draftkings mlb dfs picks

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.

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 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 Wednesday where we look to continue the MASSIVE hot streak the team at Win Daily is on, including an all-night sweat that led to big-time screenshots on Tuesday courtesy of the Rays offense as you can see above!

The 5 game Early Slate is a fascinating one for GPP play as we have a game in Coors Field with a 14 implied run total that will largely dictate builds and cash line positions one way or the other. You guys know the drill by now in Picks and Pivots on these short slates – we play strategy and ignore the “best plays” which well, means I will let everyone else stack up Coors Field in the hope they hit the exact pairing of players correctly in order to separate themselves from the herd.

The other aspect I always preach on these day-time MLB DFS slates is start times – it may seem silly, but it matters – and when you have two games that start at 12:35 PM EST (CIN/CHC) and 1:10 PM EST (CLE/MIN), a full 2+ hours ahead of the rest of the slate, there is a strong likelihood you have no lineup information on the second half of this slate before lock. Consider we also have rain concerns in Washinton that could impact Jose Berrios on the mound and there is a strong argument to be made for front-loading this slate in our builds.

The easy place to start is with Tyler Mahle ($9K) at home against the hapless Cubs who continue to pace the Majors right now in strikeouts per game and with Mahle coming off back to back 32 point DK efforts, this is going to be a chalky, albeit correct play, no matter what you do with the rest of your lineup.

The SP2 pairing with Mahle is really where the first decision point likely lies for most and with rain on the radar for Jose Berrios, my favorite pairing is Zach Plesac ($7.9K) against the Minnesota Twins.

Plesac is coming off his best start of the year, a 9 strikeout, 32 DK point outing against the Tigers, and this match-up against the Twins is one that I think can set up similarly for him due to the Twins right-handed heavy line-up. Plesac relies heavily on his best swing and miss pitch, the slider, when facing RHB, as he throws it 40% of the time and gets a 40%+ whiff rate on the pitch.

What stood out to me in the Detroit start was how Plesac attacked the lefties with a curveball nearly 20% of the time, a stark increase in that pitch type for him and one that allowed him to really mix his pitches effectively. If he can continue to get 75% of first-pitch strikes and then use the slider/curveball as put-away offerings, the ceiling is high once again for him today.

The one interesting early ownership trend that is interesting is Jose Berrios being the third-highest owned of the arms and I suspect that’s largely due to people wanting to load up on Coors bats and needing the money. If Berrios gets a lefty-heavy line-up, it would play into his 30% K rate against LHB the last 30 days and he could be a difference-making arm as a late “hammer” if the weather cooperates.

For the bats – I want to stay in this “early start” window and load up on the Reds/Indians as a pairing as they correlate exceptionally well on DK.

The Reds may get overlooked here with everyone salivating over the Coors Field Vegas totals but this is a team with a 6.4 IRT, in Great American Ball Park, against a 30-year-old journeyman in Adrian Sampson and well, I hope everyone stacks late and has to play catch up as the Reds go nuts!

Sampson is a low K arm who has given up 19 HR over 14 AAA starts this year after spending last year in the KBO where he pitched to a 5+ ERA. The Reds are just loaded up and down with power against RHP with a team ISO of .244 and a 50% HC rate over the last 30 days – so if you are in the Cincy line-up today, I have you at the top of my player pool.

The other spot that I like here is the Indians right-handed bats against LHP Lewis Thorpe of the Twins – specifically the pairing of Jose Ramirez and Franmil Reyes who both have .300+ ISO marks against LHP over the last 30 days with JRam sporting a massive 60% fly-ball rate and Franmil sporting a (checks notes) – 75% hard contact rate! On a slate where the pay-ups will be reserved for Coors – I love the idea of paying up for low-owed power bats like we can get here with the Indians duo.

Main Slate Breakdown

As we turn our attention to the 10 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Main Slate – well, let’s just say – this one is going to sound familiar.

After two nights of the Tampa Bay Rays leading us to massive nights at no ownership against the Orioles awful pitching, we can’t possibly see the masses ignore them again right? Maybe with a slate high 6 IRT and no Coors Field, they will finally get some attention – but I do not care.

