 What's going on and welcome to the solo shot? My name is Tom Vecchio. We have a six-game MLB slate tonight. It starts at 7.05. As always, this is one of the many shows on the Fandall podcast network. You can find that anywhere, whether it's Apple podcasts, whether it's Spotify, the video version can be found on the Fandall YouTube page. It also can be found on Fandall TV Plus and Fandall.com slash watch. Before we hop into things, get ready for the NFL season with incredible offers from Fandall. America's number one sportsbook right now. New customers can bet $5 and get $200 in bonus bets guaranteed. Plus, all customers who bet $5 will get $100 off NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. Now is the best time to join Fandall. The app is easy to use and you can bet on everything from spreads to player props and more. Fandall official partner of the NFL must be 21 plus and present in select states. Fandall is offering online sports waging in Kansas under agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC. First online real money wager only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-trouble bonus bets expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandall.com. Gambling prom called 100 Gambler or visit Fandall.com slash RG. That's if you're in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee or Virginia. Call 1-800 next step or text next step to 533-42 in Arizona. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. Call 1-109 with it if you are in Indiana. Call 1-800-522-4700 or visit kscamblinghelp.com in Kansas. If you're in Louisiana, call 1-877-770-STOP. If you're in Maryland, visit mdgamblinghelp.org. Visit 1-800-gambler.net in West Virginia. Call 1-800-522-4700 in Wyoming. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-50504247 support in Massachusetts. Call 1-877-8 Hope NY or text Hope NY in New York. NFL Sunday ticket offer ends September 18th at 23. No refunds, terms and embargoes apply. $100 off NFL Sunday ticket, not YouTube TV. YouTube TV base plan required to watch YouTube TV. Redemptor requires a Google account and current form of payment commercial use excluded. All right, let's jump into tonight's smaller six-game MLB. Slade Game Lock is set for $705. When it comes to whether tonight we are 100% free from rain. But as we saw last night, it's much of the same tonight in terms of very favorable hitting conditions in New York for the Yankees at home hosting the Tigers, the Nationals at home hosting the Mets, the Braves at home hosting the Cardinals, and then Kansas City probably be fourth on that list hosting the White Sox. Hot, a little bit of wind blowing out. Really should be another slate where we saw, where we see a lot of offense as we saw last night. So pretty easy stuff there. Let's jump right into the pitching. And tonight's pitching slate is really, really straightforward, where Spencer Strider at $12,300 comes in as the most expensive option. And he's by far the number one pitcher on tonight's slate. Max Scherzer is here at $10.4. Justin Verlander is here at $9.5. Scherzer and Verlander are going up against each other for Texas and Houston, respectively. And then Clark Schmidt is here at $8,800. Kyle Gibson at $8,600. So it's a pretty wide drop off in terms of salary. Strider at $12.3. Then the fourth most expensive option is Clark Schmidt at $8,800. When it comes to these options, Spencer Strider is by far the best pitcher on tonight's slate. And it's really not particularly close. He comes in with a 38% strikeout rate this season. A 7.6% walk rate, only allowing 1.07 homeruns per 9. Strider is, of course, elite. With a 2.76 skill interactive ERA, his Sierra, he does allow a 45.5% fly ball rate, which we don't love, but he has a 51.2% medium contact rate. So he does allow some fly balls, but he's not allowing them to be hard contact. Thus, keeping the homeruns low, as I said, only 1.07 this season. But mainly, that 38% strikeout rate can't be touched by any other pitcher on tonight's slate. So the question becomes, really, from a lineup construction standpoint, where do we want to be going? Because Strider has the most upside out of any pitcher on tonight's slate. Scherzer is here. Yes, Verlander is here. Yes, they're both good options. But relatively speaking, I'm not thrilled or never thrilled to be rostering a pitcher going up against Houston, as we saw last night, scoring 14 runs or whatever it was, Jose Altuve having three homeruns. I'm never thrilled to be rostering a pitcher going up against Houston. On the other side, I'm never thrilled to be rostering a pitcher going up against Texas this season. Now, if I had to choose between the two, I would go with Scherzer. He has a 28.8% strikeout rate this season, which is certainly very solid, and it's just factually higher compared to Verlander, who's at 21.0%. So if I'm shooting for the upside, it would be with Scherzer. But realistically, if I'm going to be spending over 10K, I just want to find that salary to get up to Spencer Strider. So that's the route that I'm going to be going in. And I'm not really too worried about the Cardinals offense overall. They come with a 21.2% strikeout rate versus