What a lovely Sunday for some baseball! Welcome to our MLB DFS Building Blocks, DraftKings and FanDuel picks for 4/22/22! In this article, I’ll break down by top overall plays for today’s main slate. Last year was an extremely big year for the Karma team in MLB, and we are looking to continue that success in 2022. I will be providing Core Plays for every main slate (and day baseball) this season — you can gain access to that as well as our premium discord here. You can also try out the Core Plays package with a $5 day pass. Let’s get to the plays…
Pitcher
Gerrit Cole
It looks like he has gotten back to his former self lately and he gets a solid matchup today against the Rangers. He is striking batters out 30.4% of the time and more than half of this lineup also strikes out more than 20% of the time. The winds shoud be blowing inwards as well just like nearly all the other games today and that should help him out a little when they do make contact with the ball. He is my top option for a SP1 on draftkings and makes for a very solid option on fanduel as well where you only get one pitcher. Another thing that I really like about Cole is the vast amount of pitches he serves up. He throws five pitches more than 10% of the time and that keep batters guessing.
Alek Manoah
This guy has had a really solid start to the year. For starters, he is giving up a hard hit contact rate of just 32.5%. This goes along with a 27% strikeout rate and a mere 6.8% walk rate. Not to mention his strikeout upside is fantastic. He gets a date with the Cleveland Guardians who have shown glimpses of success but it’s not consistent and they pop out a lot. The winds will also be blowing inwards here which also helps his case. This to me is a double spend up at pitching kind of slate. Most of these games have winds blowing inwards which will make hitting a little more difficult and pitching a little better.
BONUS: If you’re looking to spend down here and save some salary look no furthe than Tyler Mahle. Yes, he is someone we normally like to attack but he gets a date with the Pirates and we LOVE attacking them. Winds should also be blowing in here and that’ll help him out along with the fact that these guys strike out in the top 5% of the league.
Building Blocks
Ryan Mountcastle
He has been heating up lately and he looks to be in another solid spot today. Coming off of a double dong performance and gets Daniel Lynch and the Royals today. This teams atrocious pitching is something we have attacked a lot this year and theres good reason for that. Lynch has a FIP of 13.20 against this current roster of O’s and has a hard hit contact rate of over 50%! Now let’s add in the exit velocity of Mountcastle this year which is nearly 95% and it makes for a guy you should really consider rostering today. I will also add that the righty on lefty matchup makes it a smidge more enticing.
Bo Bichette
Toronto is in an inntersing spot today with winds blowing inwards. That being said, they have a ton of power to be displayed and even with these winds I am really digging Bo. He hasn’t been great this year but has shown plenty of flashes of upside to know that bigger and better days are coming. Now there are couple mixed results in who is starting for Cleveland but I believe it is going to be Konnor Pilkington. He doesn’t have a huge sample to go off of but in that small sample he is giving up a hard hit rate of contact nearly 60%. We saw Bo hit a grand slam not too long ago and I woulnd’t be surprised to see him go yard here as well.
Bold Call
Manoah and Cole strike out 10 batters a piece!
Written by Spike (Follow @michaelwellspe1 on Twitter)
