May 7, 2016; San Diego, CA, USA; New York Mets starting pitcher Bartolo Colon (40) follows through during a sixth inning at bat against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park. Mandatory Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

MLB Picks and Pivots – FanDuel Baseball Picks May 9

Welcome to the Monday 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.

Monday returns us back to a “normal” slate with 13 games kicking off at 7:05PM EST.

I will continue to track winning Tournament 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:

Saturday was a day dominated by the aces, as Clayton Kershaw and Chris Sale were found on the winning tournament lineups but it is the hitting that continues to separate the teams that simply “cashed out” and those who made real profits. In order to score at these levels you need your 8 hitters to score between 25-28 points per game. An alternate strategy on Saturday was to simply play Aaron Hill who put up 70.1 points due to 3 home runs and for those of you lucky enough to have played him Saturday, we salute you!

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…