Welcome to our MLB DFS Building Blocks, DraftKings and FanDuel picks for 4/19/22! In this article, I’ll break down by top overall plays for today’s main slate. Last year was an extremely big year for the Karma team in MLB, and we are looking to continue that success in 2022. I will be providing Core Plays for every main slate (and day baseball) this season — you can gain access to that as well as our premium discord here. You can also try out the Core Plays package with a $5 daily pass. Let’s get to the plays…
Pitcher
Corbin Burnes
Burnes is self explanatory tonight and I don’t really need to dive into why he is an elite pitcher. He struggled out of the gate in his first 2022 start, but looked back to normal striking out eight Orioles in seven innings on the 13th. He’s also priced below Walker Buehler on DraftKings, despite having much higher strikeout upside. To top it off he has arguably the best match-up on the slate against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Pittsburgh’s projected lineup tonight sports a combined .300 wOBA since the start of last season with 24% strikeouts. He’ll likely be very high-owned but I try not to overthink at pitcher, especially earlier on in the season and he is the clear top overall play for me on both sites tonight.
Joe Musgrove
And after Burnes, we have a clearly mispriced Joe Musgrove against the Reds. Musgrove has churned out 22.5 and 28.6 DK points in his first two starts of 2022, and should be closer to the mid-$9,000 range in my opinion. Cincinnati has a 24% strikeout rate as a team vs right-handed pitching since the start of 2021, and Musgrove has been really good in that department. Over that span, his strikeout rate sits just south of 29% backed by a dominant 13% swinging strike rate. There are some great offensive spots tonight, but if you read me enough you know I lean towards elite pitching nine times out of ten and I think a Burnes/Musgrove duo is in play for me on DraftKings tonight.
Chris Archer
Archer is my top cheap option today, priced at just $5,400 on DraftKings. It’s been quite some time since I’ve even considered rostering Chris Archer, and to be frank I’ve never been a huge fan of him as a pitcher. He was never able to fully develop a third pitch in Tampa Bay, that made him vulnerable to blow up games when trying to navigate a batting order three times through. We have under a 75 plate appearance sample from him the last two seasons, but it does come with a 25% strikeout rate. If he can get strikeouts, he’s in play at that price tag and I actually don’t mind the match-up against Kansas City. I was excited about this Royals team to begin the season, but they have underwhelmed thus far at the plate. Since the start of 2021, their projected lineup owns a combined .289 wOBA vs right-handed pitching…yikes! Archer threw 63 pitches in his first action of 2022, and I think we likely get five innings from him tonight. I typically wouldn’t be on him, but anyone this cheap that can get some strikeouts is in play for me. He’s a GPP SP2 candidate on Tuesday.
Building Blocks
Manny Machado
I’m gonna start this section with an obvious play today, but one I can’t ignore. Reiver Sanmartin and the Reds bullpen has been a situation we’ve attacked all season thus far. He did toss five scoreless in his last start against the Dodgers, but the advanced numbers still don’t look great. Despite the success in that last outing, he still is allowing 36% hard-contact and 27% line drives to right-handed batters. Machado has been locked in at the plate as well, with a homerun last night. Through two weeks of action, he ranks second in all of baseball with 22 balls hit 95+ mph off the bat. He’s one of the top bats on the slate in my opinion and viable in all formats tonight.
Christian Yelich
I can’t get a read on where the ownership will end up on Milwaukee tonight. They did score six runs last night, but four of them came on a Christian Yelich grand slam in the fourth inning. Yelich was miserably bad in 2021, but there are reasons to believe he can rebound this season. For starters, he’s finally healthy, or so it appears, which has been the bulk of his issues since last season began. His statcast data looks much better to begin this season, ranking top-15 in average exit velocity with above-average barrels per plate appearance as well. JT Brubaker really struggles with left-handed power setting up a great spot for Yeli tonight. Brubaker’s most used pitch vs left-handed batters is his slider — and we can hope he throws Yelich one tonight. Over the last four seasons, Yelich owns the highest wOBA and hard-contact rate against the pitch in this lineup.
Bold Call
The Padres score 10 runs!
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
