 When you look at a quick glance of this slate for today in MLB DFS, it's going to become pretty clear, pretty fast that Max Scherzer is the most talented full-rain pitcher on this slate. I say full-rain specifically because Chris Sale is not quite there yet. We'll talk about him in Things to Watch. The problem with Scherzer is that he's facing the Padres, and the Padres may not be what they were previously, but it's still a really tough matchup. Our dilemma for today in MLB DFS is do we ride with talent, or do we ride with a matchup and less talent elsewhere? It's a pretty tough decision for today. Usually, I tend to go with talent. I think that will probably win out for today, but I think it is an actual discussion for tonight's slate. Welcome on into the solo shop. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and Numberfire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for Numberfire.com. Here to break down Thursday night's nine-game main slate with lockstep for 7.05, four-to-night. Thankfully, no weather to know for today. We should be good to go there. As always, we are back once again later on with our 4 p.m. stream. Breaking down tonight's slate and taking your questions live on the FanDuel YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter pages. Make sure you swing by there if you have questions around tonight, and there probably will be a decent number because it's a slate you can play in multiple ways is the way that I would phrase that. That's it today at 4 p.m. We also have a loaded day tomorrow on the Numberfire Daily Fantasy podcast feed with UFC, NASCAR, MLB, all coming your way at the NASCAR podcast for Daytona, which is on Saturday night. So make sure you search for the Numberfire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts, hit that subscribe button, and if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. Hey, football fans, the 2021 NFL season is right around the corner, and FanDuel is giving fans the opportunity to get in on the action by playing fantasy football. Right now, FanDuel has daily best ball fantasy drafts you can compete in. All you have to do is head over to FanDuel.com and draft your team, pick a league with your desired number of teams, draft your squad, and compete for prizes. Head on over to FanDuel today and start drafting. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to FanDuel.com or download the FanDuel app for more details. Pitching preview for this Thursday main slate, Chris Sale is the highest salary pitcher on FanDuel. He checks in at $10,700, followed by Max Scherzer at 10.5. Hugh Darvish coming off the IL is $9,900. James and Tyone in tough matchup with the A's is 92. And we have Zach Ethlin also coming off the IL. James Caprellian facing the A era, facing the Yankees, tough matchup there. And Alex Wood as the other guys at $8,000 are higher. So as you can see, there's not a lot to put you off of Scherzer here. We'll talk about Sale and Things to Watch. But as far as Scherzer goes, tough match with the Padres. And I think that despite the fact they've been rough recently, they still got talent. They still got Fernando Tates Jr. They still got a lot of good guys in that offense. They don't strike out that much. But I think from a talent perspective, Sale's gap over the field is enough to still make him the top guy tonight. I will say that a lot of times when the top pitcher on the slate from a talent perspective is definitively one guy, it can push me towards just saying, OK, load up on that guy. I don't think that's the case tonight, partly due to the matchup. Let's talk about Scherzer here. The Padres are a team I have not targeted too often, but I have been doing so more often recently. Specifically, we saw work with Aaron Nola over the weekend. And Scherzer is very much on that Nola level. He's been throwing more change-ups over his past 10 starts. He's likely trying to keep lefties in the yard. Change-ups are a good pitch to use if the opposite-handed hitters are getting to you. Seems like Scherzer's been trying to do that, and he's still letting up fly balls, but the hard contact number is good. It is a 30% hard hit rate in that time. Comes with a 33% strikeout rate, obviously a very good number, with a 3.25 skill-interactive ERA. Now, in that 10-start sample, we did see Scherzer face the Padres twice, and they scored 11 runs against him in those two starts. But Scherzer did get strikeouts. He had seven and eight strikeouts in those two starts, and they were also more than a month ago, which means our concern around familiarity is lower. Since then, we've seen Scherzer beast out in tougher matchups. He had 10 strikeouts against Houston, and Houston's offense is one I worry a lot more about right now than San Diego's. So it's not a super comfortable spot for Scherzer. And again, my exposure levels to him, relative to guys who have his level of talent gap on the field, usually, is smaller. So I do think that we want to be willing to spread things out a bit more. Be willing to go elsewhere at Pitcher. Be willing to deviate. But overall, the pitcher to whom I would want the most exposure in tournaments would be Max Scherzer. The second slot is up for grabs. I think there are three guys who really do great out really well here. We'll talk about two guys in the pitching section and one more in things to watch. Among those three options, the number two guy behind Scherzer is going to