RHP Spencer Watkins is next up on the death march and with a high hard contact rate and fly ball profile to go with a low K rate – this lines up for an all-in Rays stack once again! Over the last 30 days – the Rays projected line-up has a .252 ISO, 45% HC rate, 40% FB rate and 8 of the 9 batters are sporting .200+ ISO marks individually against RHP. If you are not stacking the Rays tonight, you are DFS-ing wrong.

The secondary stack to pair with the Rays can vary – but the correlation is key and mostly, when finding a team to use alongside Tampa, I want teams with strong SS/3B combos and that is where both the Red Sox and Braves come into play.

Adam already covered the Red Sox against Andrew Heaney so I won’t simply regurgitate the great spot they are in – instead let me give you a bit of insight on the Braves against LHP Jesus Luzardo.

Luzardo is a simple pitcher to attack – even more so the last 30 days, as he is getting walloped by right-handed batters to the tune of a .333 ISO and 48% HC rate. During that time he has changed his pitch mix too – relying heavily on his sinker nearly 40% of the time that is getting hit to a .385 ISO and 67% HC rate by right-handed batters.

Austin Riley is a sinker hitting MACHINE – as his .484 ISO and 58% HC rate attest to and with our recent stretch of calling HR’s – let me go ahead and predict the Austin Riley HR off a sinker tonight. Book it.

The other place we can attack Luzardo is with his change-up usage and this is where we can potentially get value if both Travis d’Arnaud and Guillermo Heredia are in the lineup. Over the last 30 days, Luzardo is throwing the change 30% of the time and is giving up a .263 ISO mark and considering both TDA and Heredia have 50%+ HC rates and 250+ ISO marks against it, they could pay off as cheap pieces around a core Rays stack.

Now, you can tell by the way I approached this slate, bats are the priority but honestly, I think there is enough value in the Rays/Braves that you can still get up to the top end arms especially if we utilize value OF’s like Heredia or Kiermeir/Phillips in a Rays stack.

As Adam broke down in starting rotation – we have elite K options tonight and I want to anchor to those types of arms with Freddy Peralta, Jack Flaherty and Shohei Ohtani at the top of my list. The last two nights, we have seen – paying for pitching is trending back to earlier MLB DFS outcomes where the high ceiling strikeout arms are anchoring builds and I want to continue that approach tonight as a single entry player.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

Stepping back and looking at these two MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slates – we can see how the paths are going to carry the day and we need to be strategic about getting the big bats without taking risks at pitching and still taking the high ceiling K arms we have staring at us.

Good luck tonight all! Let’s keep that hot streak rolling! Come join the Win Daily Sports Team – grab a Gold Membership and take advantage of all the tools, articles, and expert coaching we can give you to make you a consistent winner in DFS.

Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @2LockSports and be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD ACCOUNT account here at Win Daily Sports. Gain access to our Projection Models and jump into our Discord where we will have our experts talking plays across every sport and slate!

Welcome to the Tuesday edition of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we dive into the top fantasy baseball plays and slate strategy 15thto 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 back my friends to a full MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate here on Tuesday Night and after we absolutely CRUSHED last night’s slate courtesy of some Rays and Astros HR Derby – we are back at it again tonight and ready to build our bankroll higher!

When looking at a huge slate like we have tonight, remember – there are a ton of good spots but trying to capture all of them in our builds is going to leave us in a constant state of tinkering, so instead I want to reiterate how critical it is to limit our player pool and really try to concentrate on our core build strategy.

Much like we had last night, we have one very clear-cut SP1 with a massive strikeout ceiling in Corbin Burnes ($10.2K) who gets a significant splits advantage as Mr. Cole got in his spot last night. Burnes has a 41.1% K rate this season to right-handed batters and tonight he will face a St. Louis team with 7 of the 9 projected batters hitting from the right side. In his only other start this season against the Cardinals, Burnes struck out 9 batters on his way to 30+ DK points and I think anchoring to these high ceiling SP1’s as a single entry GPP player is a core start each and every day.

Going high/low tonight with pitching looks to be ideal and pairing Burnes with a $7K Vladimir Gutierrez against the Cubs feels like a high K pairing with a serious ceiling.

