MLB Daily Fantasy Helper: Saturday 8/19/17

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.

Pitchers to Target

High-Priced Pitchers

Chris Sale ($11,500 on FanDuel): Last night, the baseball gods were none too kind to two of the game's best hurlers. We saw Max Scherzer unexpectedly get scratched and hit the disabled list mere hours before his start, and then Corey Kluber left midway through his game with an ankle injury. While both situations sound mild in the grand scheme of things, let's hope the gods are more forgiving to our star pitchers tonight. Chris Sale has been right there with those two as one of the most dominant flamethrowers this season, checking in with the best SIERA (2.49) and strikeout rate (36.9%) among qualified starters. As good as the New York Yankees offense has been, they haven't shown as much punch against southpaws, against whom their active roster has just an 89 wRC+ and 27.6% hard-hit rate. The Bronx Bombers have just a 3.34 implied team total. Sale is your unquestioned top pitching play of the evening.