FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Tuesday 4/4/23
We're getting another 11-game slate tonight, and this is one of the season's first offerings with multiple teams showing implied team totals above five runs.
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.
Pitching Breakdown
Max Scherzer ($10,800) was just okay in his 2023 debut and saw a slight dip in velocity, but he still logged a quality start with 6 strikeouts and a 14.3% swinging-strike rate, so we probably don't have much to be worried about.
Scherzer is still one of the few candidates who could go 100 pitches at this stage in the season, and the Brewers have the fifth-lowest implied team total (3.60) tonight. Additionally, Milwaukee's active roster has the fourth-highest strikeout rate (23.7%) versus righties dating back to last year, potentially bumping up Scherzer's upside even more. He's arguably the night's top pitching play.
Luis Castillo ($10,100) looked sharp last week, amassing 6 punchouts (17.1% swinging-strike rate) and no walks over six scoreless innings. He also allowed just one hit. It's all a promising sign after last year's bounce-back campaign when Castillo posted a 3.35 SIERA, 27.2% strikeout rate, and 7.3% walk rate.
The opposing Angels aren't getting a lot of love from bookmakers (3.12 implied team total), but this by no means a cupcake matchup against an active roster showing a 121 wRC+ versus righties since the start of 2022. Castillo's pitcher-friendly ballpark could even the playing field, though, so don't rule him out in tournaments.
Shane Bieber ($11,000) and Framber Valdez ($9,800) should be able to advantage of what should be two of the league's worst offenses in 2023.
Bieber didn't allow any runs in his Opening Day start -- but three strikeouts over six innings isn't exactly moving the needle, either. That amounted to just a 13.0% strikeout rate, and while his 11.5% swinging-strike rate was a little more encouraging, it was still well below last year's mark (13.8%).
His velocity was similar to what he had last year when he put up a 25.0% strikeout rate, so it's likely that more productive fantasy days are ahead. But it's fair to be concerned with his ceiling at this slate-high salary on a night with plenty of alternatives.
At the same time, it's also very hard to imagine Bieber totally letting us down against the lowly Athletics, who have a slate-low 2.78 implied team total.
It can be an uphill battle for Valdez to put up tournament-winning DFS scores due to his modest strikeout rate, but the Tigers are the ideal team to push him up the ranks. The southpaw recorded a 3.14 SIERA, 23.5% strikeout rate, and 66.5% ground-ball rate in 2022, and a 70.6% ground-ball rate in his first 2023 start suggests we'll see more of the same. The fact that we can roster Valdez at a fairly nice discount below someone like Scherzer is a nice bonus, as well.
Julio Urias ($10,500) rounds of the night's aces. Urias typically isn't one of my favorite DFS plays because he never quite reaches elite levels when it comes to strikeout rate, but no one would be surprised to see him shut down the Rockies in Dodger Stadium. Urias had a 3.66 SIERA, 24.1% strikeout rate, and 6.0% walk rate in 2022, and he scored 40 FanDuel points on just 79 pitches in his first start this season.
For a value play, Andrew Heaney ($8,800) is worth having on your radar, although I also wouldn't blame you for passing over him when we have all the aforementioned options.
In 2022, Heaney displayed a head-turning 2.46 SIERA and 35.5% strikeout rate in what was easily his best campaign in recent memory, but he still had his usual issues with the long ball, giving up 1.73 dingers per nine innings. Now with the Rangers, it remains to be seen if the positives carry over into 2023. For what it's worth, Baltimore's active roster was below average against lefties last season, and they have a middle-of-the-pack implied team total (4.03).
Hitting Breakdown
I went over three of my favorite hitting matchups in today's stacks piece, so check that out if you want to see why the Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox, and St. Louis Cardinals should be among your top considerations. The Blue Jays are arguably the night's top stack, but their star hitters will probably be popular in GPPs.
But we have an array of appealing possibilities on Monday, so let's highlight a few more teams of intrigue.
The Tampa Bay Rays join the Blue Jays and Cardinals as one of three teams with an implied team total cracking five runs, and all three will benefit from positive hitting weather. They'll face right-hander Chad Kuhl, who's pretty consistently been a player to attack over his career.
In 2022, Kuhl produced a 4.80 SIERA, 17.8% strikeout rate, 9.4% walk rate, and 36.6% ground-ball rate, and he wasn't particularly strong against lefties and righties alike. That sure checks a lot of boxes for us, and that's even more the case because he allowed 1.64 home runs per nine innings. Those dingers weren't even the byproduct of playing for the Rockies, either, as he actually coughed up more home runs on the road than at Coors Field.
Admittedly, the Rays aren't an offense that blows us with a whole bunch of superstars, but Randy Arozarena ($3,800) and Wander Franco ($3,700) are the only batters with high salaries -- both of whom are off to hot starts -- so we shouldn't have too much trouble coming up with stacking combinations.
Yandy Diaz ($2,900) is a value leadoff man, while Brandon Lowe ($3,100) and Luke Raley ($2,100) will both have the platoon advantage. Raley likely has some risk of getting pulled for a pinch-hitter late, but he's demonstrated promising power in the minors and just slugged two home runs on Monday.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros are two others to give a long look at.
The Dodgers are a popular stack on most nights, so their inclusion is partially due to them maybe seeing lower roster percentages due to other teams having more obvious matchups and higher implied team totals. They're facing German Marquez, who's typically put up pretty good numbers in spite of playing for the Rockies but took a step back in 2022.
Last season, Marquez posted just a 19.3% strikeout rate, his lowest mark since debuting in 2016. He especially struggled with left-handed batters, walking them at a 9.9% clip and allowing a 37.2% hard-hit rate. The right-hander was solid in his 2023 debut, so perhaps he rebounds this year, but the Dodgers could give him fits regardless. Freddie Freeman ($3,700) and Max Muncy ($3,200) are the top lefties to build around.
Finally, the Astros get Detroit's Matt Manning, another right-hander with some lefty issues. In the split, he gave up a 4.69 xFIP, 16.2% strikeout rate, and 9.2% walk rate in 2022. Outside of maybe Yordan Alvarez ($4,300), Houston may not draw a lot of eyeballs, either, so consider rostering him and/or Kyle Tucker ($4,100). Manning managed just a 20.3% strikeout rate and gave up a 43.4% fly-ball rate and 37.2% hard-hit rate in same-sided matchups, so the Astros' righties aren't in a bad spot themselves.
