheaper SP2 to get in Coors bats, which is exactly why I want to go double aces if that path will be contrarian and I think we have a clear cheap stack to attack that can provide the power upside along with those power arms!

Enjoy this slate – let’s get in our FREE Discord today and chat it up while we dig through our cheat sheets and custom projections here at Win Daily to set up the start of this MLB DFS season with some big wins!

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 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Early Slate Breakdown

We kick off our Thursday with a 2 game MLB DFS slate that on the surface looks underwhelming, lackluster and one that we could just skip right over – but I am a sucker for daytime DFS and this two game slate actually has some interesting strategy when breaking down our MLB DFS picks.

I say this every time we have a short slate like this – these slates are far more about strategy than they are about “top plays” so we need to approach them with a different mindset when building our GPP lineups.

In looking at both games – Reds/DBacks and Pirates/Tigers – we lack any real ace level arms and in fact none of the arms have even a 25% K rate since the start of 2020, which tells you these are far more floor than ceiling type arms.

At an overall level – both games have similar weather situations with 50 degree game time temperatures and the wind blowing out to left field with 10-12 MPH. The one difference I do see – the Reds game has a massive pitcher’s umpire while the Tigers/Pirates have a favorable hitting umpire.

My assumption today is that most will use the arms for Pittsburgh and Detroit in Mitch Keller and Jose Urena and they will stack the Diamondbacks and Reds bats.

Instead – I think we use the arms in that game in Great American Ball Park with Jeff Hoffman and Taylor Widener. Both pitchers have had two strong outings this season, sandwiched around one bad outing – which in both cases just so happen to come against the very same teams they face today. You know the game log watchers will see it and assume these are the arms to attack!

For Hoffman, he has put up 17 and 23 DK points outside of this one stinker in Arizona, that I am going to argue – was not really so bad. If you look at that game compared to his other two starts against Cleveland and St. Louis – there was one glaring difference – his ability to generate called strikes and swings & misses on his fastball.

In his other two starts he generated a 29% and 39% CSW rate on his primary pitch type but against Arizona, this sat at just 19%. Additionally, Hoffman had just a 25% O-swing % on that game which was nearly half of what he has had in his other two starts – meaning only 25% of the time did Arizona swing at pitches outside the zone.

So in this case, Hoffman was not getting the zone and could not get Arizona to chase outside which led to an abbreviated outing. In his last start against the Indians, we saw the ceiling – where he threw 70% of his first pitches for strikes, getting ahead in the count and ultimately racking up a 14% swinging strike rate.

Widener has had a similar story – strong starts in San Diego and Washington but trouble against this same Reds team he will face tonight. What’s funny is if you look at the game breakdowns and compare Widener’s good starts with his lone bad one – almost everything is identical – with one glaring exception, his BABIP.

In his two strong starts – his BABIP (batting average on balls in play) – was .200 and .222 while against the Reds, it shot to .316. For context – the league average BABIP is .285 – meaning that the Reds saw some serious good fortune against Widener the first start, finding holes on their batted balls in what seems to be a statistical outlier.

Now if my read is correct and the Arizona/Cincinnati game is where the bats are popular – using the arms in it gives us leverage, meaning stacking the bats in Pittsburgh/Detroit bats may give us added leverage if this is where folks default to for arms.

Of the four arms on this slate – Mitch Keller (51%) and Jose Urena (47%) are actually giving up the most hard contact of any of the starting pitchers and their struggles with LHB, could spell big time trouble in this spot today.

Keller on the season is giving up a .269 ISO mark and 59% hard contact rate to LHB and the Tigers have a projected line-up tonight with 7 left-handed batters among them. With Grossman-Candelario-Castro at the top of the order, all hitting from the left side, and rookie sensation Akil Baddoo and his .500 ISO against RHP this season down in the order, I think there are a lot of ways to attack this Tigers stack against Keller.

The book on Urena has been written in pen at this point because it ain’t changing – are you a left-handed batter against Jose Urena? Yes? OK proceed to the player pool for insertion into our MLB DFS picks.

Since 2019, Urena has a .224 ISO mark against LHB which is a full .100 higher then his mark against RHB so right at the top of this lineup we see guys like Adam Frazier, Bryan Reynolds and Colin Moran are going to jump out at us.