No team in baseball is striking out more than the Cubs right now – 27.2% over the last month, 31.5% over the last 14 days, and 30.4% over the last week. Sort the data set however you want – in the words of the great Jay Sherman – THEY STINK!

Guttierez comes into this game in great recent form as well with 4 straight starts of 6+ innings, 4-6 K’s per game, 2 or fewer runs allowed, and 19-23 DK points in every single start. In these four starts, you are seeing the Reds right-hander pound the zone with 62% first-pitch strikes, while his fastball velocity has ticked up and he is using his secondary pitches like the change-up and slider more often.

Over the last two weeks, attacking the Cubs with pitching has paid off essentially every night with 10 of the 14 pitchers going for 14+ DK points, 6 going for 20+, and 3 going for 30+. To say this is a ceiling match-up would be an understatement and we should attack it every chance we get.

Going with a Burnes/Gutierrez pairing on DraftKings allows you the ability to really go after some big bats and the place that jumps out to me tonight is the Los Angeles Dodgers against RHP Wil Crowe of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Crowe is giving up a .200+ ISO mark and 40%+ hard contact rate to hitters from both sides of the plate in 2021 so stacking against him allows us to mix and match and worry far less about one side of the splits. Left-handed batters have the higher fly-ball tendency against Crowe, although the righties have been his HR bugaboo with a 2.7 HR/9 rate this season to RHB.

If we dig into the pitch type, against left-handed batters Crowe is going to rely heavily on his change-up, throwing it a third of the time and giving up a .231 ISO and 55% HC rate with it with both Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger profiling the best against this pitch type.

The fastball around 93-94 MPH is where Crowe lives primarily to both sides of the plate around 40% of the time and this is not only a fastball that generates little swing and miss activity (just 18% whiff rate) but it also gets hit hard to the tune of a .341 ISO and 40% HC rate.

The Dodgers have a plethora of options that hammer a mid 90’s fastball from right-handed pitchers – in fact, 7 hitters in the projected line-up have a 200+ ISO mark and all 8 have a 45% or higher hard contact rate against it.

I love this stack every single way you can slice it and the pricing is such where you can easily afford a stack, especially if we get $2.1K Billy McKinney in the OF again.

The Dodgers have a near 6 IRT run total – right in line with the Coors Field bats and as we saw last night, any time Coors is on the slate it is going to soak up the ownership and leave these “other” high profile stacks lower owned than they should.

Finding the right mini-stack to correlate alongside the Dodgers is key and well, would you look at this – don’t the Tampa Bay Rays sit nicely alongside the Dodger Blue.

The Rays get a match-up with LHP John Means followed by the super awful Baltimore Orioles bullpen and I think going right back to the well here with Tampa is a great strategy, especially from the right side.

Over the last 30 days, Means has shown serious splits – basically avoid the lefties and attack at will with righties. Right-handed batters have a massive .312 ISO with a 45% fly-ball rate and 40%+ hard contact rate while Means has just a 15% K rate against that side of the plate.

During this last month, Means is relying far less on his fastball to right-handed batters and with a .714 ISO and 56% HC rate allowed – well, even throwing it 37% of the time may be too much. Instead, Means has elevated his change-up usage and this is a pitch type that Nelson Cruz and Mike Zunino both HAMMER! Cruz has a .364 ISO and 49% HC rate which would seem awesome until you see Zunino rocking a .515 ISO, 50% HC rate, and an average distance traveled of 353 feet!

Also, I hate BvP but this is just stupid – Mike Brosseau is 5 for 11 against Means with 4 of the 5 hits being HR’s. That seems almost impossible.

Means has given up 2+ HR’s now in 6 of his last 10 games including twice to the Rays and is coming off a start against the Tigers where he gave up 3 HR’s and I think using the Rays as an HR based mini-stack tonight could pay big-time dividends.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

We step back and look at this 15 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate and you can see a very clear path being drawn out with high ceiling strikeout arms that still afford us the ability to get the big bats we will need.

