FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Thursday 3/28/19

Opening Day is finally here -- and that means it's time to get back to the daily fantasy baseball grind!

FanDuel's first main slate of the year is a daytime affair that locks at 1:05pm ET and goes 14 games deep, excluding only the night match between the Boston Red Sox and Seattle Mariners. The Opening Day slate is always a unique beast because naturally a majority of teams will have their best pitcher on the mound, leaving us with fewer weak arms to attack with our bats. Of course, not every team's "best" hurler is anyone to fear, so while we may have a slightly narrower set of bats to hone in on, there are still some intriguing matchups to exploit.

As of this writing on Wednesday, it doesn't sound like there are any major weather concerns, but there might be some rain in Oakland and Kansas City, so be sure to double-check their respective forecasts before lock, which should be updated here by Thursday morning.

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 ($11,700 on FanDuel): We have aces galore on Thursday, and while there's nothing wrong with opting for guys like Jacob deGrom and Justin Verlander, what better way to start off your MLB DFS season than rolling with the guy who led the league with 300 strikeouts last season? If you played a lot of daily fantasy baseball in 2018, chances are Scherzer was a familiar face on your rosters every fifth day, and 2019 shouldn't be any different. Mad Max is seemingly only getting better with age, coming off back-to-back season with a strikeout rate above 34%, and his SIERA has exceeded 3.00 just once in the past six campaigns. His opponent, the New York Mets, may have a few new faces this year in Robinson Cano and Wilson Ramos, along with the recently promoted top prospect Peter Alonso, but only the most unforgiving matchups should give us any pause with Scherzer. This isn't doesn't figure to be one of them, as the Mets were rather pedestrian against righties in 2018, posting a 100 wRC+ while striking out at a 22.0% clip.