FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Friday 10/2/20
Between a very suspect postponed game in Chicago, and the Padres forcing a Game 3 against the Cardinals, we're down to four teams fighting for the final two spots in the divisional round.
As it's been all week, the two games are spread far apart, with Marlins-Cubs getting underway at 2:08pm ET and Cardinals-Padres going at 7:08pm ET.
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!
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.
Note that the Padres haven't announced their Game 3 starter yet.
| Pitcher | Salary | L/R | Opp. | SIERA | K% | BB% | Opp. K% | Opp. wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yu Darvish | $11,000 | R | MIA | 3.14 | 31.3% | 4.7% | 24.2% | 92 |
| Jack Flaherty | $9,700 | R | @SDP | 3.89 | 28.8% | 9.4% | 20.6% | 128 |
| Sixto Sanchez | $7,600 | R | @CHC | 4.18 | 20.9% | 7.0% | 25.3% | 97 |
Let's check out the top spots on today's slate.
Pitchers
While we don't have an official starter announced for San Diego yet, they're pretty much in an all-hands-on-deck bullpen situation, so the above trio should be the only guys under consideration for your lineups.
And all three are indeed viable. Yu Darvish ($11,000) would've been the top dog on Thursday's slate, and he retains that honor here, while Sixto Sanchez ($7,600) makes sense as a value play.
As noted yesterday, Sanchez performed poorly down the stretch but demonstrated fantastic potential earlier in the season. He induced grounders at a 58.0% clip and produced a 12.8% swinging-strike rate. Given his recent walk issues, he's a boom-or-bust choice, but is your only real avenue towards a high-salary hitting stack.
Jack Flaherty ($9,700) slots in between those two, boasting a 28.8% strikeout rate but also drawing a brutal matchup against a Padres lineup that woke up in a big way last night. On a two-game slate, you pretty much have to keep Flaherty in mind by default, but he was inconsistent over nine starts, and his only notable FanDuel scores came in two starts against... Pittsburgh.
Hitters
With just four teams at our disposal, let's face it, pretty much everyone is in play, but the Padres, Cardinals, and Cubs are all firmly ahead of the Marlins.
The Padres are heads and shoulders above the other three offenses, so they would be my first choice even in a difficult matchup against Flaherty.
Although Flaherty's peripheral numbers were still pretty good, this will easily be the strongest lineup he's faced in 2020. You could argue he didn't see an above-average offense at all this season between the Brewers, Pirates, Tigers, Cubs, Indians, and Royals -- and yet he still came away with a 4.91 ERA. Flaherty failed to shut down Milwaukee in two of his last three starts, and it's telling that St. Louis opted for Kwang-Hyun Kim and Adam Wainwright in Games 1 and 2.
Fernando Tatis Jr. ($4,300) and Manny Machado ($4,000) are the top bats are their respective positions, although you probably won't be able to fit in both if you're starting Darvish. Luckily, the rest of the lineup is fairly inexpensive, and Mitch Moreland ($2,800) is one of the better values to consider. Five of the six home runs Flaherty gave up this year came of left-handed bats.
With the Padres forced to cobble together a bullpen game, the Cardinals could very well have the best matchup, so you can consider stacking both sides of this game. Only Paul Goldschmidt ($3,800) has a high salary, with the rest of the bunch coming in at $3,100 and below. This frankly isn't the most exciting team in terms of power, so this is probably one to just mix and match some variations and hope you hit the right combination.
For the Cubs, it's all about whether Sixto Sanchez can throw strikes -- he recorded a 12.5% strikeout rate and 14.1% walk rate over his last three starts. Sanchez's high ground-ball rate lowers the chances of dingers, but we can't be that picky on a small slate. The top of the order has decent power potential between Ian Happ ($3,200), Anthony Rizzo ($3,400), Willson Contreras ($2,800), and Kyle Schwarber ($3,000).
Lastly, the Marlins are purely a contrarian play in a brutal spot against Darvish. It will take guts to go with a full stack, but they'll see the lowest roster percentages in large-field tournaments. Chances are they'll be missing Starling Marte ($2,500), who is day-to-day with a hand injury, so Corey Dickerson ($2,800), Jesus Aguilar ($2,800), and Brian Anderson ($2,900) are your best bets.
