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 Monday starters…
- Yoshinobu Yamamoto
- Shoto Imanaga
- George Kirby
- Randy Vasquez
- Brady Singer
This is my list in order of pitchers tonight.
Yamamoto and Imanaga have both been completely elite this season, while Imanaga should be the favorite for Cy Young in my opinion. They have relatively neutral match-ups, but can be considered the top options on Monday due to their form/upside.
After those two is where it gets interesting. It’s pretty clear it will be a popular night for double-aces on DK with George Kirby projecting for high-OWN% as well. If you’re looking for value, Randy Vasquez is catching a high projected ownership number and can definitely be used as a salary saver for cash game formats. That’s the type of pitcher I wouldn’t want to be overweight on in GPPs, however, if the ownership is as high as the projections say.
The play I really like for tournaments is Brady Singer against the Mariners. Seattle has been a very high strikeout lineup this season, and they match-up terribly against Singer. Singer has risen his K% from 19% last year to 25% in 2024. This can be attributed to him throwing more sliders than last season — a pitch he generates 40% whiffs with. Seattle’s lineup has horrific splits against sliders, and this is a potential ceiling spot for Singer in my opinion. He can be used in all formats, but is better suited for tournaments at his price/ownership.
Building Blocks
Nick Castellanos
Casty is my favorite overall bat on Monday night, in a great match-up vs Sean Manaea. Manaea has out-performed his metrics this season, and will be in a tough spot vs this powerful Phillies lineup. He relies on his sinker, throwing it just under 40% of the time. Philly as a whole doesn’t have amazing numbers, but that’s not the case for Casty. He’s hitting .318 against the pitch this season, and was above .285 in each of the last three seasons as well. He’s beginning to heat up, and is coming off a three run homer yesterday. He’s always been elite against left-handed pitching and this season has been no different. I love to play him in DFS when seeing the ball well and that appears to be the case right now. For the BvP crowd, he also has two career homers vs Manaea which makes sense given his numbers vs LHP.
Matt Carpenter
Carpenter recently returned for the St. Louis Cardinals and checks in as one of the top values on the slate. He gets the platoon advantage over Jose Soriano who has struggled vs lefties this season. It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen prime Carp, but that doesn’t matter when he’s priced as cheaply as he is tonight and he can be used as a one-off in all formats.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
