FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Wednesday 7/13/22

On Wednesday, pitching is rather deep for a nine-game slate, but that also means fewer clear-cut stacks to fill out the rest of our lineups. Only two offenses have implied totals above five runs tonight.

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 today's main slate.

Pitchers

Shane McClanahan ($11,500): McClanahan doesn't have a cupcake matchup versus the Red Sox, but if you can make the salary work, there's no reason to overthink this.

This season, the dynamite lefty leads all qualified starters in K-BB rate (31.1%), strikeout rate (36.0%), SIERA (2.19), and xFIP (1.98), and if all that wasn't enough, he has a top-10 ground-ball rate (50.7%) as the cherry on top.

Even with the Rays typically holding his pitch counts to the mid-to-high 90s -- he's hit 100 just once all year -- those absurd numbers have allowed him to have surgeon-like efficiency on the mound.

He's now gone 11 straight games with a quality start, helping him to at least 40 FanDuel points in every outing over that stretch while cracking 50 five times. Across this period, he's allowed more than one earned run only once -- and it was a mere two runs.

Boston has one of the league's better offenses, but McClanahan's simply been too dominant for that to worry us. The Sox have just a 3.01 implied total at Tropicana Field, and it wouldn't be the least bit shocking to see yet another strong performance from the Tampa ace.

Cristian Javier ($9,700): McClanahan is a no-brainer play, but he'll obviously restrict your hitting options in tournaments, so we're going to need some alternatives in certain builds.

Luckily for us, there's plenty of upside to be found elsewhere. Shohei Ohtani needs no introduction at a cool $1,000 below McClanahan, while Javier is also in play at an even better $1,800 discount.

Both are great pivots, but let's touch on Javier here, who draws the better matchup in this head-to-head duel.

While both the Astros and Angels are above-average offenses, they're opposites when it comes to strikeouts. The Angels' active roster carries a massive 28.4% strikeout rate versus right-handed pitching this year, which is easily the league's highest.

Considering Javier already has a 34.1% strikeout rate to begin with, his ceiling is through the roof in this spot, and he demonstrated that against the Halos a couple of starts ago by piling up 14 strikeouts on his way to 70 FanDuel points.

Facing the same squad again in such a short timeframe isn't necessarily ideal, but that's a chance worth taking when the matchup provides this much potential. The main issue for Javier is his 9.0% walk rate, and his performances fluctuate wildly when he allows multiple free passes.

Given the matchup and his occasional control problems, the Houston righty likely has a wider range of outcomes than the other high-upside hurlers tonight, but he's worth the risk in GPPs. Javier becomes even more enticing if Mike Trout takes a seat after being lifted early with back spasms yesterday.

Luis Severino ($9,300): While Jon Gray is an intriguing value at $9,000 against the lowly Athletics, it shouldn't be too hard to find $300 to hop up to Severino in a plus spot versus the Reds.

The Yankees couldn't be more pleased with Severino's post-injury campaign, as he's put together 3.28 SIERA, 27.9% strikeout rate, and 6.8% walk rate over 15 starts, which is eerily similar to how he performed from 2017-18.

The punchouts haven't been there for him over his last two appearances, but Cincinnati isn't a bad matchup to get back on track, owning the sixth-highest strikeout rate (23.8%) versus righties. Their current roster only has a 93 wRC+ in the split, as well, and all of this unsurprisingly results in a low implied total (3.18).

McClanahan, Javier, and Ohtani have a big leg up on Severino in strikeout rate, but the matchup keeps the Yankees veteran in the running tonight.

Stacks

San Diego Padres

Despite an underwhelming performance on Tuesday, the San Diego Padres lead the slate with the highest implied total (5.82) yet again tonight, and they get another crack at having a blow-up game at Coors Field.

Regression has gradually come for Chad Kuhl, who's now allowed four or more earned runs in three of his last four outings. Even with an inexplicable complete-game shutout against the Dodgers, he's posted a 4.88 ERA over this stretch.

That ERA falls in line with Kuhl's underlying numbers, which are mediocre-to-poor across the board through a 4.85 SIERA, 16.9% strikeout rate, and 8.9% walk rate.

His 36.5% ground-ball rate isn't exactly a deterrent for home runs, either, and he should really be allowing closer to 1.50 dingers per nine innings as he has in each of the past three campaigns.

Give a bump up to lefties in the lineup -- Kuhl has a 5.01 xFIP in the split -- but like the past couple of nights, it really boils down to trying to fit in Manny Machado ($4,500) and then everyone else. Jake Cronenworth ($3,700) remains the only other guy with a restrictive salary, though he's projected to bat leadoff ahead of Machado, which is valuable in and of itself.

If you're rostering McClanahan or want to spend up on a different stack, forgoing Machado and Cronenworth for any other combination of Padres is all too easy with everyone at salaries of $3,100 and lower. Luke Voit ($3,100) is probably the best non-Machado one-off as the team leader in barrels.

New York Yankees

Even with last night's flop, San Diego figures to remain popular, and hopefully, they steal some attention away from the Yankees, who should also be popular.

Yes, New York makes yet another appearance on this list, but it's hard to ignore them against a meh lefty like Mike Minor. Long gone are the days of Minor being a competent MLB starter, and things have gone south in a hurry this season.

Over seven starts, right-handed batters are obliterating Minor, and his peripherals show a 5.75 xFIP, 16.2% strikeout rate, 8.5% walk rate, and 29.8% ground-ball rate in the split. He's already allowed a dozen home runs -- at least one in every game -- and nine have come off righties.

Aaron Judge ($4,200) and Giancarlo Stanton ($3,800) are two of the top overall plays on the slate, and then just work in whichever fellow righty sticks you want between the likes of DJ LeMahieu ($3,400), Josh Donaldson ($3,100), and Gleyber Torres ($3,000).

Los Angeles Dodgers

We see a fairly big drop-off after those first two stacks, which could make it trickier to be contrarian.

I would normally love to back the Chicago Cubs in a stellar spot versus Spenser Watkins, but the Wrigley Field winds aren't cooperating today, blowing in at roughly 11 mph.

Instead, let's check out the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have a 4.60 implied total despite facing a solid pitcher in Adam Wainwright.

Wainwright is having a typical Wainwright season, so this won't be a walk in the park, but he also isn't elite in any area, leaving open the possibility of a team like the Dodgers putting together some big innings.

The right-hander has just a 20.9% strikeout rate in same-sided matchups, and while he's getting grounders versus lefties (50.3%), the strikeouts take a hit (18.1%) and the walks double (8.4%).

Seeing as this is the Dodgers and those are fairly even splits, this is definitely a stack where you can target any part of the order. Obviously, the top half takes priority when possible, but you can go bargain-bin hunting amongst what could be as many as five different plays at salaries below $3,000.