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 Tuesday starters…
- Shane Bieber
- Yu Darvish
- Javier Assad
- Luis Castillo
- Brayan Bello
This is my list in order of pitchers today.
Bieber is far and away my favorite option on this slate. He’s primed for a monster season and I’ve noted a few times this season that there’s a ton of strikeouts to be had in the middle of this Mariners lineup. I don’t hate pairing him up with Castillo in GPPs, but Bieber will anchor the majority of my builds on both sites.
I’m a big Bello fan in real-life, but he really isn’t someone that I love to play in DFS due to the strikeouts. He looks like he’s going to be over-owned and I’ll be underweight in favor of Bieber/Darvish.
Assad isn’t someone I’m super high on, but it’s great pitching weather again in Wrigley and this Rockies team is a disaster. Even if he ends up decently owned, his price-tag makes him viable in all formats tonight.
Building Blocks
Fernando Tatis Jr
Tatis and the Padres check in as my favorite overall stack tonight matched up against Miles Mikolas. Mikolas struggled mightily in spring training, and followed that up by generating just 7% swinging strikes in his first start of the season. Tatis has been locked in to start the season, and I think the Padres could put up a big number here against a pitcher I’m expecting to be one of our favorite guys to stack against this season.
Seiya Suzuki + Chris Morel
Chicago will once again deal with some cold weather on Tuesday, but I can’t overlook their match-up against Kyle Freeland. If the weather was a bit warmer, this would be the clear-cut best spot on the slate so I’m going to side with the Morel + Suzuki mini-stack as opposed to the full five-man. Both of these guys excel against left-handed pitching with Morel posting a .381 wOBA last season, and Suzuki checking in with .370. Morel definitely has the power to get one out in this cold, and both are affordably priced on both sites.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