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 15thto 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 10 game Monday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate where we have a little bit of everything – we have some aces, a game in Coors Field, a little rain in Cincinnatti, and 7 teams overall with 5+ IRT’s per the folks in Vegas.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Pitcher Breakdown

With Adam getting a well-deserved day-off from Starting Rotation after helping to cover for me on vacation, I am going to dive a bit deeper today into the arms to help you decide where to go.

Stop #1 on our tour is Gerrit Cole ($10.9K) who returns from the COVID list to start against the Angels in Yankee Stadium and has racked up 3 double-digit strikeout games in his last 4 trips to the mound. The issues for Cole typically arise in left-handed power-heavy teams in Yankee Stadium but today he is likely to get a largely right-handed heavy Angels line-up which plays into his 0.29 HR/9 rate against RHB in NY.

Anecdotally, the only other concern would be a pitch count limit or some sort of restrictions due to his COVID battle the last two weeks but assuming he is full systems go – Cole has the kind of must-have ceiling on a 10 game slate that I want to anchor to but that is also why he is trending at near 50% ownership at first glance early this morning.

Kevin Gausman ($10.1K) gets a home start against the Mets and frankly, I have no interest. Sure the Mets have to fly cross-country after playing the Sunday Night ESPN game in NY but the reality is, Gausman is not an arm I want to pay $10K for with his recent numbers. Over the last 30 days, he has just a 27% K rate with just a 21% K rate against LHB, which the Mets will throw at him in droves tonight. Add on the fact that during that time, lefties have hit him to the tune of a .200 ISO and 58% HC rate and I am not looking to pay $10K for him in this spot despite the Mets struggles and potential jet lag.

Frankie Montas ($9.5K) is the last of the top-tier options and one that I think could be a GPP difference-maker against the White Sox. Over the last 30 days, Montas has been dominant -in fact, his 34.5% K rate is the single best mark of any qualified arm over the last 30 days.

Montas has always been a dominant K arm to left-handed batters, in fact, he has a 10% higher K mark to lefties this season at 31% and the White Sox are expected to roll out 5 left-handed hitters – that have a 24% K rate as a group against RHP this season and a 26% rate over the last month.

I am interested to see how Montas uses the slider against the right-handed batters here though – as I think it is the key to unlocking his double-digit K ceiling. Over the last month, the slider which he throws 25-30% of the time to RHB, has generated a 52% whiff rate which is up from the 35% mark on the season.

The big right-handed bats like Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert have 45-50% whiff rates against that pitch type while Jose Abreu/Tim Anderson are at 30-35% with sub .150 ISO marks.

We just saw a right-handed arm dominate this White Sox lineup with sliders and that leads me to talk about Griffin Jax ($7K) against the Indians. Jax is fresh off a 10 K start with 14 swinging strikes in which he used the slider at a nearly 50% clip.

Jax to me is an ownership play as game log watchers may jump on him, especially to afford the Coors Field bats, but there is clearly swing and miss stuff here that is at play and if he continues to rely on his slider as he did last start, his upside is tremendous.

In that outing, Jax had a massive 56% swing and miss rate on his slider which he threw almost entirely to the right-handed batters – in fact, he threw the pitch 34 times to RHB and the Indians tonight are expected to use 6 batters from the right side.

There is a risk here basing the upside on one start but the K upside came with a clear pitch mix/approach shift for Jax and if it were to continue tonight – the upside is there to smash this $7K price tag.

However, it brings me back to Montas because when you see how he used the slider to keep the White Sox off-balance, you wonder if Montas can rely on a similar strategy to get swings and misses.

With Coors Field on the slate, paying up for both arms is a path that I expect will be underutilized and while the Cole ceiling is obvious, my hope is that Montas goes overlooked and could be the double ace pairing that unlocks a big-time GPP night for us. If Jax continues to go overlooked, he is the pay-down SP2 you can use with Cole or Montas to get yourself the bigger bats to stack around!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Top Stacks

With a game in Coors Field with the Padres/Rockies – the likelihood is that these bats drive ownership and with it will come similar build types – so how can we find ways to pivot off them?

If we opt to pay up for arms, we still need to look for big-time stacks/bats as I noted in the open, we have 7 teams or 1/3 of the pool with 5+ IRT’s so we need to chase big-time offenses with both stacks even IF we opt to go Cole/Montas.

