FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Opening Day

The wait is finally over -- it's Opening Day!

And that, of course, means an entire season of daily fantasy baseball awaits us. Here's to a fun and profitable 2018!

Before we get started, note that FanDuel's roster slots are a little different this year, combining catcher and first baseman into one position and adding a new utility slot. That means we'll have more lineup flexibility than ever before, and stacking whomever you want will be that much easier to accomplish. If you haven't already, be sure to check out our piece on how to tackle these changes.

Now, onto the task at hand! Our daily helper will be 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's main slate.

Pitchers to Target

High-Priced Pitchers

Clayton Kershaw ($11,700 on FanDuel): One of the unique aspects of Opening Day is that we have way more aces going on the mound than on your average Thursday in, say, June. While that gives us more elite options than usual, the safest one remains our old standby, the great Clayton Kershaw. Back issues have become a concern for Kershaw the past couple seasons, and he didn't quite have the punchout power of Chris Sale or Corey Kluber in 2017, but it's hard to argue with his pristine overall track record. Despite missing more than a month with a strained back last season, Kershaw still submitted a stellar 3.04 SIERA, 29.8% strikeout rate, and 4.4% walk rate over 27 starts. Tonight's opponent, the San Francisco Giants, have an improved lineup that still doesn't strike out much, but they aren't the scariest bunch, and they possess a slate-low 2.67 implied team total. Add in the fact that Kershaw is a big home favorite against Ty Blach, and it's hard not like him as the top dog in cash games.