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
Justin Steele
Pablo Lopez is sure to be the highest-owned pitcher on today’s slate, but I’m going with Justin Steele as my top arm tonight against the Milwaukee Brewers. Milwaukee has tried to address their problem vs left-handed pitching, but they still strike out 28% of the time in the split for the season — the highest mark in baseball. They will send eight righties to the plate tonight, while Steele’s K numbers drop a bit against righties he is still just as good in the split in terms of run prevention. He has one of the best sliders in baseball, and the Brewers as a team are horrible against that pitch. Lopez is the “safest” option on the board but I like Steele in all formats on both sites tonight.
Seth Lugo
I really wanted to write up Bobby Miller in this spot, but I can’t ignore how safe Lugo feels with Mike Trout out of this Angels lineup. Other than Shohei Ohtani, there are 0 batters to fear in this lineup and Lugo is someone with good control that rarely is going to run into a super bad outing. He doesn’t have the strikeout upside of some other guys on this slate, but at below $8,000 he is in consideration for the top point per dollar pitcher on the slate — I still think Miller is in play for GPPs, but for an optimal lineup I think Lugo is the clear cut SP2 on DraftKings today.
Building Blocks
Matt Olson
Olson and the Braves are in a dream spot tonight against Cal Quantrill, who likely could be making his last start for a while should he get shelled once again. Coming off a career year, the wheels have fallen off for Quantrill who owns a 6.00 xERA and almost an identical strikeout rate to his walk rate. He’s been very bad against left-handed pitching, allowing a .387 wOBA and .208 ISO in the split. We know that Olson has monster power against right-handed arms, but he matches up very well with Cal’s pitch mix as well. Cal throws his sinker over 30% of the time to lefties while Olson has the best numbers on the team against the pitch. And that’s not to slight the other Braves, the entire lineup owns a .371 wOBA and .201 ISO vs sinkers this season. It’s a nightmare match-up for Quantrill, and Olson is my favorite bat on the slate.
Jarren Duran
Duran was a featured building block on Tuesday, and I’ll be going back to the well with him on Wednesday night against Jon Gray. Gray has been good for the Rangers this season and I respect him as a real-life pitcher, this is more of a price play given that Duran is once again priced below $3,000 on DraftKings. Gray’s worst split is definitely against left-handed hitters, while Duran continues to improve at the plate this season. His .376 wOBA against RHP is among the team-leaders this season, and he will likely feature moderate ownership even as a one-off on Wednesday night.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
