Apr 21, 2016; Atlanta, GA, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw (22) delivers a pitch to an Atlanta Braves batter in the sixth inning of their game at Turner Field. The Dodgers won 2-1 in the 10th inning. Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

MLB Picks and Pivots – FanDuel Baseball Picks Early May 7

Welcome to the Saturday early 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.

Saturday presents with the usual “multi-slate” as we get 7 games in the afternoon starting off at 1:05PM EST and an additional 8 games to be played starting at 7:05PM EST for the “main slate.” This article will focus on the EARLY slate only.

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:

Thursday’s winners had two common themes across across large field GPP’s – did you fade Jacob deGrom and how many Blue Jays and Rockies did you start in your lineups? deGrom had a disappointing performance from a tournament perspective (although was still solid enough for cash games) which allowed Kyle Hendricks to outpace him with 42 points at only $7,200. It was the offenses however that ruled the day, similar to what we have seen over the past 3 days as the Blue Jays and Rockies absolutely went off. Edwin Encarnacion (54.4 pts), Trevor Story (34.9 pts) and Gerrardo Parra (32.1) based an offense that put up over 27 points per batter in the winning lineup. We have seen over the last 3 days – it is taking a 25-29 point performance per batter in order to take down the large field tournaments so the strategy needs to be to shoot for the high upside stacks as they tend to be the most profitable for these contests.

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…