MLB Daily Fantasy Helper: Thursday 6/9/16

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. With the split slates, we'll be focusing exclusively on the main slate beginning at 7 pm Eastern.

Pitchers to Target

High-Priced Pitchers

Gio Gonzalez ($9,000 on FanDuel): There aren't many (if any) pitchers on this slate who inspire a whole lot of confidence, but Gio Gonzalez may be the lone exception. Over the past month, Gonzalez has a 3.13 SIERA thanks to his 26.4% strikeout rate and 5.6% walk rate. That has come against a few teams that struggle against lefties, but the Chicago White Sox are firmly average when facing a southpaw. They're 14th in wRC+, and outside of Jose Abreu and Todd Frazier, there aren't a lot of sticks in that lineup that will scare you. Although Gonzalez's results over his past few starts haven't been great, the peripherals have, and he could be in line to progress tonight.