Let’s start with the obvious – it is Matt Harvey against the Tampa Bay Rays – let’s not overthink it.

While Harvey has been much better over the last 30 days, the metrics are still screaming to stack against him – especially with a 50% fly-ball rate and 45% HC rate to left-handed batters during that time.

Against left-handed batters – Harvey has been a mixed bag pitch type-wise, using a low 90’s fastball, sinker, and change-up combination nearly 70% of the time. The fastball and the sinker have been his undoing with .240+ ISO marks on the year and both surrendering 50%+ HC rates over the last 30 days.

If you look at the hitters on the Rays that have strong profiles against the fastball/sinker combination from the left side – well, it is all of them. Austin Meadows, Brandon Lowe, Wander Franco, Ji-Man Choi and Kevin Kiermeier are all .200+ ISO/40%+ HC rate types against these pitch types so there is some massive power upside for the left-handed batters here.

Load up on the Rays today – they are winning us a GPP tonight – book it.

The secondary stack that I love tonight for pricing/correlation is the Houston Astros against RHP Carlos Hernandez. Hernandez has been able to navigate his way through lineups recently with only one game in which he gave up more than 2 runs, but the underlying metrics say he is getting lucky.

Hernandez has a 5 xFIP the last month with a 49.2% HC rate with reverse splits that make the right-handed hitters stand out to me. Hernandez relies on a sinker nearly 30% of the time as his primary pitch to right-handed hitters and over the last month, that pitch type has given up 72% HC rate with just an 11% whiff rate to RHB.

The Astros have some players that profile really well with Carlos Correa and Aldemys Diaz sporting .200+ ISO marks and 45% HC rates against the sinker from right-handed pitchers. If you take it a step further, the slider becomes the next weapon of choice against RHB for Hernandez and again – both Correa and Diaz have .200+ ISO and 40%+ HC rates.

The big bat here that stands out on the left side is Yordan Alvarez who well, who simply hammers the sinker to the tune of a .429 ISO and 61% HC rate.

The Astros get the benefit of being the road team here tonight so stacking them up with a guaranteed 9 innings of at-bats could be a low-owned pivot off the chalkier Coors stacks tonight.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

I love how this MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate come together and I think we can find ways to build that totally ignore Coors Field chalk and give us massive upside.

With Gerrit Cole and Frankie Montas up to and Griffin Jax as a cheap SP2, we have so many paths to stacking up the Rays/Astros tonight that correlate so well together on DraftKings and that is the exact route I intend to take tonight!

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 15thto 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 Sunday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Main Slate where we have 10 games to break down and I am finally back from a two-week family vacation. A massive THANK YOU to Jared for covering Picks and Pivots while I was gone and for Adam expanding Starting Rotation to help cover for me! Two weeks of off-the-grid life traveling around Alaska with my family was something I will never forget – so I appreciate having the time to unplug and unwind!

Stepping back into this slate on Sunday, we get a really nice slate without much weather to be concerned with, some ace level arms, and a few teams with 6+ IRT’s and as we tend to get on Sunday in MLB DFS season – we will have value bats to make it all work with ease!

All that leads me to have my eye on the top-dollar arms and frankly, as Adam outlined in Starting Rotation – this is not a slate where we have viable punt arms so I think paying up for both arms is the best approach.

With the Reds rolling out a right-handed heavy lineup and Lucas Giolito sporting just a 22% K rate the last month, I think the best pay-up is easily Sean Manaea against the Texas Rangers. Despite his up and down game logs, his 34% K rate over the last month stands out to me on this slate especially against a Rangers team that over the last 14 days has a bottom 5 ISO mark and a top 10 CSW rate!

The SP2 discussion needed to be waited on but we got confirmation that Elieser Hernandez will start for the Marlins today. Hernandez has been outright dominant in his minor-league starts and faces the most strikeout-heavy team in baseball the last two weeks with the Cubs at nearly 35%.

Hernandez has shown serious swing and miss stuff with a 32% K rate in 2020 and his minor league outings during rehab have shown that same ability to miss bats including a dominant performance the last time out where he struck out 10 batters in 5 innings of work on just 60 pitches.

