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
Lance McCullers- McCullers career has been derailed by injuries early on, but it was not long ago he was considered one of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball. He’s struck out over a quarter of the batters he’s faced in his career, and he looked absolutely electric in his starts prior to the start of the season topping out at 97 with his fastball and featuring his plus changeup. He gets the gift of facing the Seattle Mariners abysmal offense, that projects to strike out over 24% of the time against right-handed pitching. We could see Houston be a bit cautious with his pitch count, but at his price he is the clear number one for me on Saturday.
Mike Minor- SP2 is the tough decision and it comes down to Mike Minor vs Dylan Bundy for me. I like Yu Darvish but he didn’t look good enough in his camp starts for me to want to spend up on him, and the heat in Philly is making me second-think Zack Wheeler at a $10,000 price tag. Minor was solid for the Rangers in 2019 striking out 23% of batters faced and allowing a .301 wOBA to both sides of the plate. The Rockies were one of the worst teams on the road last season with the second-lowest team wOBA and striking out the third-most. They just so happened to score a whopping 0 runs on the road last night, and I will continue to attack them when they are outside of Coors in 2020.
Dylan Bundy- Bundy is really cheap today, and I think he’s going to come in massively under-owned because DFS players have been burned by him countless times. He lines up extremely well vs this Oakland A’s team, and I’m surprised he’s as cheap as he is. Bundy has always been a really splitsy pitchers, striking out 28% of righties in 2019 compared to 18% of lefties. He allows pop to both sides of the plate so that’s his Achilles heel, but I don’t think this lineup is set up for much success against him. To start, outside of Matt Olson, every hitter we fear in this A’s lineup is right-handed. He’s projected to see just five righties today, but three of the lefties are Robbie Grossman, Austin Allen and Tony Kemp…not exactly striking me with fear. He also relies heavily on his slider, it’s his best pitch generating a 50% whiff% and he throws it nearly 40% of the time to right-handed batters. Only one player in this A’s lineup has a projected ISO above .200 against sliders, and that’s Matt Chapman.
NOTE: on Fanduel, Mike Clevinger is the clear top dog while Luis Castillo is an exceptional GPP play.
Building Blocks
Max Muncy- I had Muncy listed as a building block yesterday, and he responded with a double dong. The funny thing is, I wrote him up against Jeff Samarzija, who ended up getting scratched in favor of Tyler Anderson/Kevin Gausman. I ended up keeping Muncy in my DK lineup and reaping the benefits, but it didn’t matter much considering I got crushed due to my lack of Red Sox.
Samardzija is slated to throw today instead, so I’m going right back to the well. Here’s what I had to say about him last night:
First Base is weak tonight, and that has led me to Muncy in almost all of my early builds. We know that he crushes righties — sporting a .267 ISO and a .379 wOBA in 2019 — and he also matches up well with Jeff Samardzija’s pitch mix.
Nelson Cruz- Everyone that plays DFS knows to target Nelson Cruz against left-handed pitching. I’m not a big BvP guy, but Cruz has a 53 PA sample vs Dallas Keuchel, resulting in five home runs, a .375 xwOBA and a 91 mph average exit velocity. Obviously Cruz has elite power numbers vs southpaws so these numbers aren’t shocking, but he matches up well vs his pitch mix as well. Keuchel’s most-used pitch to righties is his sinker which he throws over 40% of the time. Cruz has perennially feasted on sinkers to the tune of .540 xwOBA and a near .300 ISO.
Yoshi Tsutsugo– Tsutsugo hit a homerun in his first MLB game yesterday, but even if he didn’t, he shouldn’t be the minimum price of $2,000 on DraftKings. He projects as a .350 wOBA and .200+ ISO hitter according to Steamer, so it’s just a simple pricing mistake. Everyone will be aware of him after his big day yesterday, and he should be at the top of the Rays lineup today against a righty. If that’s the case, I will take the savings and move on.
Stack Rankings
1. Los Angeles Dodgers (Muncy, Bellinger, Joc Pederson, Seager, Mookie)
2. Minnesota Twins (Garver, Cruz, Sano, Donaldson)
3. Boston Red Sox (Devers, Benintendi, Xander, JD)
4. Chicago White Sox (Moncada, Grandal, Edwin, Eloy, Robert)
5. Philadelphia Phillies (McCutchen, Bryce, Realmuto, Hoskins)
NOTE: on FanDuel, the Reds are my number one stack while the Indians would also be top three or four.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
