FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Saturday 9/26/20

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, which starts at 7:05 p.m. EST.

Pitchers to Target

This is a pretty blah pitching slate.

My top arm as well as our model's top pick is Brandon Woodruff ($9,300 on FanDuel). Woodruff is taking on a St. Louis Cardinals offense that ranks a middling 19th in wOBA (.310). Woodruff has a 3.38 SIERA and 30.5% strikeout rate across 65 2/3 frames in 2020. He's thrown exactly 100 pitches in two of his last three starts, so the workload is there.

Luis Castillo ($10,400) sets up nicely for tournaments as his salary and matchup (at the Minnesota Twins) should keep the masses away. Castillo has massive upside, though, thanks to his 31.0% strikeout rate, 15.7% swinging-strike rate and 3.36 SIERA. While Minnesota's offense is scary, Castillo can plow through any lineup when he's on, and his 31.1% hard-hit rate and 58.5% ground-ball rate can help minimize the damage.

Normally Aaron Civale ($9,600) would be a solid choice in a prime spot against the Pittsburgh Pirates, but Civale is going to be on a pitch count tonight as the Cleveland Indians prep for the postseason. I'm not going to mess with that.

On the flip side of that contest, Joe Musgrove ($8,400) is showing signs of his long-awaited breakout, pitching to a 3.74 SIERA, 31.7% strikeout rate and 13.8% swinging-strike rate. His 10.6% walk rate is ugly, but his career walk rate is only 5.9%. Cleveland sports the fourth-worst wOBA (.303).

Stacks to Target

Chicago White Sox

Jon Lester is striking out just 14.5% of right-handed hitters this year, and while he's given up only two earned runs across his past 17 frames (three starts), it's mostly a magic trick as he's struck out just two batters in his past 11 innings.

The Chicago White Sox will send a bunch of righties at Lester today, and they carry a slate-best (as of Saturday morning) 5.23 implied total.

Jose Abreu ($4,000), Tim Anderson ($4,000) and Yoan Moncada ($3,300) will likely be in first three spots in the lineup, and all of them will hit from the right side. Luis Robert ($3,100) offers a big-time power/speed combo, and Edwin Encarnacion ($2,800) has a long history of mauling southpaws.

Atlanta Braves

The Atlanta Braves are facing rookie right-hander Tanner Houck, and Atlanta owns a stackable 4.92 implied total.

The big issue with the Braves is how many high-salary guys they have as five of their sticks are listed at $3,800 or more. That makes them tough to jam in, but you can either dip down to one or two of their value bats or use Atlanta for two- or three-man stacks.

Ronald Acuna ($4,500), Freddie Freeman ($4,300) and Marcell Ozuna ($4,400) will likely hit 1-2-3. Ozzie Albies ($4,100) and Dansby Swanson ($3,800) are also up there in salary but can pop in this spot. Austin Riley ($2,700) and Adam Duvall ($3,200) prodive some cap relief and aren't bad dart throws at a tater.

Houston Astros

Kyle Gibson has been a pretty decent hurler for the past few seasons, but his numbers have dropped in 2020 as he's struggled to a 4.81 SIERA, 19.5% strikeout rate and 10.1% walk rate. We have a lot of flexibility here with Gibson allowing a .362 wOBA to lefties and a .367 wOBA to righties.

I like a 3-4-5 pairing of Michael Brantley ($3,100), Alex Bregman ($3,800) and Kyle Tucker ($3,400). Of course, leadoff man George Springer ($4,100) is firmly in play whenever we're stacking Houston, and Josh Reddick ($2,500) is a low-salary way to get exposure to this lineup.