FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Wednesday 9/21/22

A nine-game main slate awaits us this Wednesday evening at 7:05 pm ET. We have a narrow selection of high-upside arms to choose between, and some familiar teams lead the way for our top stacks.

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!

Let's check out the top options on today's main slate.

Pitchers

Robbie Ray ($10,000): The Athletics continue to be a matchup to attack down the homestretch, and tonight is no exception with Ray.

Oakland's active roster has an 87 wRC+ versus lefties, and outside of a handful of veterans, this is pretty much a glorified Triple-A lineup. They have a 2.94 implied total on Wednesday night.

For the season, Ray has put up a 3.52 xFIP, 27.7% strikeout rate, and 7.7% walk rate over 29 starts. The southpaw has stumbled in back-to-back outings, but he's generally taken care of business in soft matchups like this. He's logged double-digit strikeouts seven times this season, and two of those have come against the A's.

Ray's main issue has been giving up home runs, but both the weak opponent and dinger-suppressing Oakland Coliseum should prevent that from being much of an issue. It all makes the left-hander the top play tonight.

Triston McKenzie ($9,600): This is theoretically a plus matchup for McKenzie against a White Sox lineup that's below average against righties, but tonight's forecast is showing high winds blowing out to center, and that's a little scary for a pitcher with a 49.3% fly-ball rate.

Chicago also isn't a great opponent for strikeouts, with their active roster showing a 20.4% punchout rate in the split. That being said, McKenzie blew away the White Sox for a season-high 14 strikeouts last month, so we can't discount him entirely.

McKenzie was a nightmare to roster in 2021 when he had a double-digit walk rate, but he's slashed that to 6.4% this season and improved results have followed. Overall, he's dropped his xFIP to a much more respectable 3.93 while still producing a 24.9% strikeout rate.

Ray's higher strikeout rate and cupcake matchup clearly puts him ahead of McKenzie, but the latter has enough going on to place him under consideration for GPPs.

Blake Snell ($9,400): Snell's been doing his boom-or-bust routine as usual, but the booms have come pretty frequently over the last few months. Dating back to the start of July, the left-hander has posted 46 or more FanDuel points in 8 of 14 starts with a high-water mark of 58 (twice).

That's why he should be on your radar despite a brutal matchup versus the Cardinals. St. Louis' active roster owns the league's best wRC+ versus lefties, and they rarely swing and miss (17.0% strikeout rate). Their projected lineup is expected to be entirely made up of righty sticks, too.

Luckily, Snell has a 31.7% strikeout rate versus righties, so he could still post a big score if he's dealing. It's also a good sign that the Cards only have a 3.57 implied total despite all their success.

The opponent makes Snell even riskier than usual, but in terms of upside, he still rates as one of the night's better plays.

Stacks

Los Angeles Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers have the slate's highest implied total (5.26), even exceeding both teams at Coors Field. That says a lot about how Madison Bumgarner's season is going.

A shell of his former self, Bumgarner checks in with a 4.87 xFIP and 15.8% strikeout rate, and he's allowing a 41.3% fly-ball rate and 39.3% hard-hit rate. He isn't even putting the clamps down on lefties anymore (5.08 xFIP), so there's nothing to prevent us from stacking any part of the Dodgers' lineup.

Mookie Betts ($3,500) and Trea Turner ($4,100) are the obvious headliners, but pretty much anyone is fair game here, including any lefties who crack the order. Arizona's bullpen also has the worst xFIP among active rosters, further enhancing this spot.

San Francisco Giants

While the San Francisco Giants' bats didn't go completely nuts at Coors yesterday, it was a positive sign that they didn't opt for pinch-hitters in the latter innings. Pinch-hitting should also be less of a concern tonight, too, as German Marquez is a right-hander and the Rockies only have one lefty reliever on their roster.

The Giants are the only other team with an implied total cracking five runs (5.01).

Marquez is usually a rock-solid pitcher, but he's taken a significant step back in 2022. He's posted a pedestrian 18.4 % strikeout rate and 8.2% walk rate, and his ground-ball rate has dropped to 47.0%. Both sides of the plate can be stacked, but the left-handed bats get the edge (4.45 xFIP).

Lefties LaMonte Wade Jr ($3,000), Joc Pederson ($2,700), and Mike Yastrzemski ($3,100) are the top lefty options, and they have very friendly salaries for Coors Field. In fact, none of the Giants' hitters have salaries above $3,100 tonight, making it all too easy to complete the full stack.

Note that there are some weather concerns at Coors, so that's something to monitor later in the day.

New York Yankees

Roansy Contreras has gotten pretty good results this season, but his underlying numbers say that he's been overachieving. Over 83 1/3 innings, the 22-year-old has a 4.49 xFIP, 20.7% strikeout rate, 9.8% walk rate, and 38.4% ground-ball rate. That's pretty meh across the board.

The Pirates also yanked Contreras after just 55 pitches in his last start despite being in the midst of a positive outing, so that could mean plenty of frames for the New York Yankees to feast on a suspect Pittsburgh bullpen. Oh, and it just so happens that the Pirates have the second-worst xFIP among active rosters behind the D-backs.

You're starting with Aaron Judge ($5,300) whenever you can, of course, and then it's mostly a matter of generally sticking with the top half of the order, with priorities going to Anthony Rizzo ($3,700) and Giancarlo Stanton ($3,100).