FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Monday 6/20/22

This week's MLB DFS action kicks off with an eight-game slate, a slate that features plenty of big names on the mound. How does that impact our lineup construction today?

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

Gerrit Cole (FanDuel Salary: $10,300) - We've got Shane McClanahan ($11,200), Corbin Burnes ($10,800), Gerrit Cole ($10,300), Yu Darvish ($10,200), and Max Fried ($9,800) all sitting with salaries of greater than $9,500 today.

However, Cole is at the top of the list for me.

Among the 16 main-slate starters, Cole ranks first in hard-hit rate allowed (24.1%) and third in a slew of other stats including strikeout rate (30.6%), called-strike-plus-whiff rate (CSW%; 31.9%), and SIERA (2.87).

He draws a matchup with the Tampa Bay Rays, who rank 20th in both active-roster strikeout rate (23.0%) and wRC+ (100) while sitting 28th in barrel rate (5.8%). Their K-rate bumps up to 24.8% against righties, as well. His strikeout prop sits at 8.5, tops on the slate, too.

My model ranks the four pitchers above $10,000 as Cole, Burnes, McClanahan, and Darvish, but all claim the top four slots tonight, and you should be thinking about upside from any value arms. They'll have to contend with a lot of potential for big outings from the studs.

Max Fried ($9,800) - If we need to save a little bit without losing too much upside, then we should check out Fried against the San Francisco Giants, a team that does rank 7th in active-roster wRC+ (114) and 11th in strikeout rate (21.2%).

Why can we still like him?

He's got a -162 moneyline, for starters, and across the board in fly-ball rate, strikeout rate, walk rate, hard-hit rate, and SIERA, Fried ranks fifth or better among the 16 main-slate starters.

He has no real blemishes statistically; it's just that the matchup isn't pristine. Helping matters: the Giants rank 10th in strikeout rate (23.0%) against lefties.

JT Brubaker ($7,200) - If you're banking on five (or seven to eight, depending on your thoughts about Fried, Logan Webb, and Miles Mikolas) strong pitching options all tanking or think that a value pitcher has elite upside to match the big games from those big names, then Brubaker might be who you're seeking from a sheer strikeout standpoint.

Among the value pitchers, his strikeout prop (5.5, +112 on the over) stands out.

Brubaker has the goods (a 22.3% strikeout rate and a 28.5% CSW%, both ranking 5th on the main slate). The Chicago Cubs active roster strikes out at a 23.2% clip to rank 23rd in the Majors, and that number holds steady (23.3%) against right-handed pitching.

Stacks

Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox lay claim to the top implied run total (5.38) of the night while playing in the lone game with an over/under above 9.0 (it's 9.5 at Fenway).

They'll start the game against Alex Faedo, who has little in the way of promise in his 171 batters faced. He's getting tagged (36.0% hard-hit rate) and allowing fly-balls (44.4%) without getting many strikeouts (19.3%) en route to a 4.40 SIERA. The Detroit Tigers have just an average bullpen by xFIP, as well.

Boston (11th in strikeout rate and 8th in barrel rate) should be able to make good on the matchup.

Over their past seven games, they've led off with either Robert Refsnyder ($2,500) or Jarren Duran ($2,700), who can help with some salary relief to smooth out the rest of the stack that would center on Rafael Devers ($4,400), J.D. Martinez ($3,700), and Xander Bogaerts ($3,400) before getting to Alex Verdugo ($3,100) and Trevor Story ($3,700).

Los Angeles Angels
The big outlier on the mound other than Faedo (and Caleb Kilian over just 41 batters faced in 2022) is Kris Bubic.

Bubic is last on the slate in hard-hit rate allowed (37.0%) and ERA (8.36); even if you adjust the ERA for the underlying data, the SIERA is a still-bad 5.23. It's tied to a 17.9% strikeout rate and a 23.3% CSW%.

That strikeout rate helps us get to the Angels, who have a league-high 26.4% K-rate themselves but project to be middle-of-the-pack there tonight given the matchup.

Taylor Ward ($3,000), Mike Trout ($4,200), and Shohei Ohtani ($3,600) comprise the core of this stack, and then the salary savers come in: Matt Duffy ($2,300), Luis Rengifo ($2,000), and/or Brandon Marsh ($2,500).

Toronto Blue Jays
For the third stack here, I was torn between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Milwaukee Brewers, but I'm going with the Jays against Lance Lynn.

Lynn made his first start of the year a week ago against the Tigers and lasted 4.1 innings (88 pitches). Across those 22 batters faced, he posted an 18.2% strikeout rate (with no walks) and ultimately a 3.66 SIERA. But that was against the Tigers, a team with an active-roster ISO of .098 and a strikeout rate of 25.0% against righties.

Toronto is -- prepare to be shocked -- a better offense than Detroit. Their ISO is .158 against rightes, and they boast a 106 wRC+ in the split.

The salaries are quite reasonble, too, especially if you omit one of the top three -- George Springer ($3,500), Bo Bichette ($3,200), and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($3,700) -- to stack two studs with two values.

That would most likely mean simply going with Teoscar Hernandez ($2,900) and Alejandro Kirk ($2,800) but also considering whoever else gets the nod between Lourdes Gurriel ($2,500), Santiago Espinal ($2,400), Matt Chapman ($2,700), and Raimel Tapia ($2,000) after them.