FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Monday 10/12/20
The two-game baseball slate for Monday starts at 4:07 with the Tampa Bay Rays looking to get to a 2-0 series lead over the Houston Astros followed by Game 1 of the National League Championship Series between the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers.
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 FanDuel main slate. Below are tonight's projected starters with their 2020 stats. Opposing team strikeout rate and wRC+ date now show this year's splits against a given pitcher's handedness using up-to-date active rosters, per FanGraphs.
| Pitcher | Salary | L/R | Opp. | SIERA | K% | BB% | Opp. K% |
Opp. wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walker Buehler | $9,600 | R | ATL | 3.80 | 28.6% | 7.5% | 23.1% | 125 |
| Max Fried | $8,800 | L | LAD | 4.32 | 22.3% | 8.5% | 20.7% | 113 |
| Charlie Morton | $8,000 | R | HOU | 3.97 | 24.7% | 5.9% | 19.8% | 102 |
| Lance McCullers | $7,500 | R | TB | 3.95 | 24.7% | 8.8% | 26.4% | 104 |
Let's check out the top spots on today's slate.
Pitchers
Despite Walker Buehler's top salary, he isn't numberFire's top projected pitcher for today's two-game slate. Buehler is projected for 28.1 FanDuel points against the Braves. Instead, it's actually the other favorite, Charlie Morton, projected to lead with 33.1 FanDuel points, a pretty sizable gap. This is despite facing the lowest strikeout rate of an opponent's active roster against a starter's handedness. A big boost for Morton is the win expectation (0.41), compared to Buehler's 0.30.
The underdog pitchers on the hill are pegged for right around 25 FanDuel points, meaning it's all pretty tight, all things considered, and popularity should dictate a lot of our decision-making on such a small slate. Still, from a median outcome, that puts Morton tops, given the salary relief relative to Buehler.
Despite the lower strikeout rate from Morton relative to Buehler, they're all pretty close in swinging strike rate: 12.3% for Buehler, 12.1% for Morton, 11.4% for Lance McCullers, and 11.2% for Max Fried.
Buehler should still offer the highest floor, with Morton as the better option for saving salary. McCullers stands out as the pivot when first looking to underdogs, given the Rays' strikeout rate.
Hitters
Given how pitcher breaks down, naturally the first place to look for bats is the Dodgers against Fried, the lone lefty getting the nod. Those stacks, for me, would rotate around Justin Turner ($3,100) at his affordable salary. Turner has a 111 wRC+ against lefties this season with a .333 wOBA. Mookie Betts ($4,300) is numberFire's top projected hitter for the day. We'd have to turn to lefties Corey Seager ($3,900), Max Muncy ($3,500), and Cody Bellinger ($4,000) if we want to stack the top half of the lineup, but Will Smith ($2,900) would offer a lot of relief if he hits fifth.
We shouldn't even overlook the stack on the other side of that game, as the Braves boast the top team wRC+ against the handedness of the opposing pitcher. My model puts Freddie Freeman ($4,200) as the beset splits-based matchup on the board with Marcell Ozuna ($4,100) not that far behind when it comes to hitting righties. With Ronald Acuna ($4,400) at the top of the lineup, it'll be hard to build a full stack, but the Braves bats could be a way to differentiate a bit, given their status as underdogs.
Some of the top splits-based value plays look to be Turner ($3,100), Smith ($2,900), Austin Meadows ($3,200), Michael Brantley ($3,000), Yulieski Gurriel ($2,700), and Ji-Man Choi ($2,500).
