MLB Daily Fantasy Helper: Monday 7/31/17

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. We've also got our Solo Shot Podcast, which breaks down the MLB daily fantasy slate each day. Here's today's episode.

If you need help getting started on that trek, here are some of the top options on the board today.

Pitchers to Target

High-Priced Pitcher

Luis Severino ($10,100 on FanDuel): From a talent perspective, there's a big gap between Luis Severino and the rest of the pack tonight, and it makes him desirable despite an imperfect matchup with the Detroit Tigers. Severino's 3.30 SIERA is more than a third of a run better than any other starter, and that's when you include Sonny Gray, who may not even wind up taking the hill. This also doesn't fully capture how much better Severino has gotten as the year has progressed. Over his past 13 starts, Severino's swinging-strike rate is 13.7%, and it goes up to 14.8% in his past six. The Tigers love to make hard contact, so Severino's not a lock, but their active roster is 25th in wRC+ against righties. That's enough to justify Severino on this slate.