Welcome in to Ben’s MLB DFS Building Blocks for DraftKings and FanDuel! In this article, I will highlight my favorite MLB DFS plays for small-field tournament formats. If you’re interested in signing up for premium access, which grants you Core Plays for every slate, projections + expert picks and our premium Discord click HERE. You can also sign up for our AI-driven sports betting tools and access to my daily betting card by clicking HERE. Let’s get into the plays…
Pitcher
Welcome into another season of Ben’s MLB Building Blocks! I believe this is my seventh season providing MLB DFS content and I couldn’t be more excited to have baseball back. The first few articles are going to be abbreviated in the pitching section while we wait for some data to build up – and we will mostly be relying on 2023 data for the first month — barring any clear changes to pitch-mix. Let’s dive into our Friday starters…
- Merrill Kelly
- Nick Pivetta
- AJ Puk
- George Kirby
- Bobby Miller
This is my list in order of pitchers today.
For it being just the second slate of the season, we have some serious scraps available at the SP position tonight. Merrill Kelly is a much better pitcher in real-life as opposed to DFS, but given his home splits and match-up against the Rockies he does check the box as the “safest” option on the board.
Safe doesn’t always mean the best play in my opinion, everyone knows that I like to hunt strikeouts and that’s why Nick Pivetta and AJ Puk are my favorite options on the board. Nick Pivetta took a huge leap last season and ended up striking out over 30% of batters faced. Seattle is a good team, but they struck out over 23% of the time vs RHP in 2023 and outside of the top two bats in their order I’m not really scared of anyone. Their 3-6 hitters all strike out over 26% of the time and I think the match-up is much better than it appears on the surface. I love Pivetta at his price.
As for AJ Puk, he might be the top-overall arm on the slate. This is a former top prospect who worked out of the BP last season and absolutely dominated spring trailing with over 40% strikeouts. There are a ton of strikeouts vs LHP in this Pittsburgh offense and Puk is the type of guy that I will take risks on when priced cheap. Even if he gives up some runs, he can make it up with K’s and I’m 100% buying into a breakout from him this season. Pivetta/Puk will be my preferred combo on DK for the salary.
Kirby and Miller are similar to Kelly – amazing real-life pitchers but we haven’t seen it from them in the strikeout department yet. Miller is the most likely to take a big leap this season — but he also has the toughest match-up against the Cardinals. They are GPP-only options for me on Friday.
Building Blocks
Corbin Carroll
Carroll was a common play for us last year as he completely broke out and helped lead the Diamondbacks to the World Series. He’s primed for another big season, and I have him graded as the top-overall option on the slate tonight after the DBacks absolutely dropped the hammer on Colorado last night. Carroll and the Arizona lineup match-up extremely well against Cal Quantrill — who threw his sinker over 40% of the time last season. We know that Carroll has huge positive splits against right-handed pitching, but he absolutely crushes sinkers as well. In 2023, he posted a .241 ISO and .465 wOBA against the pitch. I also like that Colorado won’t have any left-handed pitching available in the BP — so he will see every AB against a righty tonight. Carroll went hitless last night despite that huge output from AZ’s lineup, expect a better game on Friday.
Jake Burger
Jazz Chisholm was featured in this article yesterday, citing the decreased velocity on Mitch Keller’s fastball in spring training. That decreased velocity held true with him averaging under 94 mph on his heater and it directly translated to the four earned runs he allowed. Miami is strong spot again tonight against Martin Perez, who is somehow only 32 years old. Perez is a serviceable pitcher, but is much better vs lefties than righties and relies on getting ground balls. Due to his GB% prowess, it’s better to attack him with fly-ball hitters which can point us to Jake Burger. Not only does Burger have the highest ISO on the team vs LHP (.331 last season) but he has the highest fly-ball percentage as well. I’m actually a fan of Burger and think he can have a good season. He’s one of my favorite one-off plays on today’s slate.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