be Alex Wood. He's $8,200, so it's two values today. The third guy we'll discuss also a lower salary Pitcher. So a lot of value for not going Scherzer to me, I think it's a good slate to spend down. I just like the outlook for these guys more than like the outlook of the studs. Wood is facing the Mets. The offense is having some pretty serious issues right now. It's not just the memeable Javier Baez whiffs. They have a 142 ISO against lefties with a 24% strikeout rate. And we can use pitchers facing those numbers. Wood is trending back up again. He had a velocity dip earlier in the summer and given his injury history, it's concerning to me when his velocity goes down and it did lead to some rough outings. But the Velo has rebounded over his past eight starts. And in that time, Wood has a 3.70 skill interactive VRA. His strikeout rate is 25%. The fly ball rate back down to 29%. So he's had really good all-around skills in this time. That's helped him get nine strikeouts across 22 batters faces most recent start. The 22's batter face is low and that could be a concern, but that low number is not due to pitch count. He actually went 96 in that game, which is his highest number in this stretch. It seems like the Giants are starting to let him go a bit deeper again, which is good. Maybe the velocity being up is giving them more confidence in him too. He just wasn't as efficient there as he would hope. He could be here. So I think he's well worth $8,200. And I will put Wood second behind Max Scherzer for tonight. So Wood, the top guy among the non, assures her options for me. Number two is a guy I haven't found myself using often. In fact, I cannot tell you the last time I recommended this pitcher on our podcast. I may never have, but that guy's Brad Keller. Keller keeps the ball on the ground, doesn't get that many strikeouts. We've seen that scenario, that resume start to shift recently. And I think it's to the point where we can use him tonight against the Mariners. The big thing for Keller is that he's optimizing his pitch mix. For the full season, Keller has thrown his sinker 31% of the time and it's a really bad pitch. The whiff rate on that pitch, according to Baseball Savant, is 12%. The ex-woba against that is 392. The really bad pitch. He does have one good pitch. That is his slider. The whiff rate on that slider is 31%. And it's a pitch that he throws to both righties and lefties. His foreseamer is a better pitch than his sinker as well. So the optimal situation, if we were walking into Brad Keller and saying, hey, let's get some more strikeouts for DFS man, we would want him to cut back on sinkers and replace them with more foreseamers and more sliders. That is exactly what he is doing right now. The sinker usage hit a new season low in his most recent start. His foreseam usage was the highest it has been since June 19th. His slider usage was 41%, which is 6 percentage points higher than his full season mark. So he's moving in the right direction and not shockingly, it's working. He had eight strikeouts in that game. He had a 13.4% swinging strike rate. If we expand the sample, look to the past eight starts for Keller with this change in the works, the slider user, the sinker user didn't quite decline until like three starts into this. So that's more of a five-start sample, but to expand the sample, I went eight and he has a 25% strikeout rate in those eight starts. He has at least eight strikeouts three times in that span. He had seven in another and now he's facing the Mariners. So they have a 25% strikeout rate or 26% strikeout rate against Wrightys. That is his second highest mark on this slate. Brad Keller, $7,000 gives you a lot of flexibility, kind of do what you want to hit her. And I think there are some higher salary guys I want to use. So, you know, you're not missing out on a ton of studs at the higher end of the pitching pool. So I kind of like the idea of rolling him out there and just seeing what happens. Again, I'm not a big Brad Keller guy. I don't find myself here very often, but I think the changes he's been making, the data you see within those changes, I think it's pretty encouraging. So to me, Brad Keller on the menu for tonight, and we'll talk about one more guy on things to watch who I think is worth considering and worth rostering as well. Before that though, let's talk about the top stacks for today and part of the reason why I'm okay, spending down to pitchers because Cleveland's kind of a top heavy team. And if you want to stack them and feel really good about it, you want to have the flexibility to get to Jose Ramirez, Fomio Reyes, et cetera, et cetera. I wanted to stack them last night, but that was mostly out of obligation due to a great matchup. Here the matchup is great again, but I feel better about them because it's a righty, not a lefty. Cleveland did work out in that slate too. So I think that they should be near the top of our list. They're facing Jordan Lyles. Lyles has been leaning on a curve ball or had been leaning on a curve ball earlier on this year. And it was helping him get much better bad at ball data. He's getting more ground balls, letting it plus hard contact. And it was moving in the right direction. But for some reason he's cut back on that curve ball recently. The bad at ball data predictably has gone back in the gutter as a result. He has a 48% hard hit rate allowed over his past eight starts with a 45% fly ball