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
Per usual when Spencer Strider starts, he paces the field in both salary and projection by a wide margin. This is a smaller five game slate, which means we will likely see well over 50% ownership on Strider across cash games and small-field tournaments. Overall, there aren’t really any pitchers that can rival his K upside here so plugging him into those types of contests makes the most sense. Over the last few weeks I felt that it’s been better to fade him in tournaments or larger-field contests and you could do so again tonight – but with limited options on a small slate a mediocre game from him could still win you the slate.
Outside of Strider, we have Framber Valdez against the Texas Rangers. He’s well over $10K on DraftKings and I find it difficult to fit both he and Spencer Strider in your build. We also have Carlos Rodon at $9,000 – but he is a complete fade for me. He has the highest SIERA on the slate since returning from injury – and I would be looking to take some bats against him for leverage if he ends up a popular pick. Lance Lynn can always be used in GPPs – while Hogan Harris looks in play for me in tournaments as well tonight. He has a massive ERA, but it’s backed by a SIERA in the mid-4.00 range and he feels due for a decent start at some point soon.
Building Blocks
Matt Olson
If you are spending up for Spencer Strider on Wednesday night, it’s going to be tough to prioritize any expensive bats but we can’t ignore this spot for Olson. Atlanta matches up with Brayan Bello tonight, a pitcher I really like long-term for the Sox but has struggled to figure out left-handed hitters in his first full big league season. He’s allowing a .357 wOBA and .218 ISO against left-handed hitters compared to .274 and .130 marks against righties. Obviously we know that Olson mashes from the left side, but he matches up extremely well against Bello individually. His most used pitch in the split is his change-up — a pitch that Olson spots a monster .401 wOBA against. Nothing can really stop these Braves on offense right now, and I would call Olson the top-overall play for me in all formats tonight.
Michael Tauchman
Tauchman was my top- graded value last night and he was seemingly the only Cubs player not to do much in a night they scored 7 runs. That being said, I’m going back to the well with him tonight against Lance Lynn. Lynn has been an enigma for the White Sox this season — allowing the most HR’s in the league while also ranking 10th in strikeouts. He’s very much feast or famine on the mound and we can take advantage of that with power one-offs even if we don’t fully stack against him. Tauchman isn’t known for his power stroke, but he does feature a .200 ISO against cutters which is Lynn’s most-used pitch.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
