Despite some notable names listed amongst Monday's starting hurlers, this is a tricky pitching slate that could warrant paying down on the mound tonight. The bats will be plentiful, though, with the Yankees and Indians drawing favorable matchups, and the Cubs benefiting from a windy evening at Wrigley Field.
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! 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 main slate.
Pitchers to Target
High-Priced Pitcher
Lucas Giolito ($10,700 on FanDuel): Clayton Kershaw ($11,000) and Lucas Giolito are the only pitchers with five-digit salaries tonight, and it's tough to get super excited about either one. While Kershaw is having an excellent year from a real-life perspective and should have a solid floor against the Diamondbacks, this is a tough price to stomach for a guy with a fairly modest 23.6% strikeout rate -- he hasn't hit double-digit strikeouts in any of his 12 starts and has reached 50 or more FanDuel points just once. Meanwhile, Giolito may own the highest strikeout rate on the board (30.9%), but he draws a brutal matchup on the road against the Red Sox, whose active roster boasts a 112 wRC+ against righties and is showing a 5.04 implied total. However, despite the obvious risks, Giolito is arguably the more appealing choice in tournaments of the two, as his punchout upside still grants him a high ceiling if he can navigate this tough lineup. Most of Giolito's best performances have naturally come against lesser opponents, but he did squash the mighty Astros for a massive 64 FanDuel points in May, so stranger things have happened.