FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Sunday 8/2/20

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

Well, if you thought Saturday's pitching slate was thin, you're in for a treat today. This might be the worst pitching slate of the year so far, and we have just two guys priced above $7,900.

Jon Lester ($8,900 on FanDuel) is the most expensive arm, and he has a sweet home matchup with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates have been steamrolled by Yu Darvish and Tyler Chatwood in back-to-back days, and they carry a 27.0% strikeout rate thus far in 2020. Lester isn't someone we'd normally gravitate to due to his declining stats the last few years, including swinging-strike rates of 9.0% and 8.5% the previous two seasons. But on this slate, Lester is one of the better options out there, and our model ranks him as the slate's top arm.

I think I prefer Yonny Chirinos ($7,900) to Lester, especially when you factor in the $1,000 discount. Yonny gets a solid draw versus the Baltimore Orioles, and with strikeout rates of 20.3% and 21.5% the past two seasons, he offers a bit more upside than Lester does. The biggest downside here is that Chirinos threw only 68 pitches in his first start of the year, so unless that number jumps up in this outing, it's hard to feel too good about Chirinos' floor or ceiling, even in a nice spot.

I feel bad even recommending anyone else -- that's how ugly this pitching slate is -- but Dylan Cease ($5,800) is worth a look against the Kansas City Royals. Cease showed strikeout upside in 2019, recording a 24.9% strikeout rate, but it came with a 10.7% walk rate. You're going to have to turn a blind eye to some stuff no matter which arm you select, though, and Cease could get punchouts against a poor Royals offense.

Stacks to Target

The Colorado Rockies and San Diego Padres

Once again Coors is a place to zero in on tonight as the Colorado Rockies-San Diego Padres clash holds a laughable 13.5-run over/under. It's Antonio Senzatela against Zach Davies. Given the price of pitching on this slate, it shouldn't be hard to stack this game, and I expect ownership to be sky-high on Coors. Six of the top seven bats, according to our projections, are in this game. Not everyone is priced up. Trent Grisham ($3,300), Ryan McMahon ($3,300) and Sam Hilliard ($2,800) are cheap and will have the platoon advantage. Grisham might end up as the slate's highest-owned stick.

New York Mets

Given how popular Coors is likely to be, ownership should be capped on any other stacks, and I think a four-man stack of a non-Coors team and then going for a pair of two-man Coors stacks (one each from San Diego and Colorado) makes a lot of sense for tournaments -- though I'll also certainly have some lineups where I have four-man stacks of both the Rockies and Padres. You just need to hit on your non-Coors stack as well as pluck the right Rockies and Padres. Easier said than done, obviously.

Both sides of the New York Mets-Atlanta Braves game are appealing as each team owns a 5.50 implied total. Let's start with the Mets, who will see righty Kyle Wright. Wright has only 28 MLB frames to his name, but it's been ugly to the tune of a career 5.86 SIERA, 40.2% hard-hit rate and 16.2% walk rate.

The Mets' salaries make them ideal to use alongside Coors studs as just Pete Alonso ($3,600) is above $2,900. I'll be locked in on lefties Michael Conforto ($2,900), Brandon Nimmo ($2,700), Jeff McNeil ($2,800) and Robinson Cano ($2,600). They're all projected to be in the top-six of New York's lineup, and you'll still have plenty of cash for Coors even if you pay up for Lester.

Atlanta Braves

As mentioned above, the Braves have a gaudy 5.50 implied total against rookie David Peterson. The lefty was solid in his debut last week against the Boston Red Sox, but oddsmakers aren't buying in.

The Braves are a lot more expensive than the Mets are, which could lower their ownership a tad, but Atlanta has a lineup that should be brutally tough on southpaws. Ronald Acuna ($3,600), Ozzie Albies ($3,500), Marcell Ozuna ($3,600) and Dansby Swanson ($3,300) will all hit from the right side. And I also love cheaper righties Austin Riley ($2,300) and Adam Duvall ($2,200), both of whom offer nice power at a bargain price.