MLB PrizePicks Predictions Today: Top Plays for Monday, April 22

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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.

If you haven’t signed up for a PrizePicks account, make sure to use the PrizePicks promo code ROTOBONUS and get a $100 deposit match.

MLB PrizePicks Predictions for Monday, April 22

Mike Trout MORE Than 1.5 Total Bases (DEMON)

Mike Trout is still one of the best hitters in baseball, and he gets to face the 79.1% career contact rate of Albert Suarez in a decent hitting ballpark. We have Trout projected for 2.1 total bases, so add in the DEMON boost, and this is one of the best plays on the board for us to attack. If you need a reminder of how great Trout still is, he has a 19.3% barrel rate on a 59.4% hard-hit rate against RHP. Any time he gets high-frequency contact in a good park, 1.5 total bases is just too low of a PrizePicks projection to ignore.

Jazz Chisholm MORE Than 1.5 Total Bases (DEMON)

To get past Jazz Chisholm, he has to swing and miss. Bryce Elder just doesn’t have that type of stuff (17.7% K rate) and gets hits hard very often (49.2%). Chisholm is very dangerous when he’s making contact. He has a 16% barrel rate on a 50.5% hard-hit rate against RHP to go with some good speed to stretch anything in the outfield into a double. We have him projected for 1.9 total bases, and I think that’s conservative in this higher-contact spot. The DEMON boost is semi-free value.

Vladimir Guerrero MORE Than 1.5 Total Bases (DEMON)

Vladimir Guerrero is projected by us to smash his PrizePicks projection by 66.7%. Against Brady Singer, Guerrero’s 56.4% hard-hit rate and 11.9% barrel rate play well against Singer’s 51.6% hard-hit rate. Guerrero only has a .343 wOBA and .198 ISO against RHP, but his .266 BABIP with the hard-hit rate suggests that he’s been really unlucky. He’s off to a slow start in terms of results, but his 92.8-MPH exit velocity and 53% hard-hit rate a couple of weeks into the season suggests that this could be bad luck.

Ryan Weathers LESS Than 5.0 Strikeouts

A lefty against the Braves with a PrizePicks projection of anything over 4.0 strikeouts is usually something we want to attack. Mainly because: (a) the Braves projected lineup only has a 22.3% K rate against LHP, and (b) there’s no world where we rationally see Ryan Weathers getting deep enough to compile strikeouts. We have Weathers projected conservatively at 4 strikeouts. This 20% disparity in projections is a play we want in on.

Reid Detmers LESS Than 17.5 Outs

If you haven’t checked out our Fantasy Pick’em tool, you should do so. The pick with the 3-highest win rate is Reid Detmers and his pitching outs. We have him projected for only 15.5 outs against a super-solid Orioles lineup in the hitter-friendly Angel Stadium. We normally like Detmers, but the tool says that he shouldn’t go this deep into the game, projecting at a ~70% win rate for us on this pick. The tool also has Hunter Greene for LESS than 17.5 outs (with the same 15.5 projection on our end) and Jared Jones LESS than 1.5 walks allowed for ~75% win rates. Personally, I see more risk in those two picks than Detmers, but we should note them in this space.

Aaron Judge MORE Than 1.5 Total Bases

No DEMON boost for the Aaron Judge projection yet, and I normally prefer DEMON boosts for hitter picks because of the variance in hitting, but this is a great spot for him. He’s facing a lefty, JP Sears, who has allowed 1.68 HR/9 on a 10.5% barrel rate — 11.4% to righties — while Judge has made a ton of noise with his 30.4% barrel rate versus LHP. In Yankee Stadium, we should wanna take this projection and sprinkle it around.

All projections referenced are accurate at the time of writing but subject to change.

The strikeout projections aren’t great to attack today, but we’ve seen that outs are projected pretty high by PrizePicks for us to attack. And we can sprinkle around some nice DEMON boosts for hitters. I like a high-volume night with normal bankroll standards. Just don’t get overexposed to any hitter projections, as there are a lot for us to play to which we will want exposure.

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About the Author

AlexSonty
Alex Sonty (AlexSonty)

Alex Sonty is a professional DFS and poker player and also serves as a part-time political science professor in Chicago, IL. He’s been playing fantasy sports since 1996 and entered the DFS realm in 2014, pivoting from high-stakes cash games to mid-stakes MLB and NFL tournaments in recent years. He is a Chicago Tribune, SB Nation, and FanGraphs alum, while holding a J.D./M.A. and L.L.M. from DePaul University. Follow Sonty on Twitter – @AlexSonty