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
Sandy Alcantara
We have a loaded main slate tonight, but no pitchers stick out to me more than Sandy Alcantara against the San Francisco Giants. He’s been inconsistent this season and currently sports a near 5.00 ERA, but I don’t see anything overly alarming in his data to worry about, His strikeouts are down a bit, but, he has never been a dominant strikeout pitcher to begin with and the fellow aces on this slate are not really guys I’m worried about putting up an unmatchable score. His pitch count safety is number one of this slate, and it feels like he’s giving you 7+ innings regardless of how he’s throwing. San Francisco has power, but they also strike out a lot against right-handed pitching so I think he can definitely find some success in this match-up. He isn’t a must play in tournaments, but for cash games he’s the best starting point on Friday night.
Brandon Bielak
I’m always interested in saving money at SP, and we get that opportunity tonight with Bielak against the Oakland A’s. Bielak isn’t a big strikeout pitcher, but he’s been pretty unlucky when it comes to his BABIP this season. This is a good spot for him to put up a nice outing at home against an offense with a combined .301 wOBA and 24% strikeout rate in their projected lineup. It seems like he will be pretty chalky, though, so I likely would avoid him in larger-field GPPs.
I feel like we always get Blake Snell chalk on these big Friday night slates and it’s happening yet again. Per usual, I will continue to fade him at high ownership. Boston is a good offense, and his walk issues are too great for me to stomach on my main team.
Building Blocks
Alex Bregman
Houston has a huge six run team total tonight and checks in as one of the top offenses. Bregman is starting to heat up, and we always love targeting him against left-handed pitching. His surface numbers look rough against lefty pitching since the start of last season, but if you dive deeper it comes with 47% fly-balls and 44% hard-hits. Ken Waldichuk has been one of the worst pitchers in baseball this season, and allows a .401 wOBA and .287 ISO to right-handed hitters. Furthermore, I love targeting Bregman at home where he has been great in his career. Houston will likely be the highest-owned stack tonight, but even on a big slate I can’t argue this spot and Bregman is viable in a stack or as a one-off.
Overall, I’ll be looking to stack on a big slate like this with the Astros and Rangers sticking out above the field. For tournaments, I think the Baltimore Orioles and Atlanta Braves make sense at what should be very low-ownership on the full-stacks.
Ben’s Stat of the Day
Ken Waldichuk has allowed the second-most homeruns in the MLB this season.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
