FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Tuesday 5/11/21

We follow up a light Monday slate with a meaty 12-gamer, and it comes with a pretty wide selection of upside arms to sift through. On the hitting side, Coors Field is back on the menu today, but overall, this isn't a slate with especially high implied totals.

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

Walker Buehler ($10,800): After three straight starts with exactly four strikeouts in each, Walker Buehler has rattled off 9, 10, and 8 in the three outings since, posting a 36.0% strikeout rate over that stretch. He's now up to a 26.9% strikeout rate for the season, putting him much closer to the guy we've come to expect in recent campaigns. He's also demonstrating impeccable control with a mere two walks. Between Buehler's track record and a matchup versus a Seattle active roster with a 25.4% strikeout rate versus righties, he's a strong candidate as the top overall choice. The Mariners have a 2.86 implied total tonight.

Freddy Peralta ($8,600): Buehler is the high-floor choice, but if you're shooting for upside in tournaments, we've got some intriguing names to consider. The Freddy Peralta experience is in full effect this season between a 40.8% strikeout rate (yay!) and 13.1% walk rate (boo...), and you just never know what you're going to get in a given outing. But the ceiling is obvious when he's got everything going in his favor, and the Cardinals could be an ideal matchup (3.30 implied total), as their roster is showing just a 7.7% walk rate (27th) and 89 wRC+ (23rd) versus righties.

Dylan Cease ($8,300): Dylan Cease is another wild card via a 32.0% strikeout rate paired with a 12.0% walk rate, but he gets our attention after posting back-to-back FanDuel scores of 61 and 58 points. This is a tough matchup versus Minnesota (107 wRC+ versus righties), but the strikeout potential can't be overlooked at this salary, and the Twins have a rather modest 3.68 implied total. Note that Cease has issued three walks in five of six starts, though, further showing the risks.

Others to Consider: John Means ($11,000)

Stacks

San Diego Padres: The Colorado Rockies haven't confirmed on their website that Antonio Senzatela will be their starter, but that's the expectation following yesterday's rainout. That means everything from yesterday applies again tonight, easily making the Padres a top stack on a slate otherwise lacking many obvious spots.

We're not getting a ton of value in the Padres' lineup, though, so you may need to opt for someone like Peralta or Cease in tournaments to take full advantage of hitters suchs as Fernando Tatis Jr. ($4,700), Manny Machado ($4,100), or Trent Grisham ($4,000).

Note that the weather still isn't perfect in Colorado, but things are looking much more promising compared to last night.

Washington Nationals: Chase Anderson enters the day with a 5.30 SIERA, 17.8% strikeout rate, 11.9% walk rate, and 36.3% ground-ball rate, and his splits have been poor against both sides of the plate. A lack of punchouts and grounders to go with too many walks sounds pretty perfect for a stack.

The recent return of Juan Soto ($4,000) really makes this a much more fun team to roster again, and Josh Bell ($3,200) and Kyle Schwarber ($2,700) give us two more power bats with the platoon advantage. Trea Turner ($4,000) needs no explanation atop the order, and Josh Harrison ($3,400) has been manning the two-hole lately as a low-strikeout bat.

Kansas City Royals: Matt Boyd has gotten surprisingly positive results (2.27 ERA), but it looks awfully suspect when we see a 4.67 SIERA and 17.3% strikeout rate. Between a .240 BABIP and 2.1% home-run-to-fly-ball rate, it looks like he's just getting lucky more than anything else. Add in that Boyd's returning from a knee issue -- plus a lackluster Detroit bullpen behind him -- and there's a lot to like here for the Royals.

Whit Merrifield ($3,700) is the only Kansas City hitter with a salary higher than $3,200, making this an easy lineup to stack up, and most of them will have the platoon advantage as right-handed bats. Salvador Perez ($3,100), Carlos Santana ($3,200), Jorge Soler ($2,600), and Hunter Dozier ($2,600) form a solid grouping of low-salaried bats with some pop.

Others to Consider: Toronto Blue Jays, Philadelphia Phillies