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
Logan Gilbert
Gilbert will likely be the highest-owned arm on Monday night, and I can’t argue the match-up against the Minnesota Twins. Gilbert himself is not much of a strikeout pitcher, but the Twins strike out more than any other team in baseball right now and Vegas respects that, given that they’ve listed his K prop at 7.5. I’m not a huge fan of paying for Gilbert at this sort of salary, but there aren’t any other high-priced options I feel confident in tonight. Shane McClanahan has a super tough match-up against the Rangers, and he hasn’t looked right since injuring his back. I’m in wait and see mode with him, and will not be rostering him in DFS on Monday. Given the match-up, Gilbert is the top cash game option on the slate, but I wouldn’t be looking to use him in tournaments at this expected OWN%.
Nick Pivetta + Mackenzie Gore
While there aren’t any great spend-ups today, we have two strong mid-tier plays in Nick Pivetta and Mackenzie Gore. Pivetta will be chalky, pitching against the Oakland A’s, but at his price I can’t argue against him in any format. Gore has looked great for the Nationals as of late, he’s striking out nearly 30% of batters faced over his last five starts and has a strong match-up against the Cubs. Chicago strikes out almost 25% of the time as a team against LHP this season, and that’s with Nico Hoerner’s 10% K% leading the lineup. There are a lot of K’s to be had in the middle to bottom of that order and pairing these two cheapies together is a build I would be considering in small or large field GPPs.
Building Blocks
Shohei Ohtani
Ohtani is the no doubt top projection in our Projections Portal tongiht, matched up against Luis Severino. Severino has been a disaster for the Yankees since returning from injury. He’s pitched to a 5.35 SIERA over the last 30 days, with sub 20% strikeouts. He’s also had multiple starts with 2+ HR’s allowed, and is coming off back-to-back outings in which he allowed 7 earned runs. He’s been abysmal against left-handed hitters this season allowing over a .400 wOBA and a .245 ISO. He relies heavily on his fastball, a pitch that Ohtani absolutely crushes. Right now, I’m willing to attack Sevy with pretty much any team he is facing and spending up for the best player in baseball will be a priority for me on Monday evening.
Kerry Carpenter
Carpenter checks in at just $3,200 on DraftKings and is one of my top values on Monday’s slate. He has been locked in at the plate recently, ranking top-ten in all of baseball in barrel-rate (22%) over the last 14 days. Along with that, comes a 55% hard-hit% and a great match-up with Jordan Lyles. Lyles has struggled all season for the Royals, specifically with left-handed hitters. He’s allowing a .363 wOBA and .258 ISO in the split, while Carpenter has been one of the Tigers best hitters from the left side. He matches up well with Lyles’ pitch-mix, and can be used in all formats in a stack or as a one-off tonight.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
