FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Sunday 4/24/22

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

Logan Webb ($10,200)

San Francisco's right-hander struggled in his last start, inducing a low 6.7% swinging strike rate and a 5.00 Fielding Independent Pitching rating (FIP) on 75 pitches.

Despite his poor outing, Webb has been in overall good form through 17.2 innings this season, accounting for a 3.49 expected FIP and a 58.9% ground ball rate. Although we want to see a higher K-rate, Webb has been on par with last season's swinging strike rate (12.4% in 2021) with a 11.3% mark.

Even in a middling spot against a Washington Nationals team with a 19.9% strikeout percentage and .283 weighted on-base average (wOBA), Webb still stands as numberFire's third ranked pitcher with a 31.1 FanDuel point projection and 5.4 expected strikeouts.

Shane McClanahan ($9,500)

Tampa Bay's 24-year old left-hander has gotten off to a quick start in his sophomore big league season, accounting for a 17.6% swinging strike rate and a sparkling 1.61 expected FIP in 15.0 total innings.

On Sunday, McClanahan will take the mound in a divisional matchup against a Boston lineup with 55% of their hitters with a K-percentage higher than 20% and an overall low walk rate of 6.4%.

numberFire's models currently project McClanahan as today's second rated pitcher with a 32.7 FanDuel point expectation and 5.9 strikeouts.

Gerrit Cole ($8,800)

Despite an ugly 6.35 Earned Run Average in his first three starts, Cole's advanced statistics show some positive regression with a 4.57 expected FIP and a 16.3% swinging strike rate.

New York's right-hander will have an ideal spot on Sunday afternoon to improve upon his poor beginning versus a Cleveland Guardians squad with a 22.0% strikeout rate and a poor .282 wOBA against right-handers.

Cole should be able to aggressively pitch against a Guardians' lineup with 55% of their batters with strikeout percentages over 20% and contact rates under 79%.

Stacks

Chicago Cubs

In today's most favorable offensive environment with winds reportedly blowing out to left-center at 25 miles per hour, the Cubs should be today's most popular stack against JT Brubaker.

In his third season, Brubaker has overall struggled to a 5.06 expected FIP while also allowing an alarming 13.5% increase in his fly-ball rate from his career norm (35.1%).

Today's lineup offers several hitters to take advantage of Brubaker's trouble against lefties including Ian Happ (.345 expected wOBA, 47.1% hard hit rate), Jonathan Villar (44.1% hard hit rate, .300 expected average), Jason Heyward ($2,300, 45% hard hit rate) and other hitters in ideal form such as Willson Contreras (8.6% barrel rate, .395 expected wOBA) and Seiya Suzuki (24.1% barrel rate, .446 expected wOBA) to round out Chicago's stack.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Pittsburgh could easily go overlooked despite their sneaky 4.6 implied total and matchup against Justin Steele.

After a mediocre 2021 season, the 26-year old left-hander has produced similar numbers so far this season, recording a 4.11 expected FIP and a poor 5.4% swinging strike rate.

Several intriguing pieces of the Pirates' lineup offer salary flexibility against Steele's splits against right-handed hitters including Ke'Bryan Hayes (7.7% barrel rate, .327 expected average), Michael Chavis (.335 expected average, 6.7% barrel rate), Bryan Reynolds (7.7% barrel rate, 41% hard hit rate), and Roberto Perez (11.1% barrel rate, 61.1% hard hit rate).

Houston Astros

Outside of Wrigley's matchup, the Astros offer a high upside stack in their home spot against Toronto's left-hander Yusei Kikuchi.

In his two outings despite producing a 3.24 Earned Run Average, the 30-year old is on track for some regression after he also accounted for a 4.78 expected FIP and a 51.9% hard hit rate.

Houston's lineup is filled with value options mostly in the infield including Jeremy Pena (17.1% barrel rate, .389 expected wOBA), Martin Maldonado (13.6% barrel rate, .337 expected wOBA), Alex Bregman (.323 expected wOBA, 10% barrel rate) as well as other options such as Yordan Alvarez (.435 expected wOBA, 14.3% barrel percentage) and Kyle Tucker (10.3% barrel rate, .306 expected average).