FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Wednesday 7/17/19

Although tonight's most-expensive main slate hurler finds himself in a tough spot, some of the mid-range arms that follow are in some awfully tempting matchups. Hitting remains plentiful as usual during these warm summer months, though we'll have to keep an eye on the weather, with thunderstorms expected on the East Coast in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

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! And don't forget to take a listen to The Solo Shot podcast with Jim Sannes, who breaks down the MLB daily fantasy slate each day.

On that note, let's highlight some of the top options for today's FanDuel main slate.

Pitchers to Target

High-Priced Pitchers

Mike Clevinger ($9,400 on FanDuel): Gerrit Cole ($11,400) is far and away tonight's highest-priced pitcher, with no other player exceeding even $10k on the night. His massive 37.4% strikeout rate gives him a fantastic ceiling, but he draws a particularly undesirable opponent in the Angels, making it much more difficult to get on board with his exorbitant price tag. While he may still be worth considering at likely lower ownership in tournaments, you can find similar upside at a more palatable price in Mike Clevinger. Missing much of the season due to injury, it's been a bit of a bumpy ride for Clevinger over his six starts, but he seems to be back on track after two promising outings in July, particularly after getting up to 92 pitches in his last start. The small sample size could be inflating his stats a bit, but it's easy to be drawn in by the 39.7% strikeout rate and 16.4% swinging-strike rate he's produced, and he's already exceeded 50 FanDuel points three times. But best of all, he's facing the lowly Tigers, one of our favorite matchups for right-handers. In that split, Detroit's active roster ranks last in wRC+ (78) and hands out strikeouts at a 24.7% clip. Even if we drop Clevinger's strikeout rate to his career average (26.5%), that's more than enough to cash in on this money spot.