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.
Pitchers
Shane Bieber- Make no mistakes, everyone on the planet knows how good Shane Bieber has been this season. He’s still striking out an insane 40% of batters with nearly 20% swinging strikes. This is 2018-19 Gerrit Cole-level stuff from Bieber thus far. What’s been particularly great is his pitch tunneling. He has virtually the same release point on every single one of his pitches, making it near impossible for hitters to guess what’s coming in time to swing. This Pirates offense doesn’t project to strike out a ton, but I pointed out a few days ago how truly awful they have been against right-handed pitching. Brandon Woodruff did punch out 10 in an outing against them earlier this season, so the potential is there if Bieber can keep them off balance. Overall, he isn’t priced up enough for me on DK and he is the number one pitcher on both sites in cash games.
Clayton Kershaw- Kershaw is not the pitcher he once was, but he may not need to be tonight against the Seattle Mariners. It’s been a stready decline with hard-contact increasing yearly for Kersh, but there are reasons for optimism in 2020. The biggest reason being his velocity, which has curprisingly crept back up over 91 on average this season. This is extremely important, and I couldn’t be happier that he topped out at almost 94 in his last start. This Mariners lineup isn’t striking out like we anticipated pre-season, but they still have limited power and a below-average wOBA. I won’t be choosing him over Bieber on my main team tonight, but he is my favorite pivot in tournaments and I think we could see him turn back the clock for a vintage Kershaw start on Thursday.
Kevin Gausman- Gausman is in full break-out mode for the Giants. He’s always had potential, but he comes into tonight with a 3.26 xFIP and 31% strikeouts. The Giants are comfortably letting him throw his splitter as much as he needs, and he is having success multiple times through orders. He’s still can struggle with lefties, but he may only see four of them tonight — be sure to check the lineup before lock as this can be a huge piece of news. Furthermore, only Mike Trout has meaningful positive splits against the splitter in this Angels lineup, and Gausman’s price barely rose after his monster outing vs the Oakland A’s last week. He’s my favorite cheap play on this slate and viable in all formats on DraftKings as an SP2.
Building Blocks
Mitch Moreland- The Red Sox should be the highest-owned offense on this slate against Asher Wojciechowski, and I’ll start my exposure with Moreland. Woj’s biggest issue is power, allowing over a .200 ISO and 46%+ fly balls to both sides of the plate. Moreland owns the highest ISO on the team vs rihgt-handed pitching dating back to the start of 2019, and he is cheap enough that I will be building around him in my optimal builds.
Anthony Santander- Santander has been arguably the hottest-hitter in the MLB, and will once again be low-owned against Nathan Eovaldi. Eovaldi is not a bad pitcher, but he allows a ton of power and hard-contact to left-handed batters. Santander has by far the highest ISO on the team vs righty pitching, and has had no issues hitting the ball out of the park this season.
Jesse Winker- Winker is way too cheap on all sites tonight, and I will be overweight to him. For starters, he’s been on fire posting double-digit DK points in six of his last seven games. Is there reason’s to believe that this can continue? I think so. He actually has jumped all the way to third-overall in xwOBA in the entire MLB behind only Juan Soto and Corey Seager … does this sound like punt-priced player? He has another good matchup tonight with Adam Wainwright, and I like him in all formats.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
