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
Jesus Luzardo
Happy 4th of July everyone! We have a nice 8 game MLB DFS slate that locks early on the 4th, and it is filled with expensive pitching options. All of Jesus Luzardo, Aaron Nola and Zach Eflin are over $10,000 on DraftKings and they are also the three highest projected owned options. There’s seemingly no good cheap option, which will force a lot of users onto double-ace builds or cause them to use someone like Kenta Maeda at inflated expected ownership. I don’t like to go out of my way to target the St. Louis Cardinals with a left-handed pitcher, but Luzardo checks in as my preferred option of the three on Tuesday. He’s been incredible over the last 30 days, trimming his walks down to below 5% to go along with a sub-3.00 SIERA and 30% strikeouts. Even in a perceived tough match-up, I think he has arguably the highest ceiling of anyone today and that’s something I want to chase on a weaker pitching slate.
Outside of Luzardo, I really don’t want to use Kenta Maeda at nearly 30% ownership. I will likely sacrifice bats to fit in one of Eflin or Nola alongside him, or take a shot on a lower-owned option like Dane Dunning or Brandon Bielak.
Building Blocks
Byron Buxton
Buxton and the Twins will once again be one of the higher-owned stacks, matched up with Zack Greinke and featuring a near 5.5 run team total. Buxton has been great when healthy this season, posting a ..346 wOBA and .244 ISO against right-handed pitching. Greinke has been much better vs right-handed hitters than left, but Buxton is in a class of his own and has seen him very well in their past meetings. Buxton is currently top-four in our overall raw points projections for today’s slate and you can make a strong case for him bein the top-overall bat on Tuesday’s slate.
Jarren Duran
Boston will be one of the other chalkier spots in my opinion, up against Dane Dunning who continues to run hot. Dunning has pitched to a 2.69 ERA this season despite a 4.60 xERA — yes his xERA is two full runs higher than his actual ERA. It seems like the regression monster will have to hit him at some point and this could be a good spot for it to happen against the Red Sox offense. Duran has been very good against right-handed pitching this season and matches up well against cutters – which is Dunning’s most-used pitch.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
