MLB Daily Fantasy Helper: Thursday 6/29/17

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. We've also got our Solo Shot Podcast, which breaks down the MLB daily fantasy slate each day. Here's today's episode.

If you need help getting started on that trek, here are some of the top options on the board today. With the split slates, we'll be focusing exclusively on the main slate beginning at 7 pm Eastern.

Pitchers to Target

High-Priced Pitchers

Clayton Kershaw ($12,500 on FanDuel): It isn't easy to afford Clayton Kershaw on this slate, but you'll have to do whatever you can to try. Kershaw has increased his upside over his past seven outings by racking up a 33.2% strikeout rate with a 5.4% walk rate, helping him push his SIERA down to 2.85. Home runs have been a bit of a bugaboo in this same stretch, but Kershaw has still held batters to a 28.3% hard-hit rate, 23.9% soft-hit rate, and 35.1% fly-ball rate. Additionally, long balls aren't necessarily something in the opposing Los Angeles Angels' arsenal. They generally avoid strikeouts, which does put a cap on Kershaw's ceiling, but everything else aligns to make Kershaw the guy we should covet if we can find the salary to squeeze him in.