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 Monday’s starters…
- Jose Berrios
- Spencer Turnbull
- Zach Eflin
- Yu Darvish
- Tyler Anderson
This is my list in order of pitchers today.
I had a monster weekend on the sportsbooks when it comes to MLB betting — let’s see if we can translate that to a strong week of MLB DFS as well! We have a very weird pitching slate tonight. Both Blake Snell and Charlie Morton are way over-priced and that’s going to basically eliminate them from my pool. Luis Castillo looks to be low-owned, but I don’t love the form he’s been in to start the season so that puts him near the bottom of my list as well.
My favorite options are actually two cheap plays in Jose Berrios and Spencer Turnbull. Berrios is not the up-and-comer we know from his Minnesota days but he is serviceable and still capable of good strikeout games — the bonus is that we no longer have to pay a high price-tag for him like 2-3 years ago. Seattle has been dreadful on offense to begin the season and are leading baseball in strikeout rate vs RHP. Berrios is going to be chalky, but that’s chalk I’m willing to eat in this match-up.
Turnbull is someone I loved coming up for the Tigers, but he has struggled to stay healthy which is why he’s on a new team this season. This is a guy that has always had talent – and now he’s elevating to the next level due to the addition of a sweeper to his pitch mix. Turnbull didn’t even throw a sweeper last season, and he came out and used it 27% of the time in his first start. This will help keep batters off-balance – and I don’t hate the match-up for him. Stacking two cheap SP’s could allow you to stack any offense you want on tonight’s slate.
I also want to note that Yu Darvish will be the highest-owned arm on the slate. I like Yu, and think the match-up is fine, I think I just prefer the savings on this slate.
If you’re looking for a GPP-only play – you can look at Tyler Anderson who has actually looked good to begin the season. Tampa has struggled a bit with LHP to begin the season, but I still have Berrios/Turnbull firmly ahead of him in all formats.
Building Blocks
Bryce Harper
Obviously I have a rule that I don’t write up Coors bats in this section — so while the Diamondbacks are the top-overall chalky stack on tonight’s slate I won’t be featuring their players here. Rather, I’m going to be looking at the Philadelphia Phillies against Miles Mikolas. Mikolas has been a pitcher I’ve been comfortable attacking since last season. His xERA dipped from 3.89 in 2022 to 5.44 in 2023. He struggled mightily in spring training generating next to nothing when it comes to swing and miss. For reference, his swinging strike% went from 8.2% to 7.3% over those two seasons — but it’s really taken a hit in 2024. It was below 7% in spring training, and through his first few starts of 2023 it’s below 4%! If you can’t generate swing and misses, it’s going to be tough for you to survive in the MLB without an insane ground-ball rate or just flat-out good luck. It’s early, but his xERA is over 6.00 this season and this is a pitcher I’m going to be attacking moving forward. His most-used pitches are his slider and four seamer — while Bryce Harper owns a .200+ ISO against both pitches since the start of last year. Philly is my favorite stack tonight, and Harper is my top-overall bat and HR call.
Chas McCormick
McCormick was a plug and play type player for us last season vs LHP, and he gets that match-up tonight against Andrew Heaney. Heaney has flashed elite upside at times in his major league career, but has never been consistent enough to put together a monster season. He’s always given up hard-contact because he is willing to challenge with his fastball — and that leads to him allowing homeruns at times as well. McCormick actually has the highest ISO on the Astros vs LHP since the start of last season (.290) and he matches up very well vs the four seamer / slider pitch mix that Heaney offers. He isn’t “cheap” but he is affordably priced in the mid-tier and can be used in all formats even as a one-off on Monday evening.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
