FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Tuesday 9/15/20
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 morning.
On that note, let's highlight some of the top options for today's FanDuel main slate. Below are tonight's projected starters with their 2020 stats. Opposing team strikeout rate and wRC+ date now show this year's splits against a given pitcher's handedness using up-to-date active rosters, per FanGraphs.
| Pitcher | Salary | L/R | Opp. | SIERA | K% | BB% | Opp. K% | Opp. wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yu Darvish | $11,200 | R | CLE | 2.98 | 33.6% | 5.1% | 23.6% | 84 |
| Jack Flaherty | $9,800 | R | @MIL | 3.96 | 25.0% | 7.4% | 25.6% | 77 |
| Carlos Carrasco | $9,700 | R | @CHC | 4.02 | 28.3% | 9.8% | 25.5% | 99 |
| Zach Davies | $9,400 | R | LOS | 4.30 | 23.7% | 7.1% | 20.8% | 125 |
| Deivi Garcia | $8,900 | R | TOR | 3.71 | 25.7% | 2.9% | 22.3% | 106 |
| Dane Dunning | $8,000 | R | MIN | 3.97 | 25.9% | 8.6% | 25.2% | 111 |
| Matthew Boyd | $7,900 | L | KAN | 4.27 | 24.4% | 7.5% | 21.8% | 105 |
| Taijuan Walker | $7,800 | R | @NYY | 4.98 | 20.1% | 9.5% | 22.3% | 111 |
| Jake Arrieta | $7,700 | R | NYM | 4.97 | 17.1% | 9.2% | 21.9% | 121 |
| Sean Manaea | $7,600 | L | @COL | 3.99 | 19.8% | 3.5% | 23.8% | 98 |
| Tony Gonsolin | $7,500 | R | @SDP | 3.89 | 25.9% | 5.6% | 20.5% | 137 |
| Madison Bumgarner | $7,000 | L | @LAA | 6.15 | 13.7% | 8.9% | 23.2% | 77 |
| Randy Dobnak | $6,900 | R | @CWS | 4.63 | 13.1% | 6.8% | 25.1% | 109 |
| Rick Porcello | $6,800 | R | @PHI | 4.62 | 19.0% | 5.3% | 20.4% | 99 |
| Antonio Senzatela | $6,500 | R | OAK | 4.83 | 14.8% | 4.9% | 23.3% | 106 |
| Brett Anderson | $6,400 | L | STL | 4.40 | 14.7% | 4.9% | 19.8% | 134 |
| Jose Urquidy | $6,300 | R | TEX | 7.64 | 7.5% | 15.0% | 24.1% | 73 |
| Tyler Anderson | $6,300 | L | @SEA | 5.71 | 15.2% | 8.6% | 25.1% | 69 |
| Jakob Junis | $6,100 | R | @DET | 5.03 | 15.1% | 5.4% | 27.6% | 82 |
| Ljay Newsome | $5,800 | R | SFG | 3.54 | 21.2% | 0.0% | 23.5% | 112 |
| Julio Teheran | $5,600 | R | ARI | 5.65 | 13.8% | 8.9% | 21.2% | 84 |
| Kyle Cody | $5,600 | R | @HOU | 5.50 | 27.5% | 20.0% | 20.7% | 99 |
| Thomas Eshelman | $5,500 | R | ATL | 5.89 | 11.0% | 8.0% | 23.2% | 130 |
| Huascar Ynoa | $5,500 | R | @BAL | 6.19 | 15.1% | 16.4% | 22.1% | 109 |
Let's check out the top spots on tonight's main slate.
Pitchers
Yu Darvish ($11,200) ranks fifth overall among qualified starters in both strikeout-minus-walk rate and SIERA this season, and he gets a plus matchup against Cleveland. He's now logged eight straight quality starts with at least 40 FanDuel points in every one, hitting a high of 61 points twice. He's the number-one guy tonight.
