FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Thursday 8/1/19

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.

Pitchers to Target

High-Priced Pitchers

Clayton Kershaw ($11,400 on FanDuel): In Gerrit Cole -- more on him in a second -- and Kershaw, we've got two big dogs in their own tier tonight. Kershaw's numbers aren't as good as Cole's, but he's a bit cheaper and has a much better matchup, hosting the San Diego Padres. San Diego carries the seventh-highest strikeout rate against lefties (25.4%), and while they sport the 12th-best wOBA in the split (.325), they traded away Franmil Reyes, a guy who mashes southpaws. Our models give the Los Angeles Dodgers a 62.4% chance of winning, the highest clip of the main slate, and Kershaw has gone at least six innings in every single outing this year.