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FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Thursday 7/19/18

The Cardinals and Cubs get the second half of the MLB season underway Thursday night, giving us a nice little DFS appetizer before the rest of the league returns tomorrow. Who should you consider rostering on tonight's single-game slate?

We don't get a full slate of baseball games until Friday, but if you need to scratch that DFS itch, we still have a matchup between the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs to hold us over tonight. If you've never played the FanDuel single-game format, the general scoring remains the same, but you use an abridged roster of five batters and no pitchers. This shakes out to one infielder, one outfielder, two utility spots, and a special "MVP" who nets you 1.5 times the normal fantasy points.

Our daily helper is available every day to analyze FanDuel's main slate and help give you a starting point when you're building lineups. Be sure to also incorporate our great tools into your research process. Whether you're looking for daily projections, the latest starting lineups and weather, or batting and pitching heat maps to find the best matchups -- we've got you covered!

On that note, let's highlight some of the top options for today's one-game FanDuel slate.

Hitters to Target

Matt Carpenter ($8,500): Kyle Hendricks isn't the most exciting guy to attack due to his generally solid batted-ball marks, but he's had a much more difficult time containing lefty bats. This season against lefties, he's only inducing ground balls at a 43.6% clip, to go with a modest 19.7% strikeout rate and 9.4% walk rate. The resulting damage comes in at a 5.30 FIP and .350 expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA). Unfortunately, this being the Cardinals, we don't have much in the way of left-handed bats to choose from, but Matt Carpenter should reside at the top of the order, as usual. Carpenter continues to enjoy a strong 2018 campaign, posting a 50.5% hard-hit rate and 50.6% fly-ball rate against righties, helping him to a .388 wOBA, .430 xwOBA, and .270 isolated power (ISO).

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