Now paying up for pitching on this slate does not mean we have to cheap out on bats and well – I get welcomed back to a Tampa Bay Ray Day!

The Rays are one of those teams that has a 6+ IRT and against a lefty in Charlie Barnes who is giving up a 50%+ hard contact rate to right-handed batters, the Rays line-up could set up perfectly for a massive day.

Barnes throws the sinker 40% of the time to RHB and well – the Ray righties stand out in a big-time way. Randy Arozarena is a sinker machine with a .647 ISO and 85% HC rate and an average distance traveled of 368 feet. Seriously, read that again.

All of Nelson Cruz, Jordan Luplow and Manuel Margot have 40-50% HC rates against that pitch type as well and if you flip to the change-up, which Barnes throws 20% of the time – it does not get any better. In fact, now ass Mike Zunino to the bunch with a .428 ISO and 48% HC rate against that pitch type!

One of the reasons Zunino is likely my odd man out in a stack though is because the Royals are facing JA Happ and that means it is Salvador Perez day!

We all know the deal with Happ by now – right-handed hitters hammer him to the tune of a .260 ISO and 45% HC rate this season and Salvy’s .380 ISO and 56% HC rate against LHP this season is just, well a cheat code. Also, Salvy has insane BvP against Happ and so we know Jason will play him because BvP is the most complete metric in all of DFS – welcome back buddy, missed ya!

I have used the KC-TB stack so often this year in MLB DFS because of the correlation where you can stack Salvy/Whit and still get all the Rays bats you covet and that is the exact path I intend to use today!

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

We kick off this Sunday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate with a good one with some solid top-end arms and amazing offensive stacks. For me, paying up for arms is a must and we can do so with a cheap Rays/Royals hitting combination that oozes upside!

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, July 31st 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 Saturday Edition of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we have a full day of baseball after an insane MLB Trade Deadline Day on Friday.

The scheduling today gives us an “early” slate but really that just means we have 3 games starting at 6:10 PM EST which makes the way this slate is chopped up super unappealing in my opinion for the early 5 gamer where pitching is weak and the games are back-loaded. My recommendation – the early slate is more “play for fun” than the one to focus on.

The Main Slate has a very clear direction in my mind – pay up for pitching and do not look back.

Listen, I get it, pitching the last month or so has been a roller coaster, and the “safety” of paying up for aces is long gone as Corbin Burnes showed us last night but I think tonight we simply have to live in this range especially with Yu Darvish and Aaron Nola in elite match-ups against the Rockies and Pirates as Adam Strangis laid out in Starting Rotation today.

The question though is how can you build around double aces tonight and still get the value and high upside stacks?

Well, let’s start with the Cleveland Indians who take on LHP Dallas Keuchel in Chicago.

Over the last month, the White Sox lefty is an arm we can attack as he is giving up a 2.45 HR/9 rate and 51% hard contact rate with a .438 ISO mark to lefties and a .222 ISO mark to RHB.

If you look at the Indians projected line-up you start to see why we are going here – because, well it is a $2K punt party up and down this bad boy. Myles Straw projects to lead-off at the minimum price while the entire starting OF while you also have Roberto Perez ($2.5K) catcher, Oscar Mercado ($2.1K) and Harold Ramirez ($2.7K) all offering you pure value in the heart of this lineup.

The two big bats you can mix and match in are Jose Ramirez and Franmil Reyes with J-Ram profiling as one of the best hitters on the slate. Keuchel is throwing the sinker/cutter combination to RHB over 50% of the time and both pitches are getting smoked the last month – to the tune of a .450 ISO allowed.

Ramirez profiles exceptionally well against both pitch types with a .359 ISO against the sinker and a .467 ISO against the cutter. I know he is pricey but with all this punt value in the Indians lineup, he makes for the ideal spend-up within the stack.

One of the things an Indians stack lacks is a strong 1B-SS mini correlation and it just so happens we get a new duo to unleash tonight in Flushing with Pete Alonso and Javier Baez and they get to do it against a soft-tossing lefty in Wade Miley.

