FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Thursday 8/30/18

Thursday may not be a slate riddled with aces, but after a hitter-friendly Wednesday, we're flipping the script on an evening that leans heavily on the pitching side. Only the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have implied team totals that exceed five runs, so they'll almost certainly be tonight's most popular offenses.

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! And don't forget to take a listen to The Solo Shot podcast with Jim Sannes, who breaks down the MLB daily fantasy slate each day.

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

Pitchers to Target

High-Priced Pitchers

Justin Verlander ($11,200 on FanDuel): Justin Verlander may not be having the best month, but he still holds far and away the top numbers on the board tonight, with a 2.81 SIERA, 33.1% strikeout rate, and 4.5% walk rate. He's suffered from an uncharacteristically poor 6.42 FIP over his last four starts, but he's still produced a 29.4% strikeout rate over that span, and lackluster performances against the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics can certainly be forgiven. However, he now faces the Los Angeles Angels for the second week in a row, which isn't ideal against a squad with a 110 wRC+ versus righties. However, there are a lot of new faces in this lineup these days, and the Angels are showing a slate-low 2.98 implied team total. Justin Upton could come off the DL today, but if he remains out, Verlander remains in play based on his overall elite marks. Still, this is a large salary to pay against a lineup that still has the imposing Mike Trout, so Verlander doesn't shake out as a must-play tonight.