Welcome in to Spike’s Building Blocks for DraftKings & FanDuel! This is a free article written daily to identify my top-overall DFS plays for cash/gpp games 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…
Top Pitchers
Gerrit Cole
WeWe are all aware the Yankees have been hitting mediocre as of late but that doesn’t change my mind about Gerrit Cole today and the field agrees (projected ownership around 52%). Cole has historically pitched well against the Rays with a whopping 30% strikeout rate against their current lineup. This is no small sample size either, we are talking 183 batters faced. His whiff rate sits around 25% with an xwOBA of .268. Outside of one or two game she has pitched excellent. Tampa Bay doesn’t strikeout a ton but that do whiff a fair amount. Overall, Cole is the best pitcher on the mound today and should be rostered in all formats!
Joe Ryan
When it comes to GPP’s or your SP2, there is an array of pitchers to choose from. Joe Ryan is my top choice. Looks like the masses are flocking around Alcantara and Lucchesi. I don’t have a lot of issues with Alcantara but I can’t play Lucchesi at a projected 40% ownership.. There are slight chances of rain in Cleveland but as of now, it looks like the game should play through with a minor delay if anything. Ryan has put up some solid numbers so far this year against teams who rank all over. Cleveland is by no means an easy matchup but with how Ryan has been pitching, I am more than willing to take my shots with him. Ryan sticks to two main pitches but they have been boding well for him. Cleveland doesn’t make a ton of hard contact nor does Ryan allow a lot of it. Strikeout rate north of 30% along with only walking batters 4% of the time. We cashed out with the Leverage play yesterday with Eovaldi, lets do the same with Ryan today!
Building Blocks
C.J. Cron
I didn’t want to outline the obvious players in the Cardinals game as they are going to be chalk and we know that they should do well today. As I said above, Lucchesi is projecting for heavy ownership and I just don trust him. It is huge leverage to grab a batter or two against him. Joey started off hot and has detoriated as the season has grown. Cron actually has decent numbers against him in a small sample size (4 AB’s). Lucchesi has a 3 pitch mix that he throws which are a sinker, slider and curve. All of these pitches are favorable for Cron as 5 of his 6 homeruns were off them. In partcular against the cutter and sinker he has an xwOBA of .452 while his current wOBA is .395. This suggests he has bigger upside than what he has been hitting. Cron is a power hitter without a doubt and he gets 75 degree weather with winds blwoing out 7-10 MPH. The Mets in general have been in a slump and I want to attack that.
My favorite stack for today is going to be St.Louis against Faedo (a must for cash games). Other teams to stack that I am interested in are Oakland and Minnesota.
Spike’s Fun Fact of the Day
C.J. Cron’s real name is Christopher John and his nickname is Crony!
Written by Spiked (Follow @spikedprops on Twitter)
