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.
Pitcher
Yu Darvish- Darvish has been the premier pitcher in the entire NL this season in my opinion. He boasts a sparkling 2.99 xFIP with 30% strikeouts and over 16% swinging strikes over the first month and half of baseball. The matchup isn’t great against a patient Cardinals team, but I’m willing to bet on form and Darvish is in as good of form as you can possibly be in. He is my SP1 tonight, but if you really need the salary I don’t mind dropping down to Carrasco against the Milwaukee Brewers. This Brewers offense has been so bad, it’s worth a look, but it will be tough to get me off Darvish on Friday night.
Cheap SP2 on DK- We have a pair of cheapies to choose from on DK — Yusei Kikuchi against the Rangers and Dane Dunning against the Royals. I think Dunning is the better pitcher at this point, but Kikuchi gets the matchup edge as a lefty against Texas. Only three batters in the Rangers lineup have a wOBA above .320 against left-handed pitching this season. Right now, I prefer Kikuchi in cash and Dunning in GPPs but be sure to check Final Thoughts for my final decision.
Note: While it’s clear where you are going on DraftKings, I do want to add Corbin Burnes to my pool on FanDuel. He is once again priced below $8,000 and has as much strikeout upside as anyone on this slate. I’m not a huge believer in this Indians offense, and I think he could easily return strong point per dollar value with a nice ceiling at that price.
Building Blocks
Rhys Hoskins + Jay Bruce- I’m starting my lineups with a pair of Phillies players tonight against the corpse of Rick Porcello. Porcello has fallen far from his “Cy Young” form and allowed over a .200 ISO to both sides of the plate since the start of 2019. He relies heavily on his sinker — a pitch that both Hoskins and Jay Bruce have a ton of success against. Hoskins in particular owns a massive .400 ISO against the pitch dating back to the day of his call-up.
Corey Seager- The Dodgers project to be one of the highest owned team stacks tonight against Antonio Senzatela. This is another bad pitcher, who owns an xFIP of 5.00 since the start of last season. He typically can troll with high ground-balls, but that hasn’t even been the case against left-handed batters with the grounders dropping below 50%. Seager has been a regular in this article this season, and remains third-overall in the league in xwOBA behind only Juan Soto and Brad Miller (!).
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