Urena throws his sinker over 60% of the time to LHB and really – the one batter that profiles well against it is Adam Frazier, with a .238 ISO mark against that pitch type.

Now do not be afraid to stack the righties here and I say this because you don’t want to JUST attack Urena, you also want the Tigers bullpen which has the worst ERA in the majors, the most HR’s allowed and has surrendered the most hard contact (45%) of any bullpen in the big leagues this season! If Pittsburgh gets through Urena with a crooked number, the worst pen in baseball awaits for your stacking pleasure!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Main Slate Breakdown

If you thought this five game MLB DFS Main Slate would be more straight-forward, well I am sorry to tell you – it is not going to be pretty.

We have two elite K arms on the slate, frankly only two – with Walker Buehler and Christian Javier – and while I do not love the spots, I will continue to push the story every single day for DraftKings GPP’s – K’s are king.

However, the metrics and the narrative changes relatively quickly with someone like Buehler, depending on how you split up the seasons. In 2020 – he had a 32% K rate, 13% SS rate and 30% CSW rate and every single one of those metrics thus far in 2021 have plummeted – to a 17% K rate, 9% SS rate and 28% CSW rate. Now tack on that he is giving up a career high 44% hard contact rate and faces the San Diego Padres loaded line-up and there are plenty of reasons to look elsewhere.

Javier meanwhile takes his electric K ability, especially to right-handers with a 31% mark, and gets the same right-handed heavy Angels line-up we thought we would see yesterday with 6 RHB in it. Well, we know the Angels went lefty heavy against Folty, and honestly could work something similar here again today which would flip the script a bit on Javier but if he gets this RH line-up he could dominate.

Javier’s slider is his DFS ceiling pitch – one that has generated a 53 and 39% CSW rate thus far with a 46% swing and miss (whiff) rate. His biggest difference in two starts – he had a 60% first strike rate in his last game compared to his 26% rate in the first game. Get ahead of batters, then put them away with the slider – seems like an easy formula to execute right?

My dude Adam already highlighted arguably the pitcher in the best form though in Alex Cobb and I think for those who are not paying attention, they may not realize the change in pitch type that is driving this huge increase in strikeout stuff. The Astros also leave Coors Field to head back to Houston and it may be anecdotal, but I love attacking teams the first game outside of Coors Field and the thin air.

Lastly, I have interest in Nick Pivetta against the Mariners and much of this is due to their marks against RHP this season more than anything else. On the season, Seattle has a 27% K rate against RHP which ranks among the highest marks in baseball, while also having one of the top 5 highest soft contact rates (20.1%) while also walking at one of the lowest marks (7%).

So to summarize – they strike out a lot, do not walk and when they make contact it is like a wet noodle.

Pivetta is sporting an 11.2% SS rate on the year so the swing and miss stuff is real and while his walk rate struggles are a concern, if the Marines are not a team that looks to work counts – maybe this is the perfect spot to balance that out!

I apologize in advance – but I am doing it.

I am going back to the Mets bats here tonight – in fact, I am going back to this game in Wrigley Field in general with the Cubs and Mets.

My guess is that the Cubs bats are popular against LHP Joey Lucchesi tonight after they outburst on Tuesday and honestly, the pitch data supports going back to it. Lucchesi is going to rely nearly 60% of the time on sinker to right-handed batters and oh boy – the Cubs primary RHB jump off the page with this pitch.

Willson Contreras has a .727 ISO mark and 67% hard contact rate, Javier Baez has a .684 ISO mark and Kris Bryant has a .330 ISO mark – meaning, this could spell seriously hard contact woes for the Mets lefty.

On the other side of this – the Mets are going to break out tonight. Book it. Lock it. DO IT.

Trevor Williams is a low K arm who has given up a .190 ISO mark to LHB since 2019 while the right-handed batters have actually been his issue with a .243 ISO mark.

Williams is basically a two pitch pitcher – fastball/change to LHB and fastball/slider to RHB.

With a left-handed heavy line-up opposing him – looking at that change-up is key. All of the Mets big lefty bats have .200+ ISO marks against that pitch type with Lindor, Smith, and Conforto hitting it for power. The slider meanwhile to RHB, Mr. Alonso has a .247 ISO mark and a 50% hard contact rate against it – so you hang one of those bad boys with the wind blowing out at 15 MPH today at Wrigley and it is Polar Bear SZN SON!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

If you are a GPP player for MLB DFS, these are the kind of slates you have to love because the strategy ends up being almost a bigger part of your process than simply “picking the top guys.”

