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…
Above is an example of my MLB Core Plays for the 4/27 slate
Top Pitchers
Jacob deGrom
deGrom really doesn’t need an introduction…he’s the bets pitcher in baseball and the sites have finally decided to price him as such…but he’s still the best play on the slate. He can strike out 10+ batters no matter how many pitches he throws, and I’m not scared of a Yankee lineup that will likely be missing Aaron Judge tonight. There are always value bats on big slates, and anytime deGrom plays it’s a plug and play for me. I’ll prioritize him and make it work.
Clarke Schmidt
Schmidt is someone I was high on to begin the season, and despite some struggles through his first few starts he flashed the upside in his last start striking out 8 across 5.2 innings against the Blue Jays. He draws the Rangers tonight, who are much more exploitable match-up than the Blue Jays. Since the start of last season, their projected lineup sports a 24% strikeout rate and a sub-.300 combined wOBA. This slate sets up for Alek Manoah to be heavy chalk on DraftKings at his $6,900 price tag. If you know anything about my content, I am 100% comfortable playing good chalk at the SP spot. I don’t think Manoah is good chalk anytime he gets ownership, so I won’t be going out of my way to plug him in. Schmidt doesn’t have the pitch-count safety of Manoah, but I’m much more comfortable with Schmidt for cheap and half the OWN% as Manoah tonight.
Building Blocks
William Contreras
Contreras checks in as my top-overall mid-tier play today and I always love having conviction around a catcher, because it gets the worst position out of the way. Contreras has been mashing to begin the season for the Beermakers and he’s in another great spot tonight against Tyler Anderson. I don’t really think Anderson is as bad as he’s thrown this season, but he’s really been beaten around by right-handed hitters and the Brewers have a few of them with power. This season. he’s allowing over a .400 wOBA and a .295 ISO in the split. Contreras not only has some of the best numbers on the team against LHP, but he matches up well with his pitch mix also. Anderson relies heavily on his fastball — throwing it around half the time. Contreras owns some of the best splits against fastballs on the team, including a team-high .565 xwOBA. He hits the ball hard and in the air, and is priced sub-$4,000 despite this strong match-up.
Given that its a Coors Field slate, the masses will be flocking to stack the Diamondbacks and Rockies. I think Arizona is in a good spot tonight, and will likely them on my main team. Some other stacks I like are the Reds and Athletics.
Ben’s Stat of the Day
Jacob deGrom owns a 1.91 xERA to go along with his 3.04 actual ERA – suggesting he is due to be even better than he has been already this season.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
