Welcome in to Ben’s Building Blocks for DraftKings & FanDuel! This is a free article written daily to identify my top-overall DFS plays for cash game and small-field contests on both DraftKings and FanDuel. I truly appreciate everyone that reads and supports the content. If you’d like to support further you can click HERE to sign-up for a MLB Premium package. This gets you access to my Core Plays daily — allowing you to tail my builds, access the premium Discord channels and view our DFS Projections Portal. We’ve been on fire already this MLB season, and there’s no better time to sign-up. With that being said, let’s dive into today’s slate…

Top Pitchers

Joe Ryan

We have a pitchers duel on tap Tuesday night between Joe Ryan and Nestor Cortes with a total of just 6.5 runs in Minnesota. Ryan is one of the best young pitchers in baseball, he owns a 2.46 xERA which is almost a full run better than his already good 3.24 ERA. He has good strikeout ability, especially against right-handed hitters with a 32% strikeout rate in the split. New York will send five righties to the plate tonight, and the lefties in the lineup don’t strike any fear at all outside of maybe Anthony Rizzo. The Yankees are striking out 24% of the time against RHP since the start of last season, and Ryan just dominated them striking out 10 over 7 innings a few weeks ago. He’s expensive, but the best pitcher on this slate and the number one option for me tonight.

Mason Miller

It seems like the projections are down on Miller today, couple that with the Angels sporting a five run team total and we should get pretty low ownership on the young flamethrower. Miller rapidly ascended through the minor leagues, and only received one start at Triple A before getting the call to the big leagues. He only made it through four and a third innings in that first start, but struck out five with only one walk and still averaged a tick under 100 on his fastball. This is a tough match-up against the top of the Angels order, but his stuff is so good that I’m willing to bet on him at this price-tag…especially if he’s low owned. Plugging him in as your SP2 allows for much better spending on stacks, and I’m comfortable with Miller in all formats on Tuesday.

Note: I wanted to like Jose Berrios today, and I still do, but I’m not sure I can justify paying his price-tag when we aren’t getting a long leash at all. He’s topped 80 pitches just once out of four starts, and it seems like the Jays are content taking him out early rather than leaving him in too long. He’s finally cut back on his fastball usage and the results have been pretty good — it’s a strong match-up tonight against the White Sox and he’s definitely in play for GPPs, but unlikely to make my main team as of now.

Building Blocks

Christian Walker

Brady Singer looked horrible in his outing at the WBC, and has struggled mightily for the Royals this season. He owns a massive 8.58 xERA, the highest mark on the slate today, and has been getting hit hard by both sides of the plate. Walker has always been better against right-handed pitching than left, and is way too cheap for this match-up tonight. Arizona has one of the higher team-totals on the slate and checks in as my top-overall stack. Singer throws a ton of sinkers to both sides of the plate, while Walker has some of the best numbers on the team against the pitch. Since joining the Diamondbacks, he sports a .447 xwOBA and .250 ISO against the pitch. He’s been out of the lineup for two days, but pinch hit late last night so he should be back in the lineup on Tuesday night.

Overall, I’ll definitely be looking to stack ARI/KC on my main team. Toronto also has a great match-up against Mike Clevinger, but he’s been much worse against left-handed hitters and that’s not really the Blue Jays — outside of Daulton Varsho. My other bats will likely depend on what I do at SP — if I use Miller I can afford some more expensive bats, but if I look to stack the pitchers in the MIN/NYY game I’m going to need some more savings. Esteury Ruiz and Brent Rooker are some value bats I like — and nobody ever wants to play the A’s guys.

Ben’s Stat of the Day

Brent Rooker currently ranks third overall in xwOBA at .470.

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)