right-handed pitching with their current active roster. That's 21st in the league. So yes, they're not a super heavy strikeout team, but I will take a 38% strikeout rate from Spencer Strider, who again is the clear best pitcher on tonight's slate. Then it's a bit of a toss-up if you want to go to Scherzer, if you want to go to Verlander, just because you don't think they're going to be as popular compared to Strider. Everyone's going to be trying to spend up the salary for him, and thus Scherzer and Verlander, one of them, go a bit overlooked. I would generally lean towards Scherzer in that circumstance. However, we do have Clark Schmidt here at $8,800. He's certainly an interesting option tonight. He's been looking solid in some of these recent starts, and realistically, the matchup going up against Detroit is one that we love. Schmidt comes in with a 22.7% strikeout rate this season, a 6.5% walk rate. He's allowing 1.34 homeruns per 9, which is OK. His 4.15 Sierra, again, is OK. That's why he's sub 9K, like he's not an amazing pitcher, but he's good enough, but more importantly, it's more of the matchup that we like going up against the Tigers. Right now, the Tigers with their current active roster, they come in with a 24.4% strikeout rate versus right-handed pitching, which is the 7th worst in the league. We also see them coming in with an 86 WRC+. Which is 29th in the league. So, yeah, this is truly a plus matchup for Clark Schmidt, who saw them just last week. He didn't go super deep in the game, but he did rack up a few strikeouts. It's kind of where we were last week. It's going to be the same situation for Schmidt tonight, and really, the salary relief that he brings is pretty solid, especially when we're only dealing with a six-game slate where there's not a ton of options out there. The same can be said about Kyle Gibson, and what I'm going to say about Kyle Gibson is basically the same thing that I said about Dean Kramer last night for Baltimore going up against the Angels, where he's not overly expensive. He's going up against a team in the Angels that are just factually super weak right now. We know that Trout is still waiting on news for Otani. The Angels right now, they come in with a 25.3% strikeout rate versus right-handed pitching with their current active roster. That's the 3rd worst in the league. So, it's no data great matchup for Kyle Gibson, and himself isn't a big strikeout pitcher by any means with a 19.8% strikeout rate, which is below the league average. But what he does so well is that he has a 48.7% ground ball rate and a 54.6% medium contact rate. So, he's really not getting hit too hard. He does have, he has a 4.35 skill interactive ERA, and he's only allowing 1.05 homeruns per nine. So, he's a pitcher that he does have a clear plus matchup when it comes to the strikeout potential. He's never going to have a ton of strikeout potential in his, you know, own right on the mound, but the matchup is awesome. He doesn't necessarily allow a ton of damage because of the medium contact rate and the ground ball rate, and he's facing a line of that's pretty weak right now. So, if we're ranking these pitchers, Strider has to be the number one because he is the best pitcher on tonight's slate. That's not really up for debate. 38% strikeout rate can't be touched by anyone. Scherzer is having, you know, with a 28% strikeout rate is certainly solid, but again, I don't love attacking Houston, you know, with a pitcher. Same thing for Verlander. And Verlander has a far lower strikeout rate at 21% compared to Scherzer or Strider. And again, I'm not super interested in going up against Texas. I know they haven't been super consistent, you know, in the past few weeks as they were at the beginning portion of the season, but again, still not my favorite spot. That would push me towards Clark Schmidt or Kyle Gibson, simply for the salary relief. And this is only, you know, if you're rolling with multiple, multiple lineups. If you're running the one lineup, Strider is the answer tonight. So pitching is, despite it being only six games, is relatively interesting because, you know, there's a number of different ways that we can be attacking things. So yeah, roll with Strider as your number one. Let's move on to stacks for tonight's slate. Now, we have a landed tonight. They didn't necessarily get it done last night, but I do like them in a bounce back spot, going up against Dakota Hudson for the St. Louis Cardinals. Again, don't necessarily love touching on, you know, the Braves, the Dodgers, like too, too much, you know, teams like that, you know, when there's a game at Korsfield, it's not necessarily something I love to, you know, go super in-depth on just because they're kind of givens. Dakota Hudson, 13.9% strikeout rate, 1.13 homeruns per nine, 8.9% walk rate. It's just not like a picture I'm super, super worried about and I'll just take the offense for the Braves in a bit of a bounce back spot. It's really as simple as that. So, give me some Braves hitters as usual, load up on any of them that you can afford, obviously depending on what you're doing pitching, get up to Kunia, Olson, Murphy, Riley, Ozonea, Harrison, like the list goes on and on for the Braves. Get any of them in your lineup that you can afford and it's really as simple as that. Then there are, I don't know, three or four other pitchers that we could be looking to attack. As I said, there are, you know, some pretty favorable hitting additions in both New York for the Yankees at home. Hosting Detroit and then the Nationals at home hosting the Mets. And, you know, the Mets got it done last night against Patrick Corbin. I think they can get it done again tonight going up against Johan Adon. This is a picture that we don't need to be worried about and really should be actively looking to, you know, attack when he's on the mound. 