FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Wednesday 6/8/22

The weather has been a headache this week, and it looks like Baltimore, Cleveland, and Atlanta will be a handful of plays to check back on later tonight. But if everything goes according to schedule, this is another main slate with appealing options for both pitcher and stacks.

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!

Let's check out the top options on today's main slate.

Pitchers

Aaron Nola ($10,200): Nola has continued his trend of alternating between good and bad starts, but his underlying metrics are pristine through a 2.63 SIERA, 30.2% strikeout rate, and 3.8% walk rate.

Home runs have been part of the problem for the right-hander this year, but it looks like that's largely been due to poor luck against same-sided batters, as he has an excellent 52.7% ground-ball rate versus righties, yet has given up 1.87 home runs per nine innings off an elevated 24.1% homer-to-fly-ball rate.

Nola has arguably the best 2022 resume on the board, and this isn't a bad spot against the Brewers, who check in with a modest 3.85 implied total. Milwaukee has a 23.5% strikeout rate versus righties this season, which is tied for the seventh-worst among active rosters.

Shane Bieber ($9,700): Nestor Cortes continues to look fantastic in 2022, but he's at a slate-high $11,000 salary, which is a tougher sell when we have plenty of high-upside alternatives below him, including the aforementioned Nola at an $800 discount.

Bieber's another option, and while his velocity isn't what it used to be, he's still getting the job done and has even recorded double-digit strikeouts in two of the last three starts.

Overall, he's now at a 3.46 SIERA, 25.1% strikeout rate, and 6.5% walk rate, and he's made up for the lower-than-usual strikeout rate by regularly pitching deep into games, logging quality starts in seven of the last eight.

This is also a plus matchup for Bieber to boost his punchouts against the Rangers, another team with a 23.5% strikeout rate against right-handed pitching. Texas has also struggled as a whole in the split (89 wRC+), contributing to a low 3.38 implied total.

Nathan Eovaldi ($9,200): The Angels took the Red Sox into extra innings last night, but they still couldn't get over the hump, failing to win for their 13th consecutive game. To make matters worse, Mike Trout left with a groin injury, and while it isn't expected to be serious, he appears likely to sit tonight.

With the Angels already missing Taylor Ward and Anthony Rendon, this once mighty offense is starting to get a bit thin, and their active roster has the league's highest strikeout rate (26.4%) versus righties.

It all boils down to a great spot for Eovaldi, and he's a reasonable value at this mid-range salary. In a way, he represents a poor man's Aaron Nola, putting together a 3.10 SIERA, 26.0% strikeout rate, 3.9% walk rate, and 45.3% ground-ball rate this year.

Stacks

New York Yankees

The days of Chris Archer as an ace pitcher are long gone, and as time has passed, the strikeouts have declined and the dingers have piled up.

The ERA hasn't caught up yet, but this could be the worst version of Archer yet. Over 10 starts, he's produced a 4.74 SIERA, 18.6% strikeout rate, 9.9% walk rate, and 36.4% ground-ball rate, which checks just about all the boxes we want for stacking. And while he's predictably showing worse marks versus lefties (5.25 xFIP), he's only been marginally better against righties (4.66 xFIP).

This is a mostly top-heavy New York Yankees lineup these days, with Aaron Judge ($4,500) and Giancarlo Stanton ($3,500) leading the way, followed by guys like Anthony Rizzo ($3,700), DJ LeMahieu ($3,300), and Josh Donaldson ($3,000).

Joey Gallo ($2,300) has been a colossal disappointment this season, and he's been relegated to batting ninth the past couple of games. But he did slug a home run a few nights ago and is still carrying a 16.5% barrel rate when he does make contact, so don't rule him out for a wrap-around stack.

Boston Red Sox

Reid Detmers' start got pushed back to tonight, so we can carry over just about everything I said yesterday into this space. However, I doubt the Boston Red Sox fall through the cracks tonight as one of just five teams with an implied total above 4.60 tonight.

Other than being a left-hander, Detmers doesn't look a whole lot different than Archer, posting a 4.66 SIERA, 17.4% strikeout rate, 7.9% walk rate, and 36.2% ground-ball rate over his nine outings.

And we also find similarities between the Sox and Yankee lineups, as most of the thump in Boston's offense comes from the first five bats in the order.

J.D. Martinez ($3,700), Xander Bogaerts ($3,900), Trevor Story ($4,200), and Rafael Devers ($4,000) are the big boppers while Enrique Hernandez ($3,000) rounds things out as a value leadoff man. As noted on Tuesday, Detmers is unremarkable against lefties, so Devers should be viewed on equal footing as the righty sticks.

Finally, our equivalent for Joey Gallo is Bobby Dalbec ($2,000), another struggling power hitter slotted low in the order. It's been a trying time for Dalbec, but we know the power is somewhere in there from a guy with a career .233 ISO. Having the platoon advantage against a low-strikeout lefty is the perfect matchup to get him going.

San Francisco Giants

Among the other top stacks, the Atlanta Braves (5.66 implied total) are facing Jared Koenig in his MLB debut and the Los Angeles Dodgers (4.72) draw a past-his-peak Johnny Cueto.

But let's take a look at the San Francisco Giants (5.28), who could have the best matchup on the slate against Antonio Senzatela.

You see, Senzatela has an 8.5% strikeout rate in 2022, and we're now eight starts into his campaign. Incredibly, that shakes out to just 14 strikeouts over 35 innings, and he's yet to log more than 3 in any start.

On top of that, his ground-ball rate has dipped way down to 42.3%, and while that hasn't led to the influx of home runs that we would expect, he's now coughing up line drives 31.4% of the time, which sure isn't helping his cause, either.

Senzatela's xFIP is worse versus lefties (5.09), but considering his strikeout rate is below 9% against both sides of the plate, this is an easy pitcher to attack all around.

Joc Pederson ($3,500) and Mike Yastrzemski ($3,600) are the top power lefties, and Brandon Crawford ($3,300) and Tommy La Stella ($2,800) will also have the platoon advantage. Among the righties, Evan Longoria ($2,800) is showing nice pop since coming back in mid-May, turning a 20.0% barrel rate into a .257 ISO thus far, and Wilmer Flores ($3,000) continues to bat high in the order on a nightly basis.