Apr 25, 2016; New York City, NY, USA; Fans display signs for New York Mets starting pitcher Noah Syndergaard (not pictured) during the first inning against the Cincinnati Reds at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports

MLB Picks and Pivots – FanDuel Baseball Picks May 6

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!

FanSided and FantasyCPR have you covered – For additional FanDuel MLB analysis, take a look at 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.

Friday action starts off with a single afternoon game at Wrigley between the Cubs at Nationals, with the main slate targeted for a 7:05PM EST start.

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:

Wednesday’s games were split across two separate slates with both winning entries rolling up over 260 points which was well above both the 5 day and season averages. The early slate was littered with fantastic pitching options and they did not disappoint, however Tyler Chatwood  who was priced at only $7,400 was able to put up 57 points which was good for 7.7x value. Chatwood was able to keep pace with Steven Matz who put up 59 points but with the $1,600 savings, you were able to roll that money into some of the big bats on the day including Lucas Duda and Mike Trout and an offense that averaged over 25 points per player. The night slate saw Jose Fernandez put up a modest 39 points but it was the lack of standout pitching performances that allowed the “safe” pick to be found on the winning GPP entry. Similar to the early slate, it was the offense that carried the day with a whopping 230.5 points, good for 29 points per player, carried primarily by an Astros stack of Jason Castro, Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve.

I highly recommend gamers track their game performance across the various types of games they play – GPP’s, Cash, Multipliers etc – as this simple exercise will help teach you more about profitable roster construction than you can imagine.

Now on to the picks…