FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Thursday 4/6/23

Due to multiple games being postponed, we're left with a four-game day slate today beginning at 1:10 pm ET. We do have the first Coors Field slate of the year, though, so that should add a little more intrigue to the afternoon.

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

On such a small slate, only a handful of pitchers stand out today, so let's run through them:

Kevin Gausman ($10,800): Gausman is our lone arm coming in above $10,000, and he didn't disappoint in his first start (43 FanDuel points), logging 7 punchouts over 6 scoreless innings last week against St. Louis. The right-hander produced excellent numbers in 2022, including a 2.94 SIERA, 28.3% strikeout rate, and 3.9% walk rate, easily some of the best overall numbers of the slate.

He'll take on the Royals today, a team whose active roster owns the second-worst wRC+ (85) versus righties dating back to last season. Combine that with Gausman's strong marks, and Kansas City comes in with a slate-low 3.36 implied team total. The Toronto righty is the day's top play.

Lance Lynn ($9,700): Lynn struggled with his control in his 2023 debut against Houston, walking 4 batters in 5 2/3 innings, but he did record 6 strikeouts with a 16.7% swinging-strike rate. While the right-hander had his struggles last season, he finished the year on a high note and ultimately posted a solid 3.35 SIERA, 24.2% strikeout rate, and 3.7% walk rate. He also went 96 pitches last week, making him one of our most likely candidates to hit triple-digit pitches today.

This is a neutral matchup at best against the Giants, but Lynn's credentials are good enough to get him the second-lowest implied total (3.72). The salary discount compared to Gausman could increase his popularity on a Coors slate, though the salaries in Colorado are fairly reasonable today.

Chris Sale ($9,000): If this was the Sale of five or six years ago, he would be the overwhelming chalk against the Tigers at this salary. Instead, the lanky southpaw is a big wild card, with just a dozen starts under his belt since the beginning of 2021.

There were both positives and negatives to his first start. Sale was roughed up for 7 earned runs and 3 bombs over just 3 innings against Baltimore -- but he also produced 6 strikeouts with a 17.6% swinging-strike rate. While the lefty had some poor luck on the BABIP front (.571), he also allowed a whopping 70.0% hard-hit rate and 30.0% barrel rate, so much of the damage was deserved.

Overall, it's simply hard to know how effective Sale will be following all his injuries and setbacks, but the matchup and salary put him in play for tournaments. Detroit's active roster checks in with a 94 wRC+ against lefties since the start of 2022, which is the league's fifth-worst mark.

Hitting Breakdown

Coors Field is the headliner on the hitting side, and the 10.5-run over/under is far and away the slate's highest.

Both the Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals are top stacks -- pretty much by default -- but the Rockies specifically would almost certainly be a top stack even on larger offerings.

That's because they're facing Josiah Gray, a right-hander who's given up 2.41 home runs per 9 innings over 224 1/3 career innings. He was up to his old tricks last week, coughing up three home runs in five innings to the Braves, so we should expect more of the same in 2023.

Gray allows home runs to both sides of the plate, but left-handed batters are in an especially great spot to take advantage. In the split last season, the righty posted a 5.77 xFIP, 23.2% strikeout rate, 15.7% walk rate, and 61.8% fly-ball rate while allowing an absurd 3.38 home runs per 9 innings. Outside of the decent strikeout rate, there's almost nothing going for Gray here.

Charlie Blackmon ($3,400), Ryan McMahon ($2,900), and Jurickson Profar ($2,600) are the three projected left-handed batters we'll see in the lineup, and while none of them are upper-tier power threats, they're easy to like today. Among the righties, C.J. Cron ($4,200) and Kris Bryant ($3,500) are the musts, and Elehuris Montero ($2,600) is an appealing value play after putting up a .199 ISO in 185 plate appearances last year.

Left-hander Kyle Freeland has less glaring underlying numbers, but he was a low strikeout (17.1%) and ground-ball (42.0%) pitcher last year, so we could see the Nats plate some runs, too. Freeland produced just 1 punchout over 6 innings with a 2.7% swinging-strike rate last week, too.

Washington's lineup will be made up of nearly all right-handed batters, and only cleanup hitter Joey Meneses ($3,500) has a salary over $3,000. Lane Thomas ($3,000), Alex Call ($2,500), and Jeimer Candelario ($2,600) should all bat ahead of him on the cheap.

Outside of Coors, the Toronto Blue Jays are arguably the next-best place to look. They'll see Jordan Lyles on the mound, a familiar face for MLB DFS veterans. Lyles wasn't quite the punching bag in 2022 compared to some past years, but he's still someone we'll gladly attack with a potent offense like the Blue Jays.

Lyles had a good result in his opening start, but he also only recorded a pair of strikeouts over 5 1/3 innings, so it wasn't anything to write home about. The right-hander was slightly worse versus lefties (4.55 xFIP) compared to righties (4.27 xFIP) last year, but he was below average in strikeout rate and allowed lots of fly balls in both splits, so we needn't be picky here.

Toronto is a team we can stack from top to bottom, and that's even more the case on a small slate. The stud right-handed bats are no-brainers, but Daulton Varsho ($3,500) is the top lefty in the lineup, so he should be a priority, too. And if you're paying up at pitcher, don't rule out the value lefties at the bottom in Brandon Belt ($2,200), Cavan Biggio ($2,100), and Kevin Kiermaier ($2,300).

If you're looking to be more contrarian, the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox are the other teams to put on your radar, and they're the only others with implied team totals above four.

Chicago will face left-hander Alex Wood, and while he's a solid overall pitcher, he managed just a 22.2% strikeout rate and struggled with dingers against righties in 2022, and the Pale Hose are loaded with right-handed batters.

Boston gets Spencer Turnbull, who's returning from a long layoff following Tommy John surgery. Turnbull was lit up for 7 earned runs and 8 in 2 1/3 innings in his first start back. There was some poor BABIP luck (.727), but he also only produced a 16.7% strikeout rate and 16.7% walk rate.