FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Friday 5/19/23
We end the work week with a dozen games on the main slate. Despite the large offering, it isn't necessarily a night with a ton of slam dunk plays for either pitchers or stacks.
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.
Pitching Breakdown
As is typically the case on a Friday, we have an abundance of games to peruse tonight, but the pitching pool isn't as deep as one would expect. Just three pitchers come in with five-figure salaries, and of that group, only one enters the day with an above-average strikeout rate.
That guy is Joe Ryan ($11,000), who's coming off his third 10-strikeout game of the year and continues to impress across the board. Through eight starts, Ryan has produced a 3.07 SIERA, 29.7% strikeout rate, and 3.6% walk rate, and he's logged quality starts in all but one of those outings.
Perhaps the only thing holding him back from a fantasy perspective is an inconsistent pitch count. While Ryan has reached 100 pitches in three of his last five starts, he's also been pulled at 91 and 87 pitches in the other two despite pitching well.
That being said, it's hard to complain too much about a player who's scored over 40 FanDuel points six times and has reached a ceiling of 58 points twice.
This is a middle-of-the-pack matchup against an Angels team with an active roster sporting a 107 wRC+ and 23.2% strikeout rate versus right-handed pitching, but L.A. has a fairly low higher implied team total (3.85). Given all that Ryan's accomplished to this point, there's a strong case for making him your first choice at pitcher.
The natural pivot from Ryan is Sandy Alcantara ($10,400). Alcantara's 4.91 ERA is a far cry from what we've come to expect from him, but the good news is his underlying metrics aren't that much worse than last year's marks, as he's still putting up a respectable 3.99 SIERA, 22.9% strikeout rate, and 6.5% walk rate. His 13.7% swinging-strike rate is actually significantly higher than his career average (12.1%), too, which is an encouraging sign that his strikeout rate should see positive regression, and we could already be seeing that following back-to-back starts with 9 Ks.
Of course, Alcantara's calling card has never been an elite strikeout rate. His upside typically comes from pure volume as we saw time and again last season when he led the league with 228 2/3 innings. Despite his inconsistencies so far this year, Alcantara's still exceeded seven innings in three of his starts, and he even earned a complete game shutout in April. His pitch count has been on the rise, as well, going 103, 113, and 106 pitches this month.
The Giants have plenty of thump in their lineup, but Alcantara's always done a good job of keeping the ball in the park, and this year is no different (0.88 per 9 innings). Just as importantly, San Francisco's active roster has an upside-boosting 24.4% strikeout rate against righties, which should assist Alcantara in getting that strikeout rate up. We could see high winds at Oracle Park tonight, but at a venue that suppresses the impact of wind, that shouldn't matter much, and that's backed by the Giants' modest 3.82 implied team total.
Bryce Elder ($10,200) is the one other arm cracking $10,000, though he's a distant third in this group. Elder's 3.96 SIERA is over two runs higher than his ERA, and his 20.7% strikeout rate is pretty meh. But he has some appeal as a contrarian play due to a fantastic 56.8% ground-ball rate and a matchup against the whiff-happy Mariners. Seattle's active roster has a 99 wRC+ and 24.9% strikeout rate versus righties, potentially opening a path toward a ceiling game for Elder.
For value plays, Blake Snell ($8,900) and Reid Detmers ($8,100) are viable options.
Make no mistake, Snell has been objectively bad in 2023, and both his strikeout rate (23.5%) and walk rate (13.7%) are the worst we've seen from him in years. And yet, a 13.2% swinging-strike rate remains encouraging, and we've come to expect wild ups and downs from Snell over the course of a season. This isn't the best matchup against a patient Red Sox team, but Boston's top hitters are left-handed, and their 3.73 implied team total is the slate's third-lowest mark.
If you don't want to mess with Snell -- which is completely understandable -- Detmers has much more appealing peripheral numbers despite similar results. The left-hander has also been a tad wild (9.0% walk rate), but his 4.01 SIERA and 26.3% are positives, and he's been perhaps one of the league's unluckiest players due to an astronomically-high .372 BABIP.
This might not be a bad spot for Detmers to turn things around, too. Minnesota's active roster has the third-fewest plate appearances versus southpaws this season, so their early-season struggles against them should be taken with a grain of salt -- but a league-worst 28.1% strikeout rate in the split is still mighty enticing.
Hitting Breakdown
The Houston Astros have a slate-best 5.66 implied team total against left-hander Ken Waldichuk and Oakland's struggling bullpen, so they're one of the first stacks to consider.
Waldichuk checks pretty much all the boxes we want in a matchup, coming in with a 5.37 SIERA, 18.2% strikeout rate, 11.7% walk rate, and 34.3% ground-ball rate, and he's giving up a ridiculous 2.63 home runs per 9 innings. Throw in a group of relievers combining for a 4.89 xFIP, and it's easy to see why Houston's implied team total is so high.
Left-handed batters Yordan Alvarez ($4,300) and Kyle Tucker ($3,100) hit lefties just fine and will be able to take advantage of this A's bullpen, so they're building blocks as two of the Astros' best power bats. The return of Jose Altuve ($3,400) should give this lineup a boost, and he figures to resume his role as the regular leadoff hitter. Alex Bregman ($3,000) and Jeremy Pena ($3,100) are solid values at their respective salaries.
The Texas Rangers have the next-best implied team total (5.33) and are up against right-hander Karl Kauffmann in his MLB debut. Kauffman looks ill-equipped to handle big league hitters, as he's been terrible across 21 Triple-A starts going back to last season. In 2023 alone, he's been crushed for a 7.78 ERA over eight starts with poor marks in both xFIP (5.78) and strikeout rate (14.9%).
There's no shortage of power or value in this Texas lineup, as we can roster all of Corey Seager ($3,000), Nathaniel Lowe ($3,200), Josh Jung ($3,000), and Ezequiel Duran ($2,900) at a minimal cap hit. Seager was off to a hot start before hitting the injured list in mid-April, so this looks like a great time to buy low before his salary goes back up.
On the other hand, Marcus Semien ($4,200) and Adolis Garcia ($4,100) will be tougher to fit in, but they've been two of the team's best fantasy producers. Semien continues to be a power/speed combo with 7 home runs and 7 stolen bases out of the leadoff slot, while Garcia leads the team with 13 bombs off a .283 ISO.
We see a bit of a drop-off after those first two teams, but the Toronto Blue Jays are always dangerous and have a solid matchup versus Kyle Gibson. Gibson's posted a 4.82 SIERA and 16.4% strikeout rate across nine starts, and other than doing a good job of getting grounders versus lefties, there really isn't much in his profile to concern us.
Bo Bichette ($3,700), Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($3,700), and Matt Chapman ($3,500) have all been fantastic this season and are no-brainers if you can find the cap space, whereas George Springer ($2,800) and Daulton Varsho ($2,800) come in at appealing salaries. Springer is having a disappointing campaign, but all of his expected stats have been better than the results, and getting a cheap leadoff hitter is never a bad thing.
The Chicago White Sox, New York Mets, and Kansas City Royals are others to have on your radar. The White Sox aren't an exciting team to roster against righties, but Zack Greinke doesn't have much left in the tank (16.5% strikeout rate). The Mets also get a low-strikeout matchup against Cal Quantrill, who somehow has a 3.97 ERA despite an awful 5.61 SIERA and 11.7% strikeout rate. Kansas City is a team we seldom stack, but Michael Kopech has been all over the place this year with a slate-worst 14.6% walk rate.
