FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Thursday 7/12/18

Thursday's slate leans heavily on an abundance of elite pitching, and while one guy still stands out above the rest, there's plenty of room to get creative in tournaments. On the flip side, that means hitting is sorely lacking on this seven-game slate, with only the Boston Red Sox showing an implied team total above 5.00.

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 Pitchers

Max Scherzer ($12,000 on FanDuel): Lately, it seems like practically every night we've been treated to a glut of high-upside hitting spots, and there's been an ongoing temptation to pay down at pitcher more often to gain access to those alluring bats. Well, this is decidedly not one of those slates. Therefore, we shouldn't have any qualms with paying Max Scherzer's hefty price tag as tonight's top hurler. Scherzer has curiously been less dominant of late, with an uncharacteristic misstep against the lowly Miami Marlins his last time out. Still, there's little reason to think it wasn't simply an off-night, and he still holds a fantastic 2.62 SIERA, 35.4% strikeout rate, and 6.4% walk rate that most pitchers can only dream of. Only the great Chris Sale bests Scherzer in SIERA and strikeout rate this season. We should expect Mad Max to get back on track against a modest New York Mets lineup holding a slate-low 2.92 implied team total.