Great weather for baseball! Welcome to our MLB DFS Building Blocks, DraftKings and FanDuel picks for 5/15/22! In this article, I’ll break down by top overall plays for today’s main slate. We have already found a lot of success to start the year off and there is plenty more to come! A big KARMA takedown is imminent and only a matter of time. 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
Alek Manoah
There is a good amount of solid pitchers to contemplate for your SP1 today. That being said, Manoah sticks out for me the most. He gets a date with the Rays in Tampa and it looks enticing. He owns a 38.4% stirkeout rate against their currennt roster and has a xwOBA of 0.229. The surface nubers alone look solid enough. Heis also off to a solid start of the year and is Toronto’s best pitcher in rotation. With only a hard hit rate of 33% on the year and the fact that the Rays strikeout a lot, he makes perfect sense. I could go on and on here as the stats and metrics don’t lie about this guy. I am hoping ownership gets spread out a little with other solid names starting today as well.
Tarik Skubal
For some reason he is mispriced on both FD and DK. Baltimore has a lot of strikeouts to be found in their lineup. On the season, Skubal owns a 4% walk rate and a strikeout rate of 25%. He has posted more than 20 FP in four of his six starts this year with a high on the year of 9 strikeouts in one game. All the metrics and statistics look great. We are also getting him at a very discounted price. Tarik has a plethora of pitches as he throws 5 different ones 10% of the time. Not to mention he is only giving up hard hit contact 37% of the time. It all makes sense to roster him today. I assume he will be popular as all this stuff is easy to find. But nonetheless, he makes for a solid play and a clear SP2.
BONUS: This is a hot take no doubt about it but Tyler Wells is looking SNEAKY. Against this current rorster for Detroit he owns a 50% strikeout rate. No, you heard that right! This is strictly a matchup play and by no means is he great. Just had to get that out there. His FIP is actually negative and I doubt anyone is ballsy enough to roster him. He will make a interesting GPP play and there is some upside to him.
Building Blocks
Ke’Bryan Hayes
I know this is not your typical guy to write up. That being said, he gets a solid matchup today against Hunter Greene and the Reds. Greene hasn’t been great to start off the year and we have been attacking Cincinnati all year long. He is givng up hard hit contact nearly 50% of the time. Hunter also has an xwOBA of .386 while walking batters 12% of the time. Hayes is expected to hit 2nd and is only striking out 17% of the time which is much lower than the average player. Lets also add he gets hard hit contact about 50% of the time. He really makes for a solid play today. Use him as a one off or get really sneaky with a full stack here.
Yordan Alvarez
Alvarez has had a very solid start to the year to say the least. He gets a date with the pourous Patrick Corbin. We have been attacking this guy every time he starts and today is no different. He is second in the MLB with homeruns at 11. Yordan also sports hard hit contact nearly 62% of the time. That is a wild thing to think about. Add in that he is striking out less than 17% of the time and it looks like a recipe for success! Corbin is walking batters at an 11% rate and has an xSLG of .493 which is just flat out BAD. I prefer him as a one off as I think Houston will be pretty chalky given the matchup. You can get different elsewhere and lock this guy in today.
Bold Call
Alvarez hits for a cycle today!!
Written by Spike (Follow @michaelwellspe1 on Twitter)