We have two underwhelming pitching slates which I think gives us the chance to build around bats and live in a mid-range with our arms while still capturing K upside which is key.

Enjoy this slate – let’s get in our FREE Discord today and chat it up while we dig through our cheat sheets and custom projections here at Win Daily to set up the start of this MLB DFS season with some big wins!

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 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Early Slate Breakdown

We get ourselves a nice little split slate MLB DFS Wednesday with a 5 game Early Slate to make our MLB DFS Picks with a game in Coors Field as the starting point that has some weather risk we have to monitor!

What is fascinating about this slate is that 5 of the 10 teams in action have 4 or lower implied run totals (IRT’s) and while Coors Field stands out as a clear outlier, it will also be in the 30’s all game.

Let’s just get Coors Field out of the way as the elephant in the room – I am not going out of my way to play this super chalky game, however, the pricing on the Astros is just laughable on DK – Myles Straw at $2.7K as a lead-off hitter in Coors – he is going to be like a BILLION percent owned. These guys are going to be cash game staples but intriguing GPP fades on a short slate.

LHP Austin Gomber is not an arm we would go out of our way to stack against as he limits hard contact, limits ISO to opposing batters, and has a high GB rate. As I asked people last night with the Astros chalk – if this game was not in Coors, would you be playing them?

Now the one piece of chalk I will happily eat on this slate is Max Scherzer ($10.7K) who brings an 18% SS rate and a 35% K rate to the mound tonight. K’s are kind for your SP1 on DraftKings and I am simply not getting cute on a short slate and fading Mad Max here.

Finding the SP2 on this slate is the tougher challenge and I am turning to Win Daily Sports favorite – Mike Foltynewicz ($6.6K) against the Angels.

Folty has had some up and down outings to start but there are a few things that stand out to me. First, his velocity across each pitch type has increased from Opening Day which is fastball averaging nearly 95 MPH last start, topping out at 97 MPH against Baltimore where he had a season high 14% SS rate.

Folty was locating the fastball far better as well, with a 30% CSW rate all while getting more swings and misses on his slider – at nearly 40%. The things with Folty is he has always been a reverse splits arm, with a K rate 6% higher against RHB and the reason for that is largely the slider which is his highest swing and miss offering.

The Angels are likely to have their usual right-handed heavy line-up here tonight with 5 of the 9 batters from the right side. The splits for Folty are really what you can anchor to here – even in this first 3 games – he has a 38% K rate to RHB and just a 9% to LHB with a 20% drop in hard contact rate when you flip from lefties to righties.

It is FoltySZN – and I am here for it.

The stack that I am prioritizing today is the San Diego Padres – and it is for a few reasons. First and foremost, from a pure talent perspective this lineup which is now healthy is the best lineup on the early slate and I do not think it is all that close.

While RHP Adrian Houser is not necessarily bad, you are talking about a low K arm, with minimal swing and miss ability against a Padres line-up that 1-6 has every hitter with a .225 ISO or higher against RHP since the start of last season.

The Padres will alternate L/R in the line-up and those lefties have a massive advantage against Houser and his .211 ISO but when you can stack the splits advantages around the right-handed stars like Tatis/Machado – oh and by the way, still easily afford Mad Max at SP1. Why are we getting cute?

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Main Slate Breakdown

Oh hey there – welcome to the 7 game Main Slate where the pitching is bad and the weather is even worse. What sounds more fun than a slate where Aaron Civale and Tyler Mahle are the top priced arms and we have 5 games with temperatures 40 degree or below with serious rain issues in Boston to boot!

I know, I feel the excitement too.

Let’s be honest, this pitching slate is a hold your noise and hope kind of deal – and so to act like I love any arm here tonight would be lying to you. This is the kind of slate where I work backwards and find the hitters I want and see what fits for arms.

That said – the Yankees/Braves game is likely where I go hunting for the offense tonight with 56 degree temperatures, the wind blowing out to RF in Yankee Stadium at 12 MPH and the Braves getting the benefit of a DH.

The Yankees are throwing out Corey Kluber again today and listen, the guy just does not have it at this point. He is giving up a TON of hard contact and against left-handed batters has literally given up 0% soft contact – like none, not a one.