Alonso just faced Miley in GABP and hit a home run off him and while Miley was able to rack up 8 K’s in that outing, he also was getting hit HARD with a 45% hard contact and 7 base hits allowed and so with the Mets seeing him again just a few days later – this could be a spot where they tee off on the lefty.

As a Mets fan, I am fascinated to see how Baez impacts this line-up, and more anecdotally, I am expecting him to be a dynamic acquisition for the Mets similar to the impact we saw Yoesnis Cespedes have back in 2015. Baez is a polarizing player, and one who when he is hot, can carry a team – and I think going to New York, where he wanted to play and said so publicly – I think he comes out and has a monster first game against a Reds pitching staff he is intimately familiar with.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

The MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Main Slate looks to be a good one tonight and an opportunity to roll out double aces which frankly, has been more of a GPP strategy lately than what we saw early in the year when top-end arms were steady and consistent.

The dirt-cheap Indians offer us an opportunity to load up on arms and do so while attacking one of the worst arms in baseball the last month in terms of ISO and hard contact allowed.

Well – that is it for me. I am heading out on vacation and will be back after some quality family time but don’t worry – the Win Daily Crew had you covered. Just remember when I am gone – stack the Rays and celebrate Lester Day!

Good luck tonight all! Let’s keep that hot streak rolling! Come join the Win Daily Sports Team – grab a Gold Membership and take advantage of all the tools, articles, and expert coaching we can give you to make you a consistent winner in DFS.

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, July 30th 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 Friday’s MLB DFS Picks and Pivots 15 game slate where the big news of the day is that is MLB Trade Deadline day and that means chaos likely up to and including 4 PM EST.

This means being diligent in watching lineups, understanding who has been dealt and from a DFS perspective, not falling in love with your early builds too much because the news of the day could change how we attack it drastically.

When we step back and look at this slate, what really fascinated me was how soft the pricing felt and how easy it seemed at first blush to pay up for arms without sacrificing my bats.

Now – you guys that have been around Picks and Pivots for a while now that I never look at plays in isolation – my goal is always to look at players and price points within a roster build to understand what is possible and today, with how cheap the bats seem, I am starting my pitcher pool up top.

That all starts with Lance Lynn ($10.3K) who on paper gets a really strong match-up against the right-handed heavy Cleveland Indians. The Indians are projected to roll out 5 RHB tonight and with Lynn having significant splits (33% K rate to RHB versus 22% versus LHB) – this would seem like the ideal spot to attack.

Over the last 30 days, no team in baseball has struck out more than the Indians, with a 26.4% K rate and this projected line-up overall has a 27.4% K rate against RHP over the last month – with three hitters (Bradley, Zimmer, and Franmil) all sporting 33% or higher K rates on their own.

The other $10K arm on this slate is Corbin Burnes ($10.2K) who gets a road start against the depleted Braves lineup in Atlanta. Burnes continues to be a high ceiling K SP1 who gets deep into games consistently and has double-digit K upside every time he takes the mound.

Not only does he have a massive 37% K rate on the year but he has held hitters on both sides of the plate under .070 ISO and uses his 50% ground ball rate on the back of his cutter to drive a 20.4% soft contact rate which is tied with the aforementioned Lynn for 6th in all of baseball.

Now while these two arms have different profiles, their ability to drive 30%+ K upside while leading the league in soft contact allowed gives you this floor/ceiling combination that you have come to expect from $10K aces on DraftKings but since the sticky stuff crackdown, we have rarely seen play out.

That narrative has been prevalent in MLB DFS circles for weeks now and we talk about it seemingly every day in our Win Daily Sports Discord but I would counter that this “don’t pay for arms” narrative is proving to be more sizzle than steak. Look back at last night – the winning builds seemingly all went with a Montas/Musgrove “double ace” type build and while it was a smaller slate, the simple fact these arms built a 75 point DK foundation – is what drove cash lines to be so high and I could see a similar outlook this evening.

Going with both Lynn/Burnes is going to leave you with $3.7K per batter for the rest of your build, and frankly, that is more than enough to feel good about your lineups.

What really excited me about this double-ace approach is that I can head to Toronto and get my favorite stack on the slate alongside them. Nope – not the 6+ IRT of the Blue Jays – I want all the Kansas City Royals action against RHP Ross Stripling.

