FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Tuesday 9/7/21

Tuesday's slate has a little bit of everything, with enticing high-upside pitching, Coors Field, and a plethora of other inviting stacks.

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Let's check out the top options on tonight's main slate.

Pitchers

Blake Snell ($10,100): It scares me to place Snell here, but everything's been clicking lately, and he faces a modest Angels lineup. Since the beginning of August, Snell has put up a 2.81 SIERA, 38.8% strikeout rate, and 8.6% walk rate, and the Padres have completely removed any limitations on his workload, as he's exceeded 100 pitches in five of those six outings. Snell does have a 12.8% walk rate for the year, so it's always possible he runs into control trouble, but both his recent form and high pitch counts should give us more confidence than before. Expectations are also quite low for the Angels, who check in with a 2.70 implied total tonight.

Gerrit Cole ($11,300): Cole has a difficult matchup against the Blue Jays, which makes him a tougher sell at this salary, but he's been lights out since returning from the COVID-19 injured list. Over those four starts, he's produced a 2.15 SIERA, 40.6% strikeout rate, and 4.2% walk rate with FanDuel scores of 73, 55, 46, and 47 points. Honestly, despite the tough spot, I don't think it's unreasonable to put Cole as the top overall option. In terms of both season-long numbers and recent results, no one can touch Cole on this slate.

Aaron Nola ($9,000): Nola's results have been all over the place lately, submitting an absolute stinker against the Nationals his last time out (9 points) while also posting a whopping 57 points just a couple of starts before that against the Padres. There hasn't been any noticeable dip in his underlying numbers, though, and for the year, he's showing an excellent 3.33 SIERA, 29.4% strikeout rate, and 5.5% walk rate. This could be a "buy low" opportunity on Nola, and his matchup versus Milwaukee isn't one to shy away from.

Others to Consider: Max Fried ($9,300), Zac Gallen ($7,900)

Stacks

San Francisco Giants: The Giants are at Coors Field against one of the weakest pitchers on the board, allotting them a truly massive 6.99 implied total. I'd say we've found the chalk stack.

The opposing hurler is Chi Chi Gonzalez, who comes in with a 5.28 SIERA, 12.9% strikeout rate, and 40.2% ground-ball rate. He doesn't get strikeouts or grounders, and he owns weak splits versus lefties and righties alike. Matchups don't get much better than this, and that's before mentioning that this game is at Coors Field.

To top it all off, the Giants' salaries aren't even that high as a team, as only Kris Bryant ($4,100) has one above $3,500. He's a great add, of course, but we can get plenty of pop from guys like Brandon Belt ($3,300), Buster Posey ($3,300), LaMonte Wade Jr ($3,400), Brandon Crawford ($3,300), and Mike Yastrzemski ($3,500). Tommy La Stella ($2,700) is an easy value play if he bats high in the order, too.

Between the matchup, depth of this offense, and reasonable salaries, this is an easy team to stack from top to bottom, and given the popularity we should expect them to see, rostering lower-order bats might be a way to avoid having too obvious a lineup build in tournaments.

Los Angeles Dodgers: J.A. Happ was surprisingly holding his own since being acquired by the Cardinals, but that came to a screeching halt in his last start, with the Reds dumping seven runs on him, including two dingers, in just one inning pitched. That sounds a whole lot more like the Happ we've seen for most of this season, and there's every reason to think the Dodgers can get to him early tonight.

Right-handed batters have been teeing off on Happ this season, as he's showing a poor 5.51 xFIP and 17.0% strikeout rate in the split while allowing a sky-high 47.2% fly-ball rate. Between the low strikeout rate and all those fly balls, Happ is coughing up 2.13 home runs per nine innings to righty sticks.

Much like the Giants, we don't have to be too picky here, and Trea Turner ($4,300), Mookie Betts ($4,000), Justin Turner ($3,800), Chris Taylor ($3,400), and Will Smith ($3,400) are the righties we ought to see in tonight's lineup.

Max Muncy ($3,900) doesn't get the platoon advantage, but it's not like Happ is anything special versus lefties (4.49 xFIP). so Muncy and his fantastic .277 ISO are fair game, too.

Cincinnati Reds: Adrian Sampson has logged just 11 1/3 big league innings this season, so it's hard to read too much into those numbers, but there's plenty of other evidence to suggest that the Reds are in a great spot tonight.

In Triple-A this season, Sampson produced a lackluster 5.56 xFIP and 16.9% strikeout rate across 81 2/3 innings. And when we last saw him in the Majors (2019), he recorded a similar 5.33 xFIP and 17.9% strikeout rate. Sampson also struggled mightily with home runs that year, giving up 2.08 per nine innings.

Joey Votto ($3,500) and Nick Castellanos ($3,800) are the top guys you want, while Mike Moustakas ($2,300) and Tyler Naquin ($2,300) offer us enticing salary-savers with the platoon advantage.

Others to Consider: Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Royals, New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, San Diego Padres