Having Ehire Adrianza at lead-off for $2.1K for Atlanta, assuming Acuna is out again, makes this a cheap stack in totality as you can easily pair him with the pricey bats of Freeman, Ozuna, Albies and TdA and make yourself a nice little 5 man Bravos stack!

Now I know the Yankees have not been good to start the year and I am sure Adam will scream blasphemy – but this is a talent argument on a short slate. The hitting conditions in Yankee Stadium will likely be the best on the slate and while Anderson is a talented arm, but the Yankees bats handle high-velocity fastballs well and they all but two batters have .200+ ISO marks against the change-up from RHP which is Ian’s primary pitch type off the fastball.

To me, this is a fun game stack that you can build on talent alone and have a HR Derby looking squad. Let’s face it – it is that kind of build that is going to win you this slate tonight – so work backwards with bats and then fit in your value arms from Adam’s Starting Rotation.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

We have a two slate MLB DFS day and honestly finding the MLB DFS Picks to build around is not as easy as you may think – which is ideal for GPP’s.

Both MLB DFS slates today are littered with poor conditions, generally poor arms and uncertain paths – and it is those kinds of slates where you can make big time GPP noise in my opinion!

Enjoy this slate – let’s get in our FREE Discord today and chat it up while we dig through our cheat sheets and custom projections here at Win Daily to set up the start of this MLB DFS season with some big wins!

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 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Tuesday Pitching Picks

As we open this monster 13 game slate here on Tuesday, we have larger than usual player pool and a start time that sits 30 minutes earlier to include the 6:30 PM EST games, including the first game of the Twins/A’s 7 inning double-header. All this means we have a ton to sort through for our MLB DFS picks on this slate!

If we simply go off metrics, it is hard to argue that anyone other than Corbin Burnes ($10.8K) should be our SP1. Burnes right now is pitching at an elite level with a league-leading CSW rate at 39%, a swinging strike rate at 19.7% which sits behind only deGrom/Bieber and a 48.4% K rate that somehow does not lead the league – and that is only because Jacob deGrom exists.

Sure the match-up with San Diego is not one we want to pick on, but much like when deGrom pitched in Coors Field, you ignore the opposing factors and simply focus on the incredibly high and dominant upside of this SP1.

What is interesting is that if you just look at the metrics since the start of last season, it would be Luis Castillo ($6.6K) as the clear SP2 with a 15% SS rate which would trail only Burnes and a 28% K rate which would rank amoing the top 4 arms.

The issue is, the 2020 stats are propping up what has been a disaster start to Castillo’s 2021 but I think this is more a story of bad luck than an overall trend.

If you look at some of the underlying metrics for Castillo, his ground ball rate remains elite at 53% which is in line with career norms, his 13% SS rate remains high and his 29.4% CSW rate is exactly in line with last year.

So what has changed? How about some bad luck? Castillo has just a 46% left on base rate, significantly down from his 70% mark last season and the league average of 72%. His hard contact rate sits at just 17% on the season, with a BABIP of over .333 – again a mark that is way over the league average of .280 this early season.

The truth is, so much of the early metrics are skewed by a horrendous opening day start against the Cardinals. The last two games – 12 innings, a 12:1 K/BB ratio and 40 DK points over those two starts.

The last two games, Castillo has posted a 14.5% SS rate and 26% K rate – again fun with numbers when you take out that first game outlier. The fact that Castillo threw 30% sliders in that first start and has thrown just 6% the last two games – tells you he is making an adjustment from that outing and if you dig into the game script from his last outing via our friends at Baseball Savant – you see a very interesting story.

You can see Castillo is anchoring more to his change-up which generated a 41% whiff rate and 30% CSW rate which is going to be the primary weapon he deploys against a lefty heavy Arizona line-up here tonight. I expect a bounce back for an ace who is priced as a gas can.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Picking Our Stacks

When I opened this slate and saw Patrick Corbin back on the hill, my interest was piqued – and then I saw it was against a right-handed heavy line-up like the St. Louis Cardinals. Good gravy this is going to be ugly.

Since the start of last season, Corbin has a .225 ISO and 55% hard contact rate to RHB and this lineup has each of the top 4 in its lineup with .230+ ISO marks since 2019 against LHP.

