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

Spencer Strider

It’s always a good night when Spencer Strider toes the rubber, and I will continue my Jacob deGrom treatment of him — if he’s on the slate I lock him in. He’s on pace to strike out well over 300 batters this season, and even being priced at $12,000 I think he is a discount on most slates. Today is a bigger slate with some high-upside options to pivot to, but I don’t really think anyone other than Shohei Ohtani can match his raw ceiling right now. Los Angeles is a great team, but there are some strikeouts to be had in the middle of their lineup and at the end of the day I don’t really care. Strider is the top play on the board, and I’ll be building around him on my main team tonight.

Brayan Bello

Given that I’m spending up so high on my SP1, I will be looking to save on my SP2 in GPPs and we can look no further than Brayan Bello. Bello was one of the top pitching prospects in baseball for a reason, and I will continue to back him moving forward this season. His 24% strikeout rate is much higher than your typical value-priced pitcher and there is some some positive regression to come in terms of his ERA. I think he’s thrown much better than his near-5.00 ERA indicates and if he can navigate Trout/Ohtani I don’t fear much else in this Angels lineup. There are a ton of K’s to be had in the middle and bottom of the Angels order and I won’t be shocked if he’s one of the top point per dollar plays on the entire slate tonight. I also think Eury Perez is in play in Coors Field — for larger-field contests.

Building Blocks

Esteury Ruiz

Ruiz and the A’s are in a sneaky good spot tonight against Marco Gonzales. Gonzales has been terrible against right-handed hitters this season allowing a .371 wOBA and a .205 ISO in the split. Ruiz has been great against lefties this season posting a .371 wOBA while striking out just 11% of the time. Ruiz doesn’t have much power, but he’s so aggressive on the base paths that as long as he gets on base you have an opportunity for fantasy points with his legs. He also has stole multiple bags in the same game a few times this season, so his ceiling is much higher than a typical low power bat. Overall, I think the A’s can score some runs tonight and Ruiz can be used as a one-off or in a stack.

Ben’s Stat of the Day

Esteury Ruiz leads the MLB in steals with 24.

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)