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 and the Field
Thursday awards us an early slate, with one pitcher pacing the field in both salary and projection — Spencer Strider. Strider is on pace to break the K/9 record and comes into today 3 full points higher than anyone else in projection — and over $2,000 more in salary. As always, it’s really tough to advocate using Strider in tournaments at this price-tag given that he needs to have such a big game for it to be worth it. At the same time, however, on smaller slates it can be the best move if there isn’t anyone that can compare to his ceiling. On smaller slates, sometimes a bad game from Strider is still better than some of the other options. Overall, I typically like to plug him into my cash game roster and then fade him in tournaments.
After Strider, Pablo Lopez is popping for ownership and I’m expecting the field to want to roster Corbin Burnes coming off a vintage 13 strikeout game against the Reds. I’m not sure if he’s fully back, but I am sure people will be playing him at only $8,500 on DraftKings. We also have Blake Snell in a tough match-up against the Blue Jays at $9,000. With Burnes and Snell, we have two guys that can rack up 10+ K’s so that makes it easy for me to avoid Strider’s salary in tournament builds. Strider + Burnes will likely be my cash game duo, while I will build with Burnes as my SP1 in GPPs.
For cheap, I like Michael Lorenzen against the Kansas City Royals. He’s been pretty league average this season with 23% strikeouts over the last 30 days. That will certainly play against the Royals, and he’s one of the cheapest options on the slate.
Building Blocks
Wilmer Flores
For years, Wilmer Flores against a left-handed pitcher was a plug and play piece in DFS rosters. While that hasn’t really been the case for the last few seasons, DFS players will be going back to old reliable on Thursday when the Giants square off against Andrew Abbott. Flores carries the highest ownership projection in our Projections Portal for today’s slate — and he’s been in great form as of late. He has three homeruns in his last three games — including a two HR, 5 RBI game on Tuesday night. Abbott has been great for the Reds in his first major league season, but has shown pretty drastic splits thus far. In a small sample size, he’s allowing a .000 ISO against left-handed hitters compared to a .202 mark against righties. Even though he isn’t as good as he once was, Flores still has arguably the best numbers on the Giants against left-handed pitching. He’s in play as a one-off for me in cash games and small-field GPPs on Thursday.
Francisco Alvarez
Alvarez and the Mets will be in consideration for top-overall stack on Thursday, when they match up against Michael Kopech. Kopech has been a stone disaster for the White Sox this season. He’s pitched to a massive 8.84 SIERA over the last 30 days, and is coming off a start where he didn’t make it out of the first inning, allowing four runs and four walks. He also has starts with 6 and 7 walks over the last month of play. He is coming off the injured list, so maybe that was ailing him, but I’m not sure how anyone can trust his form right now at all. Alvarez is underpriced on DraftKings in my opinion, and will be locked into my catcher position regardless of if I stack the Mets or not. He seems to be finding himself at the plate for the Mets — and ranks fourth-overall in barrel-rate (25%) over the last 14 days.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
