MLB premium

FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Wednesday 10/2/19

Despite being slight underdogs on the road, can Tommy Pham and the Rays get some runs on the board against Sean Manaea tonight?

The MLB playoffs got off with a bang in Tuesday's National League Wild Card Game, with the Washington Nationals coming through with a thrilling come-from-behind victory to knock off the Milwaukee Brewers. Now the American League takes center stage as the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics go toe to toe in their wild card matchup. Like last night's contest, this isn't expected to be a high-scoring affair, with an over/under set at just 7.5 runs.

For those unfamiliar with the single-game daily fantasy baseball format, scoring is identical to its full roster cousin, except you only roster hitters and lineups consist of five flex spots. The one twist? One of the five roster spots is your designated "MVP," who receives 2-times his total fantasy points, along with an "All-Star" slot that gets 1.5-times the points. Naturally, it's crucial that you choose your MVP and All-Star carefully if you want to be at the top of the leaderboards when it's all said and done.

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

High-Priced Plays

Matt Olson ($8,500): With Charlie Morton coming off another fantastic campaign, and Sean Manaea dominating down the stretch after missing most of the season to injury, runs could be hard to come by for both offenses tonight. The Athletics get the slight nod in implied team total (3.99 to 3.51), but both totals aren't anything to write home about at pitcher-friendly Oakland Coliseum.

Really, your roster construction may just come down to leaning heavily on one side and hoping they happen to go off, or taking a hodgepodge of power hitters to try to snag a few solo shots in a low-scoring game.

It's hard to find much of an advantage against the likes of Morton, but Matt Olson will have the platoon advantage, and Morton allowed more hard contact (36.8%) and fly balls (33.0%) to lefties this season. For Olson's part, he showed massive power against right-handers in 2019, posting a .288 ISO off a 53.3% hard-hit rate and 43.6% fly-ball rate. His prowess in the split is nothing new, either, owning a career 143 wRC+.

If you're stacking the Oakland side -- or just looking for power one-offs -- the right-handed sticks of Matt Chapman ($8,000), Mark Canha ($6,500), Marcus Semien ($9,000), and Ramon Laureano ($7,000) are all potential home-run threats in same-sided matchups, carrying ISOs of .249, .251, .240, and .239, respectively, this season.

To read all premium content, upgrade to a Premium account with numberFire

If you're not a Premium subscriber, it takes just a few seconds to sign up. You'll get access to all of our insider information, game projections, handicapping advice, DFS tools, advanced statistics, and more.

Log In Go Premium