Apr 8, 2016; San Francisco, CA, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez (23) against the San Francisco Giants in the tenth inning at AT&T Park. The Giants won 3-2. Mandatory Credit: John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports

MLB Picks and Pivots – FanDuel Picks April 20

Welcome to the Wednesday 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!

FanSided and FantasyCPR have you covered – For additional FanDuel MLB analysis, take a look at my fellow staff writer Matt Rogers FanDuel Economics column or Mike Marteny who provides Draft Kings MLB Picks analysis giving you the most in depth DFS coverage for tonight’s baseball slate.

Wednesday has the potential to play across multiple games as we have 4 “early” games with the earliest kicking off at 12:35PM EST and another 10 games in the “main” slate at 7:05PM EST. With the early start and enough games to choose from in the early slate, this will be a fun DFS day as you can easily play early only/late only or play the all-day slate.

I will continue to track winning GPP lineups and compare trends over 5 day periods to help us understand what it takes to remain profitable. I HIGHLY recommend each of you do this each morning to look back on the previous night and understand how the winning lineups are constructed in the games you participate in.

The view below tracks GPP entries over various time periods, breaking out key metrics to understand the trends and compositions of GPP winning rosters:

The Monday GPP entries had Hector Santiago as their starting pitcher as he pitched a phenomenal game and was low owned as Noah Syndergaard was the chalk play. Looking across the various entries, I found that Syndergaard was the key piece in the winning cash/multiplier games but it was Santiago that allowed for the upside and differentiation in large field GPP’s.

It continues to be very interesting to me to see how the mid-range starters are the ones we need to hit on in order to win larger GPP’s and the trend of roster construction has been very consistent over both short and long term time frames.

This is one of the simplest tools to help DFS players better understand how to compete in their games of choice and it continues to be an effective way to expand your bankroll.

Now on to the picks…