1.55 homeruns per nine allowed a 39.8% hard contact rate and a 44.8% fly ball rate is not a good mix. He comes in with a 4.60 Sierra. You know, his walk rate is only a 5.8%, which is certainly very solid, but a 90% strikeout rate is nothing that I'm too worried about. He's not a pitcher that can really, you know, pitch himself out of trouble. And, you know, we see a 2.53 babbit this season, which is batting average of balls in play. That is better than a league average. And realistically, he is due for some negative regression towards the league average. And, you know, the Mets are a lineup that, you know, they have some pop in a lineup as we saw last night. And I think they can get the ball rolling in terms of a don'ts negative regression in terms of bad, but they could get that going tonight. And it's probably going to be much of the same last night. You know, Alonso went deep last night. It's certainly good to see. And I think I'll be rolling with many of the same players. And, you know, maybe, you know, I talked about DJ Stewart last night. He didn't make the starting lineup. But, you know, if he's going to be in there tonight, I'll certainly take that. He is a 373 ISO this season, or at least with the Mets, you know, smaller sample size, but at least with the Mets this season, he's a 373 ISO versus right-handed pitching, which is absolutely awesome. I'll roll with Nemo, Alonso, Alvarez at a homer last night, Lindor, I'll roll with all these players yet again. And, you know, frankly, I think that they're a good team to be stacking because we have a mix of salaries that we can be getting to in the lineup. Yes, Alonso at 4,000, Francisco Lindor at 3,700 are on the more expensive end, but you drop a little bit further down. We can be getting some nice salary relief into the lineup. Jeff McNeil is only 2,900, Alvarez had a homerun last night, he's 2,700, DJ Stewart is 2,600, depending if he's in the lineup or not. You know, we can mix and match some of these Mets hitters that are ultimately in a great spot. And again, as I said, it's hot there, the wind's blowing out. I think we're going to be in another game where we could be seeing some offense. And on the flip side, I think going to some of the Nationals hitters, going up against Jose Bouto for the Mets should be just as good. You know, the Mets, the bullpen, I'm not really worried about that overall. Bouto, again, young pitcher. I think we'd be relatively comfortable going to some of the Nationals hitters, which may not be the first priority for a lot of people. But again, they're affordable. We can mix and match them, especially when we're trying to pay up for Strider, who's so, so expensive over $12,000, we're going to need the salary relief. And we want these hitters that are sub $3,000. So overall with some Nationals hitters tonight, Lane Thomas, he's, you know, day to day, if he's not making a lineup, that's certainly fine. But CJ Abrams, you could certainly look to get into the lineup. Carter Keeboom, whoever makes the lineup for them, I'll certainly be slightly interested, depending on their salaries and, of course, their spots in the lineup. We also could be looking to the Yankees who are going up against Matt Manning for the Detroit Tigers. Manning comes in with a very low 15.8% strike every 1.29 homeruns per nine allowed. He has a 5.1 for skill interactive ERA. He has a 47.2% fly ball rate this season, along with a 39% hard contact rate. None of that is good to see, especially in a stadium like Yankee Stadium that is hitter friendly, along with the favorable hitting weather that we have there. All of this lines up to be a good spot for the Yankees who are seemingly getting a little bit hot over the last 10 days, 2 weeks or so. They won 3 out of 4 against Detroit last week. They swept Houston, and then, you know, they're coming off a win last night. They have, you know, decent amount of pounder lineup. Jason Dominguez obviously being called up. We could certainly look to him, Aaron Judge, with a 3-40 ISO this season versus Reidy. She's always a threat for not just one, but two homeruns. Staten had a homerun last night. Labor Torres is looking hot as of late. DJ LaMahieu is popping off some homeruns as of late. Like, this is a team that I think we can be looking to stack tonight, especially against Matt Manning. Again, with that fly ball rate and the hard contact rate with the hitting weather in a stadium as they have at Yankee Stadium, it's pretty good. And frankly, none of these hitters