Jack Flaherty ($9,800) makes for a solid runner-up versus Milwaukee, particularly when factoring in his less restrictive salary. The Brewers just haven't gotten the job done against right-handed pitching, with an active roster that ranks 27th in wRC+ and 29th in strikeout rate in the split. Flaherty's had mixed results by his standards this season, but his underlying numbers remain solid, including an encouraging 13.4% swinging-strike rate that's on par with his career average. He got up to a season-high 95 pitches in his last outing, so perhaps he can reach six-plus innings for the first time since his Opening Day start way back in July.
Carlos Carrasco ($9,700) went through a bit of a rough patch in the middle of August, but he's now rattled off three straight starts with exactly 40 FanDuel points apiece. The Cubs continue to be an excellent source of punchouts, so if Carrasco can keep those pesky walks out of the box score, he should put up a top-notch numbers.
It's never easy boarding the Matt Boyd ($7,900) experience. He pretty much defines "boom or bust." And really, it's been a whole lot of busting in 2020, with three of nine starts going for single-digit FanDuel points and his most recent start hitting negative points. Still, before that he notched 40 and 43 FanDuel points in back-to-back turns against the Twins of all teams if you can stomach going here.
Hitters
Oakland Athletics
The Oakland Athletics will be a popular stack tonight, as they check in with a slate-high 6.30 implied total against Antonio Senzatela at Coors Field.
Despite a 3.69 ERA over nine starts, Senzatela's middling 4.83 SIERA and 14.8% strikeout rate don't exactly inspire a lot of confidence, and he's unlikely to see this level of success continue.
A high ground-ball rate is typically Senzatela's best asset, but it's actually dipped to 49.4% this year, and against right-handed batters in particular, he's curiously inducing grounders at only a 41.4% clip.
Furthermore, Oakland largely consists of fly-ball hitters, so they're well-suited to excel here. Matt Olson ($3,900) owns a career .286 ISO with the platoon advantage, so he's easy to like alongside those batting ahead of him in the top half of the order.
In the value range, Sean Murphy ($3,000) will probably bat near the bottom if he starts, but a 12.9% barrel rate is worth investing in. Newly added Jake Lamb ($2,700) has been a non-factor in 2020, but he does have a promising 58.6% hard-hit rate.
Atlanta Braves
The Atlanta Braves have been one of the league's best offenses versus righties, and now they face a right-handers with an 11.0% strikeout rate.
Considering Thomas Eshelman's poor peripherals, it's almost laughable that he has a sub-4.00 ERA, and his .187 BABIP is obviously unsustainable. Dating back to last season, he's posted a 5.67 SIERA and 12.5% strikeout rate over 61.0 innings.
Eshelman probably won't pitch deep into this game (he's thrown fewer than 50 pitches in his last two appearances), but it's not like the Orioles' bullpen is imposing, either. Their active roster owns the sixth-worst bullpen SIERA (4.59) in the league.
A deep Atlanta lineups gives you plenty of options from one through nine in the order. You don't necessarily have to break the bank, too, with guys like Travis d'Arnaud ($3,200), Nick Markakis ($2,600), Adam Duvall ($3,100), and Austin Riley ($2,600).
Los Angeles Angels
It's weird to say that Madison Bumgarner has some of the worst numbers on the board tonight, and he's giving up dingers at an alarming rate of 3.76 per 9.0 innings.
The lefty's 17.4% barrel rate is the fifth-worst in the entire league, and he's bottom-of-the-barrel in just about every other Statcast category. He's averaging just 88.2 MPH on his fastball, a far cry from an already low 91.7 mark in 2019.
The Los Angeles Angels don't have the most amazing lineup for DFS beyond Mike Trout ($4,500) and Anthony Rendon ($4,000), but the rest of the order has salaries of $3k and below, and it's really, really hard to see this ending well for Bumgarner.
Other stacks to consider include the New York Mets, Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Houston Astros.
