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
Shohei Ohtani
Per usual, Ohtani needs no introduction. He’s the best player in baseball, arguably the best pitcher in baseball and we have plenty of cheaper options to fit him into our main lineups. He has a “tough” match-up on paper against the Houston Astros but in actuality he doesn’t. Houston has not been the same Astros team offensively this season, and outside of Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker who are both left-handed — nobody scares me here. If you isolate their projected lineup to just 2023 numbers — you get a sub-.300 wOBA with a 24% strikeout rate. Ohtani is tougher on lefties than righties — which is why it’s important that the two hitters we are scared of bat from the left-side. I’m not sure what his own% will end up given his price tag, but it’s worth it for the safety and he will likely be anchoring my main team on Tuesday night.
Clarke Schmidt + Brandon Pfaadt
I love big slates like this when we have good cheap pitching options, and we are awarded two of them on Tuesday night with Clarke Schmidt and Brandon Pfaadt. I’ve written up Schmidt several times this season, and after a rocky start he is starting to show the strikeout upside we saw in Spring Training. He has 20 strikeouts over his last three starts including multiple 8+ K performances. He doesn’t pitch super deep into games, eclipsing five innings just once this season, but he doesn’t need to when he’s priced $6,000. Oakland is worse against right-handed pitching than left, and they don’t have a ton of power outside of Brent Rooker. New York is the streakiest team in baseball and that offensive performance just may get them going as a whole. Their captain is supposed to be back in the lineup tonight, and they’re the biggest favorites on the slate. Schmidt will go to his cutter a lot to get strikeouts, and outside of Rooker, the A’s struggle mightily against the pitch. I think $6,000 is way too cheap for him in this match-up — and if he can go 4-5 innings with 6+ strikeouts I’ll take that all night long. All of the expensive options outside of Ohtani tonight are in tough strikeout match-ups, or not high-K pitchers, which is all the more reason for me to save at SP2.
As for Pfaadt — I think he will actually be lesser-owned than Schmidt and that makes me love him in tournaments. He got shelled in his first big-league start, but that was against a much more powerful lineup and he is going to give up HR’s with how much he lives in the strike-zone. That being said, this is arguably the best pitching prospect in baseball going up against a Marlins team with a combined .129 ISO and 24% strikeout rate in their projected lineup tonight. Pfaadt is the number one tournament option for me tonight, and he won’t need to do much to smash this salary.
Building Blocks
Matt Olson + Sean Murphy
Atlanta will feature the best hitting weather on the slate tonight, with Nick Pivetta toeing the rubber for the Red Sox. Pivetta has been known to allow homeruns, and this Braves lineup is not one that I’m comfortable with him facing in the hot weather. Matt Olson sticks out as the top-overall play, while Sean Murphy has been the best offensive catcher in baseball this season. Some combination of two or three ATL guys will anchor my main team on Tuesday night.
Aside from the ATL/BOS game, the cheap right-handed power from San Francisco is helpful with lineup building. Using them becomes even better when you factor in that there aren’t many lefties in the WAS bullpen — which makes them less of a pinch-hit risk. I also love the Yankees against Drew Rucinski and the A’s bullpen.
Ben’s Stat of the Day
Sean Murphy ranks first-overall in xwOBA this season (.481).
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
