Welcome to another edition of Ben’s Building Blocks! In this article, I will outline the players I’m looking to build my main lineup around for today’s slate. If you want access to my core plays for every main slate, as well as one of the best discord communities in the industry, click here.
Pitcher
This is a weird first article of the season given it’s only two games, but boy am I glad to be back! We have just four pitchers to choose from on Thursday night, making it a pretty straightforward slate despite this being the first night of games. It’s obvious that if you’re playing more than one team you will probably have exposure to all four of these guys, so I’ll go ahead and talk about my favorite of the bunch. Enter: Max Scherzer. I expect Clayton Kershaw to be the highest-owned pitcher due to his price and soft matchup with the San Francisco Giants, but if I’m choosing one I’ll lean with Scherzer.
He gets the platoon edge over the bulk of this Yankees team. New York should have seven righties in the lineup, while Max struck out over 38% of right-handed batters in 2019. He also allowed just a .114 ISO and 30% hard-contact, which should combat the massive power of the Yankees batters. Furthermore, Scherzer’s slider has always been the pitch that took him to the next level in the K department. Last year, he surrendered just a .161 wOBA with his slider while generating whiffs 50% of the time! Of the seven right-handed hitters projected to start, five of them swung and miss over 40% of the time against right-handed sliders a season ago…
Building Blocks
I’m not going to waste my time writing about how you should play Cody Bellinger or Mookie Betts on a two game slate…this is common sense! The Dodgers are 100% going to be the highest-owned offense on the slate up against Johnny Cueto, and rightfully so. This leaves a tough decision when it comes to ownership in tournaments, but they are without a doubt in the best spot. If I had to choose one Dodger it will still probably be Cody Bellinger, though I am curious to watch him tomorrow night after he has talked about changing his swing in the off-season.
Hunter Pence- Pence is the guy I feel really good about on this slate, and at $4,700 on DraftKings he should provide massive leverage as nobody will be clicking his name especially when most are playing Kershaw against him. Now, I talked about Max Scherzer’s slider above, and if we look at what Kershaw did in 2019, he had a very similar pitch mix. Over 80% of Kersh’s pitches were fastball or slider, although his was much less effective. Instead of 50% whiffs he got just 32% with his slider, with an xwOBA of over .350. This Giants offense is not good at all, but if there’s one guy that’s good at hitting lefties, it’s Hunter Pence.
.416 wOBA, .309 ISO, 44% hard hits…that’s the type of numbers Pence was putting up vs southpaws in 2019. He also feasted on left-handed sliders, sporting a .458 ISO and 90 mph average exit velocity.
GPP Dart: Eric Thames- Cole is as filthy as they come, but we will have to get weird on a two game slate and this is the National I feel best about not named Juan Soto. Thames is similar to Pence in that his expensive price tag will keep ownership away. He has massive strikeout concerns, but he crushed sliders when he was able to make contact last season, and has the second-highest ISO on the team against fastballs that come in at 96 mph+.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