rate. His strikeout rate has gone up. Maybe that's straight off there, but it's also just 18%. So he's getting a couple more strikeouts, but the bad at ball data regression is not enough or is too much and it cancels out the gains in the strikeout rate. And it seems like the Rangers are kind of just like saying, hey, go eat innings. We're not gonna save you. He's just going deep in games and letting up a lot of runs. He has a 6.00 ERA in this time. He let up five earned runs and four of those eight starts. He has had some good starts in there. He had a big one last week against Boston where I was in on them. But I do still think we should stack against him. Cleveland grades out really well in this spot. Now mentioned how we wanna stack Cleveland. We wanna get to Framio Reyes, Jose Ramirez, and that is easy to do when you're going with Brad Keller or with Alex Wood. It's not as easy as Scherzer, but I will say that Daniel Johnson, if he starts, could move the needle here. He hasn't been able to start much recently, but because they've been facing a ton of lefties. Like lefties pretty much every day. I'd expect Johnson to start today and he should bat sixth or seventh somewhere in there. Really good power for Daniel Johnson. He just strikes out too much and that's less than a concern against Lyles given the low strikeout nature of his resume. $2300 a dollar is a salary for Johnson. If you use him, you should be able to get to Jose Ramirez and Framio Reyes and on that Rosario with your Max Scherzer lineup. So I like Johnson a lot both as a salary saver, but also because he's got some power. And I think that that is enticing at $2,300. Our second stack is gonna be the Cardinals. They're facing the other Keller on this slate that is Mitch Keller. And Mitch looked better his last time out and the Cardinals looked really bad. So I don't love it, but I do like it enough to rank it highly here. Complicating matters is that Keller's really good star came against the same offense, St. Louis. He held them scoreless for five innings and had six strikeouts. He pitched really well and the advanced numbers for Keller in that game really good too. We've seen other situations like with the Tyler Gilbert no hitter where the peripherals kind of put water on a good start. That's not the case with Keller. His advanced numbers were actually pretty good. And I think that what's interesting here is that he did make a change. Keller threw a few more sliders and a few less curveballs which is likely intentional because his curveball is not good and his slider is pretty solid. So we could see a situation where Keller starts to improve and he starts to have an uptick as a result of that tweak. But it would seem, I don't know, it would seem a bit, I guess optimistic for me to just totally jump off of stacking against Keller after one start. I would like to see that be sustained over a bit larger sample before I fully buy into it. And the Cardinals, they have seen this new approach they just saw him last week that could better position them for success. We look at the four starts for Keller since he returned to the rotation he's still letting up a 52% hard hit rate that does include that game against the Cardinals although his hard contact data was very good in that individual game. I think that we should stack them here, see if that familiarity helps them turn a corner but keep a close eye on Keller and see if we want to back off stacking against him if he can duplicate that and keep up the low curve usage in the high slider usage. One guy who is not in that game who is back here today is Dylan Carlson. Carlson is interesting specifically because he's a switch hitter and lefties do get a bump against Keller and there aren't a lot of lefties in this team which may be why he did so well. Carlson struck out twice last night, did have a hard hit ball in his first game back also made some decent contact in his first plate appearance yesterday. I would be decently high in him at $3,100. I will say the Cardinals are my second stack. My level of confidence in them is not all that high but I do think that they great out best given that I don't want to overreact to just one start for Mitch Keller in which he was good against his very same offense. So the Cardinals still to me worth it despite what Keller did to them last week. For the third stack as a team that kind of led us down last night. I know they scored six runs and I know that our guy Kyle Schwerber did come through but Red Sox didn't really make me feel super warm and fuzzy last night but I'm gonna go back here. John Gantz has been getting more strikeouts recently. I still think the Red Sox are a good stack here. This would be Gantz second start in the rotation for the twins. This first start back in the rotation he had an 11.5% swing strike rate and he's actually been getting a lot of whiffs since he joined the twins. He's been cutting back on his sinker. So maybe that's legit because sinkers suck but there is a trade off there. I don't like sinkers but we've seen Gantz let up a lot of hard contact. He has let up a 57% hard hit rate with the twins. He let up six hard hit balls on nine balls and play against the Yankees which was his start last week and the results were not good. Now likely getting stretched out going longer in games and I think that opens the door for us to potentially stack against him. I do acknowledge that Gantz has been getting