My only concern is ownership frankly – even on a 13 game slate – because 50% of the field got burned by Corbin his last start, they will be itching now to pick on him and oh by the way – the Cardinals scored 10 runs last night as the GPP takedown stack which means recency bias will be all too real.

At the end of the day it is still baseball and so while I love the stack – I see almost no reason to hit overwhelming hitter chalk on a 13 game slate if the Cardinals get out of control.

The other way to play it – would be to pair a chalky stack with a lower owned stack that correlates well alongside it – and I think we found exactly that with the New York Mets against Jake Arrieta in Wrigley Field.

Arrieta is exactly what we expect at this point – a heavy sinker ball arm, throwing it nearly 50% of the time, and one who has struggled with left-handed power to the tune of a .200 ISO mark the last season plus and one who the Mets are intimately familiar with since he has spent the last 3 years pitching Philadelphia.

Jacob deGrom is not pitching so we can feel free to deploy the Mets bats – especially since this is a spot where the left-handed heavy Mets line-up will work to their benefit.

The Mets LHB against that sinker have significantly strong pitch type data as all of Jeff McNeil, Dominic Smith and Francisco Lindor have .200+ ISO marks against that pitch type with Michael Conforto leading the team with a .386 ISO mark against it.

What I like about the Mets stack here tonight from a roster construction perspective is how we align with the Cardinals positions. With the St. Louis priority bats in the infield, it leaves you openings for mid-range OF’s and that is where the Mets come in with – Smith, Conforto and lead-off man Brandon Nimmo.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

Much like we had last night, the pitching spots are not “obvious” but the winning formula continues to be – go after the high K arms time and time again in our MLB DFS picks.

Last night, the high K arms like Joe Musgrove, Brandon Woodruff, Danny Duffy and Kevin Gausman were top scorers on the slate and I think if we simply anchor to those “kinds” of arms night and and night out – we give ourselves the best chance to win.

Corbin Burnes is that clear ace tonight from a metrics perspective and absent one outlier bad start for Luis Castillo, he deserves to be in that same conversation. The fact you can pair them together with a high/low salary build and still focus on getting high dollar bats/stacks – makes this an optimal path in my opinion.

Enjoy this slate – let’s get in our FREE Discord today and chat it up while we dig through our cheat sheets and custom projections here at Win Daily to set up the start of this MLB DFS season with some big wins!

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 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!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Monday Main Slate Pitching

We have a smaller six game Main Slate here on Monday with a clear slate weather wise to make our MLB DFS Picks! What I like about this slate at first glance is that nothing seems obvious – we have good plays but none that come without warts and so I think we can make arguments today in GPP’s where we pivot in spots to give ourselves an edge.

First stop pitching where Joe Musgrove ($10.3K) stands out as the elite SP1 with a slate leading 34% K rate and 14.3% SS rate since the start of 2020 and now he gets a match-up with a Yelich-less Brewers team that has a 27%+ K rate against RHP in their projected line-up.

My one concern with Musgrove is the pitch count. Outside of his 112 pitches in a no-hitter against Texas, he has throw just 78 pitches and 81 pitches the other two trips to the mound.

That same pitch concern lies with Dustin May ($9.7K) who was yanked with just 71 pitches thrown last time out in a typical Dave Roberts managed start for a Dodgers starter. May’s metrics this season – a 31% K rate and 14% SS rate would rate him as one of the best arms on the slate against a Mariners projected line-up with a 26% K rate against RHP this season.

So there in lies in the concern with both top priced arms – you are paying premium pricing for the potential of a shortened outing.

If you opt to skip over the top two arms at the top – I think the likely landing spot is to live in this $7K range with Dylan Bundy ($7.7K), Danny Duffy ($7K) and Kevin Gausman ($6.6K).

Bundy has an interesting match-up has his 27% K rate and 13% SS rate are largely inflated by his ability to dominate right-handed batters to the tune of a 34% K rate. So while the Rangers are an elite K offense to attack, they also will likely roll out 6 lefties to face Bundy tonight.

Now this Rangers team is one that ranks among the worst against right-handed pitching this season, with a 30% K rate that is second highest in baseball and a team ISO that is among the five lowest in the league but let’s not forget that Musgrove’s no hitter against this same line-up is skewing much of those statistics.

