FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Friday 10/20/23

Unless both series extend past the weekend, Friday marks what could be the final multi-game MLB slate of the season. Like yesterday, the first game begins at 5:07 pm ET this evening.

Our daily fantasy 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 numberFire's great tools into your research process, including daily projections, the latest starting lineups and weather, and batting and pitching heat maps to find the best matchups.

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

Pitching Breakdown

Thursday's pitching slate was the equivalent of throwing at a dart board while blindfolded, but hopefully, you landed on Brandon Pfaadt if you participated. Thankfully, tonight's slate might be slightly easier to predict.

Right away, we can cross off Joe Mantiply, who will be strictly used as an opener in a bullpen game for the Arizona Diamondbacks. That leaves us with Jordan Montgomery ($9,900), Justin Verlander ($9,700), and Cristopher Sanchez ($8,200) as our options.

Montgomery's pedestrian strikeout ability (21.4% rate) generally leaves him as a less desirable DFS option, but he's a good pitcher in real life, and we'll gladly have him on a short slate. He does a good job of limiting both walks (6.2% rate) and home runs (0.86 allows per 9 innings).

He's alternated good and bad starts this postseason (46, 6, and 47 FanDuel points), but the last good one came in Game 1 of this ALCS, proving the southpaw is capable of handling this Houston Astros team under the bright lights.

Perhaps the best thing Montgomery has going for him is that he's been tough as nails versus lefties this season (2.85 xFIP), giving him a better chance than most to silence Houston's hottest hitter, Yordan Alvarez. In Game 1, Montgomery struck out Alvarez all three times he faced him.

Montgomery will be opposite Verlander, who also pitched in Game 1. Despite taking the loss in that one, Verlander allowed just 2 earned runs in 6 1/3 innings and has a pristine 1.42 ERA across his two playoff starts.

However, much like he did in the regular season, he continues to show worrisome underlying numbers, as his 4.38 SIERA, 21.6% strikeout rate, and 9.8% walk rate this postseason don't exactly back the results.

That being said, Verlander doesn't necessarily have to be perfect on a two-game slate, and he likely has the longest leash of anyone after going 101 pitches last time. Per the MLB odds on FanDuel Sportsbook, his K prop is set at 5.5, which is easily the highest among today's starters.

Verlander and Montgomery ought to be featured in the vast majority of lineups, as it's difficult to know what we can expect from Sanchez, who hasn't pitched since the end of September.

But if the 26-year-old is allowed a fairly high workload, we could be getting a lefty who put up a 3.33 SIERA, 24.2% strikeout rate, 4.0% walk rate, and 57.0% ground-ball rate this year. Unfortunately, following such a long layoff, it's impossible to know whether he'll be able to replicate those numbers.

Sanchez is a dice roll for sure, but as long as a hard pitch count isn't mentioned ahead of time, he could be worth taking a chance on at his modest salary versus the Diamondbacks.

Hitting Breakdown

The Philadelphia Phillies' bats finally cooled off on Thursday, but it isn't surprising to see them sporting a slate-high 4.95 implied team total against opener Joe Mantiply and the Arizona bullpen.

Honestly, not much has changed since yesterday. Bryce Harper ($4,500), Trea Turner ($4,200), Kyle Schwarber ($3,800), Nick Castellanos ($3,800), and J.T. Realmuto ($3,400) have all hit multiple bombs in the playoffs and are the guys to build around when stacking Philadelphia. Like most nights, Schwarber and Harper have the shortest odds in this game to knock one out.

After the Phillies, we're getting virtually identical implied team totals across the other three teams, and you can make a pretty good case for backing any of them.

But if I'm picking one, it might be the Texas Rangers.

Part of this is the fact that Verlander is likely to be the slate's most popular pitcher, which should lower interest in Texas' bats by default. The other reason is what was alluded to earlier; his metrics simply haven't been that impressive this year.

In the regular season, both Verlander's xFIP (4.56) and SIERA (4.43) were much higher than his ERA (3.22). Most notably, between a modest 21.5% strikeout rate and 35.5% ground-ball rate, it sure seems like he was lucky to allow just 1.00 home runs per 9 innings.

In looking at Verlander's game log, it's clear he's still capable of dominating; it just doesn't happen quite as frequently as it used to.

Corey Seager ($4,500) and Adolis Garcia ($3,900) are our best candidates to smack Verlander with that home run regression. In fact, Garcia (+255) and Seager (+260) have the shortest odds to hit a home run on the entire slate.

Beyond those two, Josh Jung ($3,600) has been one of the Rangers' best hitters in the playoffs and leads the team with a 58.3% Statcast hard-hit rate. Mitch Garver ($3,100) has just one hit in this series, but he had the team's best barrel rate behind Garcia and Seager in the regular season, which is reflected by him having Texas' third-shortest home run odds.

I'm slightly less enthused about attacking Montgomery with the Houston Astros, but we know anything can happen in the playoffs. The smoking-hot Yordan Alvarez ($4,400) is an obvious add despite the lefty-lefty matchup, and Jose Abreu ($3,000) has been dialed in, too, with seven barrels this postseason (Yordan leads with nine).

Rostering the Arizona Diamondbacks is a bet that Sanchez will be off his game after so much time off, which isn't an outlandish thought. Game 3 hero Ketel Marte ($3,600) continues to enjoy a fantastic postseason, and Christian Walker ($3,800) remains their best power threat. Evan Longoria ($2,500) has an 80.0% hard-hit rate in the playoffs and seems due for a dinger -- if you can stomach the pinch-hit risk.

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The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.