Apr 9, 2016; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Arizona Diamondbacks starting pitcher Zack Greinke (21) delivers a pitch in the first inning against the Chicago Cubs at Chase Field. Mandatory Credit: Jennifer Stewart-USA TODAY Sports

MLB Picks and Pivots – FanDuel Picks April 15

Welcome to the Friday edition of Picks & Pivots, a daily fantasy column focused on providing analysis for the upcoming MLB FanDuel slate. The purpose of this column is to first identify key building blocks that can be used for any roster construction and then identify pivot points to help differentiate your lineup in hopes of a big pay day!

Follow me on Twitter @2lockSports and feel free to pose questions each day as you work to construct your DFS roster on FanDuel!

Although there is one afternoon game in Chicago, the main slate kicks off at 7:05PM EST with 14 games allowing us the ability to play multiple styles of FanDuel games on such a large slate.

I have fielded a few questions for MLB around “target scores” and what value multiple gamers should target as I had done in my NBA Picks and Pivots article. With the new FanDuel scoring this year, I have been actively tracking my performance and the performance of top finishers in each GPP I have been playing to try and understand the trends and wanted to share this data with my readers over the last week:

• Average Top GPP Finish Points Scored: 225 Points
• Average SP Salary: $7,900
• Hitter/Pitcher Percentage of Salary Spent: 23/77
• $ Value Per Point: $6.44

This is a small sample size of a week and captures multiple entries/slates as this past week I have been playing a combination of early only/main only and all day. However what struck me was that the only winning pitcher over $10k in entries was during Noah Syndergaard’s electric performance against the Marlins so in the early going its been more beneficial to utilize a higher percentage of your budget on your lineup.

I will continue to track this and reference in my picks, but this gives you a good benchmark for the early season with the new scoring.

Now on to the picks…