Duffy gets a boom or bust match-up against the Rays – a team with a 26% K rate against LHP but also a team ISO north of .200 – so are you feeling lucky? Duffy has done a nice job of limiting hard contact, just 30% of the time since 2020, and his near 11% SS rate gives him a path to success after throwing 97 and 100 pitches in his first two outings against the Indians/Angels where he racked up 22 and 24 DK points on his way to well pitched wins.

Gausman meanwhile has the K metrics to make the argument he is an elite arm on this slate – with a 30.4% K rate which would trail only Musgrove and Woodruff and a 14.6% swinging strike rate which is actually the best mark of any arm on this slate.

Gausman’s issue has always been left-handed power however, with a .200+ ISO mark to left-handed batters and so pitching in Citizen’s Bank Park with Bryce Harper and Didi Gregorious on the other side of this game presents some serious risk. The flip side is the Phillies lineup other than these two bats is going to be all right-handed so the path for Gausman is there IF he can avoid the lefty power bats.

One last arm I want to focus on is Jack Flaherty ($8.5K) who frankly is kind of priced in no man’s land – but he gets an intriguing match-up with the Nationals. Flaherty just faced this team, racking up 6 K’s and 23 DK points and has now thrown 94, 96 and 100 pitches – so where we have pitch count concerns with others on this slate – Flaherty is taking on a consistent load every time out.

The splits for Flaherty have always been right-handed heavy as he has a near 30% K rate against RHB and a .116 ISO mark so the risk with Flaherty is really with the lefties like Soto, Schwarber and Bell. This is going to be the same line-up he just faced and so while the risk remains, the path to success is clearly demonstrated.

So you probably get to this point and go – great – you told me why I could play guys but also why I shouldn’t – but that is the point, there are no slam dunks on this slate and nobody that I think you start your day building around. Instead, I think we can look at the bats/stacks and work our way backward, knowing we have a ton of potential arms in the player pool to choose from – none of which feel like must plays.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Picking Our Stacks

From a Vegas perspective, the stack to start with is the Dodgers and their slate leading 4.7 IRT against LHP Justus Sheffield however much like the arms, I can find reasons this is not the best spot to attack.

Sheffield in his short MLB career has limited RHB to a .9 HR/9 rate with a 34% HC rate and 53% GB rate so while the Dodgers bats are great against left-handed pitching – is this really a blow up arm they can hang a cooked number on?

So let’s go back to the Philly/San Francisco game for a minute – we talked about Gausman’s struggles with left-handed power and the very same applies to Chase Anderson on the other side of this game – who has given up .317 ISO mark to LHB since 2020 with 7 HR allowed in those 19 innings to LHB.

Guess what the Giants are going to roll out today – a left-handed heavy lineup with 1-4 in the line-up have .200+ ISO marks against right-handed pitching. All of Tommy LaStella, Mike Yazstremski, Alex Dickerson and Brandon Belt have massive power splits against RHP.

If we dig into the pitch type data – all of Yaz, Belt and Dickerson have .200+ ISO marks against the change-up which Anderson throws 30% of the time and if you look at his fastball which he throws nearly 40% of the time, Yaz, Dickerson and LaStella all have .300+ ISO marks against that pitch type!

Now we mentioned Gausman as a pitcher we could use – but the flip side is that his 37% hard contact rate is the second-worst on the slate and so if we build around the lefties we mentioned above in Harper/Didi – I think you can extend this stack a bit more in a power park as we have in Philly.

JT Realmuto is a pricey addition to a Philly stack but one that has some interesting profile advantages against RHP. Realmuto has a .233 ISO and an average air distance traveled of nearly 350 feet since last season and with Gausman’s reliance on a splitter to RHB, this is a pitch type JT has handedl exceptionally well. Realmuto has a .300 ISO mark with a 50% HC rate and a 431-foot average distance traveled on that pitch type – aka, home run city.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up

After digging through this slate to find my top MLB DFS picks – what I landed on really was how much I loved the Giants stack and the idea of pairing it with a Phillies mini-stack is really appealing considering the power upside.

What it likely means is that I am living more in the cheaper SP range at first look because the pricing on the bats seems elevated today and so with that context – I am willing to absorb risk at pitcher to afford the bats that I think make the difference.

Enjoy this slate – let’s get in our FREE Discord today and chat it up while we dig through our cheat sheets and custom projections here at Win Daily to set up the start of this MLB DFS season with some big wins!

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!