FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Monday 7/5/21

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.

Pitching Breakdown

There's one standout pitcher from a salary standpoint, and that's Brandon Woodruff ($11,400), who draws the New York Mets. Woodruff leads all probable starters with a 3.11 SIERA and a 31.1% strikeout rate this season. The Mets are only 22nd in expected wOBA on the season and have an active-roster strikeout rate that's 11th-highest in the Majors, as well. Woodruff seems well worth the salary for tonight's slate.

There's a tier drop off after Woodruff, and that tier behind him is small. It would probably just include Joe Musgrove ($9,600), Max Fried ($9,100), and Dylan Cease ($8,400).

Musgrove's projection is only 0.2 points shy of Woodruff's, according to numberFire's model. Musgrove's matchup with the Washington Nationals means he's facing a team that is just middling in strikeout rate this year (17th in active-roster strikeout rate), which should elevate a bit with Musgrove's 30.0% strikeout rate -- tied for second-best on the slate. Musgrove's 3.22 SIERA is also second, not too far off the pace of Woodruff's mark (3.11). He's the clear second option.

The $7,000 range comes with a potential option on the mound, and that's Rich Hill ($7,000) against the Cleveland Indians. Hill's SIERA is just okay at 4.25, but he does have a stellar -200 money line attached to this game, making his win odds high. Hill rates as numberFire's second-best value behind only Tylor Megill ($6,200), who is up against the high-strikeout Milwaukee Brewers.

Megill himself is viable if we want to avoid the Woodruff chalk and go with an entirely different lineup build.

Stacks to Target

Chicago Cubs
The Chicago Cubs enter the night with the highest implied run total of the night by far at 5.87 runs.

They'll be facing lefty Matt Moore, who boasts a weak 5.21 SIERA, a lowly 17.6% strikeout rate, and a slate-worst 21.4% called-strike-plus-whiff rate.

The Cubs' bats should feature plenty of righties, namely Willson Contreras ($2,600), Kris Bryant ($3,400), Javier Baez ($3,500), and Patrick Wisdom ($2,600) inside the top five, which they ran out yesterday against a lefty.

Combine all this with a great hitting environment -- winds nearing 15 miles per hour to right-center field and temperatures in the mid 80s -- and the Cubs are an easy stack to want to build around.

Atlanta Braves
The Atlanta Braves' implied run total of 5.14 is top-three on the slate. Given the matchup with Chase De Jong, it's understandable.

De Jong has recorded a 4.76 SIERA and has not gone deeper than five innings in any of his six starts this season. He can generate some strikeouts but has had two games with sub-15.0% strikeout rates, and overall, his K-rate is 20.3%.

This is a high-salaried stack, but if we're not going with Woodruff, we don't have much to worry about.

Ronald Acuna ($4,400), Freddie Freeman ($3,800), Ozzie Albies ($3,500), Austin Riley ($3,000), and Dansby Swanson ($2,600) are all in play in the top five, and we can even consider Guillermo Heredia ($2,400) and Abraham Almonte ($2,300) in the six and seven spots, too, if we need.

Acuna (.428 expected wOBA), Freeman (.411), Albies (.355), Riley (.356), and Swanson (.328) are all above the MLB average in expected wOBA (.319).

Philadelphia Phillies
While we can look first at the Cubs tonight, we don't have to ignore the other side of that game.

The promising hitting conditions apply to the Philadelphia Phillies, as well, and they get a good matchup of their own against Zach Davies. Davies has a slate-worst SIERA of 5.61 across his 363 batters faced this season, and he also is second-worst on the slate in strikeout rate (15.2%) and just 18th in called-strikes-plus-whiff rate (25.4%).

The Phillies' bats are a lot more affordable for our salary caps, too, and would pair well with a Woodruff lineup.

Odubel Herrera ($2,500), Jean Segura ($2,800), J.T. Realmuto ($2,800), Bryce Harper ($3,800), Andrew McCutchen ($2,900), and Rhys Hoskins ($3,000) are all viable, though we ideally would be locking in Harper and pivoting one way or the other with the stack.

The Phillies' implied run total is 5.13, fourth-best on the slate.