outside of Aaron Judge are super, super expensive. Aaron Judge is up at 4.2. Dominguez is 3.5. Gleiber is 3.3. And then it drops immediately to Stanton, who's below 3,000 at 2900 and LaMahieu's 2800. So, again, depending on what you're doing with pitching, depending on what you're doing with the other stacks, the Yankees could be somewhat of a filler stack, you know, mixing and matching some of their lower salary players. We also could be seeing Austin Wells in the lineup tonight. He's 2400. They're newly called up catcher along with Jason Dominguez. They were both called up at the same time. 2400 for Austin Wells is another player to keep an eye on tonight. And then finally, I want to touch on the Chicago White Sox. In offense, I know most people probably aren't super thrilled to get exposure to, but we saw it last night where Dave put up a bunch of runs. Kansas City put up a bunch of runs. It's great hitting weather. It's kind of just bad pitching staffs on both sides. I would not be surprised to see a whole lot of runs again tonight. Jordan Lyles is on the mound for the Kansas City Royals. A pitcher we should be excited to see when he's on the slate. This season he's allowing a 524 slugging to lefties, a 488 slugging to righties. He's allowing 2.15 home runs per nine to lefties. 1.92 home runs per nine to righties. Absolutely awesome to see when we have hitters going up against them. A 50.8% fly ball rate to righties. And a 47.5% fly ball rate to lefties. This is absolutely awesome. Now, yes, the White Sox aren't a team that have performed this season, whatever it might be. And their lineup is factually weaker, specifically with Luis Robert not being in. He's missed a few games here or there. But the salary relief that they bring is absolutely undeniable tonight. And realistically, they might be a kind of key secondary team tonight because of what we're trying to do with pitching, which is probably pay up for Strider who's over $12,000. If Robert does not make the line up, he's $3,700 tonight. If he does not play, again, he's missed a few games. That means Eloy Jimenez at $2,800 is the most expensive hitter on the White Sox. That means you can get an entire White Sox stack going up against Jordan Lyles with solid hitting weather in Kansas City. Every single player will be below $3,000 tonight. This is what we need when it comes to filling in our lineups. We want to pay up for some of the braves, hitters. We want to pay up for Spencer Strider. We need salary relief, especially on a six-game slate, where we're not dealing with a whole lot of options. This is a lineup that we could or realistically do need. And we do need some of these players to kind of fill out the rest of our lineup and ultimately a great stack. So I would love to see Robert in the lineup just because it makes it that much more dangerous. And he has plenty of homerun upside in his own, right? But if he's not there, we're getting a ton of sour relief. And yes, these players don't have as much power compared to Robert with his $2,88 ISO versus Rides. I would love to see that. But could you look to Andrew Vaughn? Could you look to Jimenez? Yes, of course. Andrew Benintendi doesn't bring a ton of power to lineup, but he gets on base, which we love to see. He has a 307, well, with this season versus Rides, which is in jumping off the page. But if we're taking him as part of a stack, I'll certainly look to get Benintendi in there. I'll look to get Vaughn. I'll look to get Jimenez in there. And that should be a pretty solid, salary relief stack for the White Sox guy who are ultimately in a very, very favorable spot. All right. So let's move on to Dinger calls to close out the slate. It's smaller, only six games, pretty straightforward stuff in terms of who we should be looking at for homeruns. We have some, again, very, very easy matchups, very, very favorable hitting conditions for a lot of these players. Aaron Judge is the easy answer tonight. Just going up against Matt Manning. The fly ball rate for Manning, the power that Judge has with an over 300 ISO versus Rides, this season is undeniable. I think we absolutely want to be looking there. And then for a bit of a longer shot, going to be going with Michael Harris of the Atlanta Braves. Power up and down their lineup. And frankly, when hitters get on base for the Braves, it's not like pitchers can pitch around them just because there's so many other power hitters coming up after them. So, you know, I'll take Harris in just an awesome lineup who's on fire at the plate. He doesn't necessarily have a ton of home runs lately, but he's putting the ball in play each and every night, which I absolutely love to see. So I will take Harris has a bit of a longer shot and Aaron Judge is kind of the easy answer for a homer tonight. All right. So that does it for today's podcast. There's always going to be found on Apple. It can be found on Apple podcast. It can be found on Spotify. The video version can be found on the Fandal YouTube page. It can be found on Fandal TV plus can be found on Fandal.com slash watch. You can follow me on Twitter at Tom underscore Vecchio one. And until next time, good luck in your contests.