MLB PrizePicks Predictions Today: Top Plays for Monday, April 29th
Traditional MLB DFS formats aren’t the only way to profit from daily fantasy baseball. MLB PrizePicks is a great fantasy pick’em site where we can take today’s projections versus theirs and combine two or more baseball predictions for sizeable payouts.
In this space, we’ll explore a few PrizePicks plays for the upcoming MLB slate. This article isn’t the be-all, end-all of great plays or a recommendation for a full ticket; it’s simply a starting place for you to explore thinking about the game within the game. Maybe you want to scatter these plays across entries. Maybe there are only two or three you think are worth playing. Daily fantasy pick’em gives us the flexibility to make only the plays in which we think there is value rather than being forced to create a full lineup while competing against the best DFS players in the industry.
PrizePicks is daily fantasy baseball made simple, and our Fantasy Pick’em tool makes the process even simpler.
All stats cited are since the start of the 2023 season unless otherwise noted.
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MLB PrizePicks Predictions for Monday, April 29th
- Max Fried MORE Than 5.5 Strikeouts and 17.5 Outs
- Luis Severino LESS Than 17.5 Outs
- Trevor Rogers LESS Than 17.5 Outs
- Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani MORE Than 2.5 Total Bases (DEMON)
- DJ Stewart and Francisco Lindor MORE Than 1.5 Total Bases (DEMON)
Max Fried MORE Than 5.5 Strikeouts
Max Fried MORE Than 17.5 Outs
This isn’t exactly like the Marlins situation where Fried threw a CGSO, but it’s kind of close. The Mariners have more power against LHP than the Marlins but strike out a little bit more often. Fried’s leash is among the longest in baseball, while the combination of his 6.6% BB rate, 4.4% barrel rate allowed, and 58% ground-ball rate allows him to be very economical with his pitches. 6 innings should be fairly simple for him against a team totally dependent on the long ball to score runs with a slight ballpark bump in Seattle. We have Fried projected for 5.7 strikeouts in 17.3 outs, and I think that’s too conservative. 6 strikeouts and getting into the 7th inning is well within the range of outcomes. I wouldn’t blast every contest with this, but we know the upside is 7 strikeouts in 8 or 9 innings, so it’s one to which we should have exposure.
Luis Severino LESS Than 17.5 Outs
I don’t love this play because Severino is healthy and coming in with ground-ball stuff that seems very real. Playing LESS than in the outs category, I want a guy with worse than a 7.8% BB rate and 57% ground-ball rate on the season, but our tool has this as the best play on the board, so I could be very wrong. I see Severino being economical with his pitch count, given the Miles Mikolas-esque 82.7% contact rate, but that contact rate could get him into the trouble that forces him to exit the game when the Mets need a strikeout that Severino can’t supply. He’s only struck out 22.4% of hitters this season, so that’s where I can believe our tool the most — that the Cubs BABIP their way to cause uncomfortable traffic on the basepaths to force an early exit for Severino.
We should note that Severino hasn’t gone more than 5 innings in a situation that wasn’t served up to him on a platter. He threw 6 innings in San Francisco, but a lot of guys can throw 6 innings in San Fran. And he threw 6 innings against the Pirates, who kinda suck. He only went 5 innings against the Royals and Brewers in Citi Field and against the Reds in Cincinnati. He’s thrown a good deal of innings and can go 100 pitches, but it just takes one dirty inning out of five to get him yanked. We have Severino projected for just 14.9 outs.
Trevor Rogers LESS Than 17.5 Outs
I don’t know if it’s tilt bias or what, but 17.5 outs is way too high for Rogers, who hasn’t completed 6 innings all season despite having a long pitch-count leash. His 7.6% BB rate doesn’t have him wasting pitches, but he’s facing a super-pesky Nats projected lineup that has only struck out 16.8% of the time against LHP. This should be a very high-contact situation for Rogers, whose 52.9% ground-ball rate can only go so far without strikeouts. Ground balls are great, but the BABIP is higher on them than fly-outs, and it just takes one dirty inning to get him the hook. We have Rogers projected for 15.8 outs, so it’s not the smash spot that we have for Severino, but it’s one with the 3rd-highest win rate in our Fantasy Pick’em Tool behind Severino and Grayson Rodriguez LESS than outs.
Rodriguez’ LESS than 17 outs is a fine play to which I’ll have some exposure, but he’s probably the better pitcher of these three, and he brings strikeout stuff to the Yankees, which is the way to buckle their knees.
Mookie Betts MORE Than 2.5 Total Bases (DEMON)
Shohei Ohtani MORE Than 2.5 Total Bases (DEMON)
I hate these 2.5 total bases projections, but sometimes the DEMON boost is just too much to ignore. The Dodgers go into Arizona with the roof open against a terrible Tommy Henry, who has allowed a 10.3% barrel rate on a near-80% contact rate. This is a spot for a high frequency of high-quality contact, especially for Betts and Ohtani. Betts is projected for 2.7 bases and Ohtani for a whopping 3.0, so they’re easy plays to sprinkle around with the DEMON boost.
Betts has a .457 wOBA and a .346 ISO on a 13.3% barrel rate against LHP, while Ohtani has a .361 wOBA, .250 ISO, and team-leading 15.9% barrel rate against LHP.
DJ Stewart MORE Than 1.5 Total Bases (DEMON)
Francisco Lindor MORE Than 1.5 Total Bases (DEMON)
1.5 total bases is more my jam to attack on PrizePicks. The Mets are in Citi Field, which sucks for hitting, but they face Jameson Taillon, who has surrendered a 14.4% barrel rate to lefties on a 34.9% fly-ball rate and 52% hard-hit rate. Stewart, a lefty, is quietly sporting a 14.3% barrel rate, .382 wOBA, and .288 ISO against RHP, so he’s projected for 1.8 total bases. The switch-hitting Lindor has excellent lineup protection with Pete Alonso, JD Martinez, and Stewart hitting behind him, and he is projected for 1.9 total bases. The Dodgers are sexy, but these are my favorite hitting plays on the board.
All projections referenced are accurate at the time of writing but subject to change.
Between the Mets lefties and the Dodgers, there are plenty of strong hitting plays to sprinkle around the pitching value we have. I like playing a lot of smaller contests today as opposed to max stacking. Two or three strong value pitching plays with a DEMON-boosted hitting play and we should be golden.
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