MLB Daily Fantasy Helper: Saturday 7/1/17

The beauty of daily fantasy baseball is that the top targets are different each and every day. Whether it's the right-handed catcher who destroys left-handed pitching or the mid-range hurler facing a depleted lineup, you're not going to find yourself using the same assets time after time.

While this breaks up the monotony, it can make it hard to decide which players are primed to succeed on a given day. We can help bridge that gap.

In addition to our custom optimal lineups, you can check out our batting and pitching heat maps, which show the pieces in the best spot to succeed on that slate. Put on the finishing touches with our games and lineups page to see who's hitting where and what the weather looks like, and you'll have yourself a snazzy looking team to put up some big point totals.

If you need help getting started on that trek, here are some of the top options on the board today. We'll be focusing exclusively on the main slate, which begins at 4:05 p.m. EST and includes six games.

Pitchers to Target

Jharel Cotton ($7,400 on FanDuel): The pitching on tonight's main slate (which is not to be confused with the Main Slate II) is pretty terrible, but Cotton has some positives in his corner. His biggest plus is a sweet matchup with the Atlanta Braves, a team which sits 28th in wOBA (.312) over the past 30 days. Cotton's 19.9% strikeout rate is decent, and he'll be toeing the rubber in Oakland, which is 22nd in park factor and 28th in home run factor over the last three years. With no great options, we're going to have to gamble, and Cotton's as good of a roll of the dice as anyone. Editor's note: since publication, Cotton has been scratched from his scheduled start.