FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Friday 4/30/21

We have a gigantic Friday slate on our hands as usual, with 14 games to thumb through, and there shouldn't be any rain to muck things up, either. Some elite aces headline tonight's pitching group, and high winds blowing out at Yankee Stadium help the New York Yankees' bats to one of the highest implied totals on the board.

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 tonight's main slate.

Pitchers

Gerrit Cole ($12,200): When you pair one of the best pitchers in baseball with one of the best matchups, you just go ahead and plug him in, regardless of salary. Gerrit Cole comes in with a 1.74 SIERA, 42.0% strikeout rate, and 2.5% walk rate, while the Detroit Tigers own an 89 wRC+ and 26.5% strikeout rate versus righties going back to last season. Detroit also has a paltry 2.89 implied total. Even with potentially 20 mph winds blowing out tonight, the strikeout upside is too good to pass up.

Shane Bieber ($12,000): The one guy who can hang with Cole's numbers is Shane Bieber, who has a fantastic 2.58 SIERA and 39.3% strikeout rate. A 9.0% walk rate shows that free passes have been an issue at times, but we're really nitpicking here when a guy already has FanDuel scores of 70 and 64 points on the ledger this season. One of those games came against tonight's opponent, the White Sox, showing that Bieber still has absurd upside in difficult matchups. Cole has the easier path to a big game, but Bieber definitely needs to be in your tournament lineups, as well.

Andrew Heaney ($8,700): Following a brutal 2021 debut, Andrew Heaney has been cruising ever since, and the result is a 2.74 SIERA, 36.7% strikeout rate, and 8.9% walk rate that isn't that far off from Bieber's marks. Heaney also draws a plus matchup for strikeouts in the Mariners, who own a 27.5% strikeout rate versus left-handed pitching since the start of 2020. Historically, Heaney struggles with allowing dingers to righty sticks, but Seattle doesn't necessarily have the type of lineup to scare us too much from that front.

Others to Consider: Yu Darvish ($11,000), Pablo Lopez ($8,100), Lance McCullers ($7,400)

Stacks

New York Yankees: As mentioned earlier, we're seeing some very hitter-friendly winds at Yankee Stadium, so the Bronx Bombers are even more intriguing than they already would be against Tarik Skubal. The Detroit southpaw showed some promising peripherals last season, but any positives have quickly evaporated so far this season. His 2021 numbers give us just about everything we want for a stack: a high SIERA (5.72), low strikeout rate (19.3%), high walk rate (13.6%), and low ground-ball rate (21.1%).

Toss in the aforementioned boosts from the wind and venue and a predominantly right-handed lineup against a lefty, and this really all sets up for a huge night at the plate. Outside of Aaron Judge ($3,800) and Giancarlo Stanton ($3,700), everyone else in this lineup remains low-salaried, so you won't have any trouble stacking 'em up from top to bottom. Just know that your fellow competitors will be in the same boat, so the Yankees ought to be very popular.

Toronto Blue Jays: As of this writing, the only team with a higher implied total than the Yankees are the Blue Jays, who also face a lefty in Drew Smyly. While Smyly actually has pretty good underlying numbers going back to 2020, he's up against a slew of tough right-handed bats and has only managed a 5.17 xFIP and 20.0% strikeout rate in the split this season. He's also giving up tons of hard contact, resulting in six home runs over just three starts.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($4,000) and Bo Bichette ($3,700) are both mashing, and the return of George Springer ($3,800) adds another potent slugger to the mix. Randal Grichuk ($3,200) and Marcus Semien ($3,300) give us some mid-range options, while Teoscar Hernandez ($2,500) could be back tonight, giving us a punt power bat.

New York Mets: The Braves and Reds have high implied totals tonight, so they're firmly in play, but for a low-salaried stack that might not get as much attention, the Mets are in a great spot against Chase Anderson. It's no secret the Mets have been off to a slow start, but Anderson owns a 5.12 SIERA, 17.1% strikeout rate, and 10.5% walk rate through four starts, and he's routinely had home run issues dating back to 2018.

Anderson isn't finding success against lefties and righties alike, further giving us a reason to trust New York in this spot. This is also a park factor boost for the Mets away from Citi Field. Pete Alonso ($3,800) is still up there in salary -- but well worth it -- and the rest of the crew comes in at $3,100 and below.

Others to Consider: Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Boston Red Sox