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. Let’s dive into our Wednesday starters…
- Albert Suarez (DK)
- Yusei Kikuchi
- Brandon Pfaadt
- Dylan Cease
- Reid Detmers
This is my list in order of pitchers today.
Tonight is a pretty difficult pitching slate, with the clear cut best option in Dylan Cease toeing the rubber in Coors Field. He will still likely be the highest-owned option, but anytime I can fade the chalkiest pitcher that happens to be going in Coors…it has to be considered.
For me, the top option on DK is clearly Albert Suarez due to his $4K price tag. I will consider pretty much any SP at this price, let alone one we saw have success in a start last week. He will be my SP2 tonight.
I like Kikuchi, but I’m getting concerned with the wind blowing out in KC/overall good hitting weather so I may knock him down a peg.
Pfaadt still has big-time upside, and the Cardinals offense has been very disappointing over the last 10 days. Pfaadt really struggles vs left-handed heavy lineups and he will likely only see four of them tonight with 6 righties. Advantage goes to him in that sense, and I think he is nicely priced for the K upside he possesses.
Building Blocks
Andrew Vaughn
Vaugh and the White Sox have not been big DFS targets for us this season, but that can change tonight against Chris Paddack. Paddack has been nothing short of a disaster pitching to a 8.36 ERA backed by one of the worst xERA’s in baseball at 8.90. He’s giving up a ton of hard-contact, and opponents are hitting over .400 against his fastball and change-up — his two most used offerings. Vaughn started slow to begin 2024, but is up to a 44% hard-hit rate and 77% fly-ball rate over the last seven days. We know he has big-time power, but he also destroys fastballs which seems to be a recipe for success against Paddack. He is my HR call for Monday night.
Trevor Larnach
Larnach is one of the top value plays on tonight’s slate on the opposite side of that game vs Jonathan Cannon. Cannon has upside, but we haven’t seen much of him yet and Larnach has respectable numbers vs right-handed pitching. Batting from the left-side, he’s posted a .338 wOBA and .214 ISO in the split since making his major league debut.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