If you look at the splits for Stripling by month, you see a story unfolding where the wheels have fallen off and the progression is steady and consistent. In every single month, his hard contact rate allowed has increased from 25% to 30% to 34% now in July and with it, his fly ball rate has climbed from 42% to 45% to 50% in the month of July.

If you look at his last three starts, two in which he gave up 10 ER and 5 HR’s in just 4 innings before a strong starts against the Mets – you see an approach change that hitters have jumped on.

Through the end of June, Stripling was using his curveball and slider nearly 35% of the time to play off his four-seam fastball. However in his last three starts specifically, we have seen a massive change where Stripling has all but abandoned the curve and now that 35% usage for the duo was down to about 25% and in its place was a heavier reliance on his fastball.

Well in those two bad outings – that fastball was hammered – as 4 of the 5 HR’s came off that pitch with a 50% and 100% hard contact rate allowed in those two outings. Against the Mets, that fastball generated essentially no hard contact but the same over-reliance was still there and the curveball was thrown just 6 times.

The Royals are a team that absolutely hammers the low-velocity fastball from right-handed pitchers up and down the line-up and if you are telling me that this is what Stripling is going to throw nearly 60% of the time with 10+ MPH winds blowing out – I AM HERE FOR IT.

Whit Merrifield (.281 ISO and 47% HC rate), Carlos Santana (.448 ISO and 44% HC rate), Salvador Perez (.300 ISO and 38% HC rate), Jorge Soler (.471 ISO and 43% HC rate) and Andrew Benintendi (team-high 365-foot average distance traveled and just an 8% whiff rate.

For all the focus that will likely be on the Jays tonight – I would argue the better bang for your buck is on the other side of this game with the Royals.

Now – for the secondary stack – this one, may not seem obvious but this is talent versus price discussion – and so can we talk about the Astros pricing versus Kevin Gausman?

Listen I get Gausman has been good this year but let’s not pretend like we all were stacking against “Gas Can” prior to his career resurrection in San Fran!

Three of his last five starts have been for less than 10 DK points and his negative outing last time out against Pittsburgh where he gave up 8 hits and 6 runs in just 4 innings was a reminder of the old Gas Can days!

In the last 30 days, the lefties have hit him hard – with a .378 ISO mark and 50% hard contact rate allowed while even the RHB have a 40.5% HC rate! The two lefties in Michael Brantley and Kyle Tucker are priced at $3K and $3.5K respectively and give you incredible salary relief to attack this recent skid from Gausman.

Gausman is basically a two-pitch pitcher against lefties with a 94 MPH fastball and a splitter that account for 80-85% of his pitch mix and both Astros lefties profile extremely well against it with Brantley having a .266 ISO against the FB and .280 ISO against the splitter while Tucker stands out with a team-high .343 ISO against the fastball velocity!

Now flip to the other side of the plate and let’s not overlook the right-handed batters especially Carlos Correa. Correa has a .340 ISO and a team-high 61% HC rate against the fastball of this velocity with an average distance traveled of 363 feet and even against the splitter – you get a .214 ISO and near 40% HC rate!

Since the All-Star break, Gausman has simply been ineffective and if you dig deeper you will see that batters are simply making him work and not chasing pitches outside the zone. On the season, Gausman has a 35% swing rate outside the zone which is driving his 16% SS rate – but over the last two starts, the Dodgers and Pirates simply didn’t bite and his 25% swing rate outside the zone mirrors the just 7% SS rate.

The Astros are a patient team and one that does not K much against RHP – much like the Pirates and Dodgers – in fact, all three teams rank in the bottom 8 in K rate in 2021 versus RHP with the Astros being the hardest team to K with right-handed arms. If you thought the last two starts were grinds for Gas Can – wait until tonight’s late-night hammer.

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up

This Friday Night MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate is going to be wild with the MLB Trade Deadline and frankly, we need to be patient and react. I mean goodness, I just gave you a whole breakdown and didn’t even mention it’s Jon Lester Day!

Today – get your butts in Discord – because things will change and we need to talk through it! Let’s rock fam!

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!