Welcome to our MLB DFS Building Blocks, DraftKings and FanDuel picks for 4/8/22! 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
Max Scherzer
We know the story by now with Max, year after year he is one of the top pitchers in baseball and has seemingly avoided any major arm issues in recent years. He was pushed back to today due to a hamstring injury, but knowing Max and how he operates I don’t expect that to limit him any more than he typically would be in his first start of the season. Yesterday I wrote about chasing strikeouts, and how I think spending up for top-dollar SP’s isn’t the best strategy early in the year. Max is the most expensive pitcher on the slate, and projecting for over 50% ownership as of Friday afternoon. He is 100% in play for cash games for me tonight, but I’ll likely be moving down to Charlie Morton as my SP1 in GPPs due to the savings.
Charlie Morton
Jose Berrios is in this same price range, but I prefer Morton for my main team. Morton is coming off another solid season in Atlanta, striking out over 28% of batters and holding both sides of the plate below a .275 wOBA. All of the mid-tier in Morton, Berrios and Sean Manaea, have similar match-ups tonight, which has me favorite Morton for the slight advantage in the strikeout department. For what it’s worth, he was very good at home in Atlanta last season as well — pitching to a 3.09 xFIP with 29% strikeouts in Truist Park. Typically, Morton would be more of an SP2 candidate for me but I think he can be used as you anchor — or in a build with Max on Friday night.
Reid Detmers
Detmers is not a household name… yet, and it’s entirely possible he struggles to begin the season. It’s also possible that he lives up to his potential and solidifies himself as the Angels ace of the future. For those of you who don’t know, he’s one of the best pitching prospects in baseball. He got a cup of coffee with the big league squad late last season, and turned in poor results with an ERA over 7.00. That being said, he had barely made double-digit starts in his minor league career and it showed how confident the Angels are in him to call him up that quickly. It also shows their confidence that the elected to go with a six man rotation to start the year to include him. Due to Patrick Sandoval being scratched, Detmers moves up and will now start tonight. This is a very tough match-up against a good offense, but good pitching can often win out especially early on in the season. Detmers had a dominant 43% strikeout rate at Double-A, and he is so cheap it’s not like we are asking him to pitch seven innings here. This is a GPP-only play, but the upside here is immense and he is going to be basically un-owned. If he comes out and and looks good, the secret will be out and we likely won’t get him this low-owned again unless he sees a major price bump. I’m buying into the K upside in tournaments, per usual.
Building Blocks
Marcell Ozuna
Ozuna is likely to be a staple for me on Friday night, matched up against the left-handed Reiver Sanmartin. We only have around a 30 plate appearance sample-size from Sanmartin, but the results have been a lot of line drives, fly balls and hard hits to right-handed batters. That is Ozuna’s game — sporting a 42% hard contact rate since the start of 2020. Sanmartin also throws a sinker a good amount to righties, which Ozuna owns a .210 ISO against. He is my favorite batter on the slate, and is actually pretty affordable on both sites as well.
CJ Abrams
I’ve been going back and forth on who else to tag as a Building Block today, and I’ve decided to go with the value of CJ Abrams. He didn’t crack the lineup on Opening Day, but I feel good about the Padres top prospect starting tonight against Merrill Kelly. We don’t have much data to go off of here as this will be his major league debut, but I’m always comfortable buying into these top prospects for minimum price tags on DraftKings. We will likely need the savings tonight, especially in cash games and he projects to be a much better hitter than what he is priced for.
Top Stack
Today I’m going with the Toronto Blue Jays as my top overall stack. Now, this isn’t really a hot take, but it does appear that Jon Gray is picking up some ownership on DraftKings due to his price. Right now, Gray is projected to be the third-highest owned pitcher on the slate at over 30% against one of the best lineups in baseball? Yeah, that’s an easy leverage spot for me. It’s accurate that Gray is better vs right-handed pitchers than lefties — while the Jays are predominately right-handed, they have power up and down the lineup. Gray is also mostly fastball/slider, which are two pitches this entire lineup hits very hard. Overall, this is an easy early season spot — if an average pitcher is getting ownership vs a good lineup, I will play that lineup in tournaments.
Bold Call
Reid Detmers strikes out 7 Astros!
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