better as possible that the twins maybe saw something in him before that trade because it was weird that they got him before they traded for him to maybe unlock him moving to a better level but given the hard contact against the Yankees the expectation, the strike area will come down. I do think that we can feel okay stacking the Red Sox once again. And it's also a door to go right back to the Red Sox lefties. Gantz has a 51% ground ball right versus righties compared to a 38% rate against lefties. So we call the Kyle Schwabber home run here last night right back on him once again. Alex Verdugo missed about a week earlier this month and it seems like he's been getting more loft in the ball since he came back is launch angles about five percentage points so or five degrees I should say that's enough for I think it's noteworthy lot of hard contact in the past week too. So I like Verdugo at $3,100. Like Schwabber, Rafael Bevers is pretty obvious. Going back to the Red Sox once again despite the fact they did, I would say let us down last night. Let's move now to things to watch and talk about a couple of pitchers first. First Chris Sale probably not gonna be in my rotation right now in both of his two starts he has gone five innings which could be because they had at least a five run lead both times but it also could be because they don't want him warming up a bunch. You've seen this a lot with the Marlins where they don't want to have their guys go back out there throw 10 woman pitches and stuff like that. And it's more so about that than pitch count. It seems like Sale right now is on an innings limit versus a pitch count. And if he's gonna go just five innings he's not gonna get the quality start bonus. It hurts his odds of getting a win. And they're also just 15 available outs for strikeouts where a Scherzer could get 15 strikeouts tonight. I don't think Sale can do that. So it's possible Sale goes longer and once he does I will happily adjust and be there because he's looked great in those two starts. I'm just not there right now. So no Chris Sale for me yet. But again, keeping a close eye on that pitch count the innings limit too to see if they will give him more leash. I did not get to Zach Gallin in the pitching section but I am pretty interested in him for tournaments here tonight. He's facing the Phillies. They have an 88 WRC plus against righties. Not a big strikeout team which is why I prefer Alex Wood and Brad Keller over Gallin but Gallin pitching pretty well. He has a 28% strikeout right over his past six starts. So I think he could do well here. I would say pitching overall tonight is going to be pretty spread out for me. Like if I wound up having 25% each of Scherzer, Wood, Keller and Gallin, that's fine. I would not object to that all that much. I'd probably prefer to be closer to 40 on Scherzer and then evenly distributing the other three but I do think that overall more spread out for me a pitcher than I typically want to be. Finally, using the Giants did not work last night but I am tempted to give them a swing once again here. They're facing Carlos Carrasco. Carrasco does not have bad advanced numbers but he's been super volatile. A couple of really rough starts and even while having starts against the Nationals and the Marlins and those are two really bad offenses right now. The peripherals are why Carrasco are why the Giants are not higher on this list but I do think that they're worth a long look here and they'd be pretty easily the fourth ranked stack for me and I think that they're kind of again if we're talking about tiers here, I would say Cleveland's in a tier by themselves but then the Cardinals, the Red Sox and the Giants all kind of in the same tier. I would rank them in that order. Maybe the Red Sox over the Cardinals but overall I do think that it's kind of a tiered out slate so again, that's why I'm pumping the 4pm show once again today. There are a lot of ways you can play this slate so swing by then to get set for tonight's slate and ask me about some other plays that may be viable for tonight. Before we get to the 4pm show though, gotta do some Dinger calls for today. We got Schwerber last night. We're gonna load up on Cleveland here. Both options will be from Cleveland. The boring one is very boring because all he does is hit home runs that is from the arrays, from the arrays going deep for today for Cleveland and the fun one is the guy we talked about before Daniel Johnson may not start full disclosure so just keep that in mind but I do think that Johnson if he plays a lot of power should be in a good position probably in about six or seven or so totally fine by me. He tends to stay in the game for most of the game too. So home run calls for today both on Cleveland from the arrays and Daniel Johnson. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shop but as always we are back once again tomorrow to get you set for Friday's slate of MLB DFS also have a UFC and NASCAR podcast coming up tomorrow. So make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts and as always if you like what you hear leave us a rating and review. If you have questions for me before the 4pm stream I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S you can also follow the FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you tonight. We'll talk to you once again on Friday to close out the week. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.