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
Kevin Gausman
Gausman needs to introduction on Saturday against the Detroit Tigers. It’s obvious he will be the highest-owned option today and I can’t argue with the match-up at all. He’s one of the most dominant strikeout pitchers in baseball, trailing only Spencer Strider in total K’s during the 2023 campaign. He strikes out 34% of all right-handed hitters he faces and he will see six of them in the Tigers lineup today. Furthermore, this lineup strikes out 24% of the time combined as well. It’s baseball, things can always go wrong on any given day, but he’s the best option on Saturday and I’m treating him as such.
Outside of Gausman there are a number of ways to go at SP2. Gerrit Cole is projecting for almost 30% ownership today, while Gavin Williams will likely be the chalky SP2 option priced at just $7,000 against the Kansas City Royals. I’m a big Williams fan long term, but his early MLB results have been a mixed bag and I don’t think he is a must play by any means even in this match-up. You probably want to drop down to him in cash games just to fit the build, but if he ends up as the second or third highest owned guy I would be comfortable fading him in tournaments. Someone that sticks out to me is Tyler Wells against the Twins. There’s a good chance Wells comes in under-owned due to his price tag of $9K. HIs strikeouts have been on the rise the last month, and no team in baseball strikes out as much as the Twins against right-handed pitching right now.
Building Blocks
Corey Seager
Seager was featured in this spot yesterday and he responded with a monster 21 DK point game. Texas will once again be one of the highest-owned stacks against Jake Irvin. Irvin has featured stark pitch splits this year, posting a .296 wOBA and .055 ISO allowed to right-handed hitters — with those numbers ballooning to .352 and .170 against lefties. As I noted yesterday, Seager has been on another level this season and would likely be leading the AL MVP race if not for Shohei Ohtani. He has some of the best numbers in baseball against right-handed pitching, and matches up well against Irvin’s pitch usage. We know that he hits fastballs very well, but Irvin’s second-most used option is his curveball — a pitch that Seager sports a .352 wOBA against since the start of last season.
Harrison Bader
I’m not sure if we can fully trust this Yankees offense right now, but Drew Smyly has been terrible as of late for the Cubs. Over the last 30 days he’s pitched to a 5.62 SIERA with 11% walks and only 16% strikeouts. New York has been bad as of late as well, but they will be able to pile in righties against him today. Bader has been fantastic for the Yankees this season, and really been one of the their only bright spots on offense. He has excelled against left-handed pitching all season, and being priced below $4K makes him a viable one-off in all formats on Saturday.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
