 We have a full 15 games on tonight's slate for MLB DFS, which means we've got a lot of choices, and it also means scores are going to be high tonight, whether it be for cash games or for term, and you're going to need a lot of points in order to cash for tonight. So our job is to identify high upside plays, both at picture and in stacks, to make sure we can keep up and make sure we can get the requisite point totals to cash for tonight's. That is our goal here. We're going to break things down and get you set for Tuesday night's slain. Welcome on into the solo shot. 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 today's 15 game slate with lock set for 705, 4, 2, 9, and just one weather note for today, potentially not even a relevant one, because that is out in Boston, where the rain is likely arriving late in the game for the Red Sox and the Blue Jays. As of right now, it appears as if they will get that game in with the rain coming later on. But I would check back on the timeline of that rain later. So that's the one note I've got for weather for today. Everything else should be good to go. So check back on that later on and make sure that it's good to go. Lots of stuff coming up here on the NumberFire Daily Fantasy Podcast V today, because we also have our PGA DFS podcast for the men's Olympic games. That is with myself and Brandon Gadoula. We are recording on the Fandal YouTube page at 10 o'clock and then on the NumberFire Daily Fantasy Podcast V immediately after that. Brandon will have more PGA today, 3.30 p.m. Eastern time talking about betting and DFS for the men's Olympic games. That is on the Fandal YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages. And as always, I will swing by 4 p.m. to break down MOB DFS as well. So make sure you are subscribed to the NumberFire Daily Fantasy Podcast V. Also leave a rating or review if you like what you hear and then swing by today, Fandal YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter to talk to Brandon and myself about PGA and MLB. Hey baseball fans, Fandal has a fun promotion going on called $5 Dinger Tuesdays. It is indeed Dinger Tuesday today. All you have to do is bet a $25 plus bet on me to hit a home run prop on any Tuesday MLB game. You'll receive a $5 site credit, $25 max for each home run hit in the game by either team regardless if your bet wins or loses. Head over to Fandal on Tuesdays to play the $5 Dinger Tuesday. Must be 21 plus and present Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia or West Virginia. Refund issued as a non-withdrawable site credit that expires in seven days. Terms apply, gambling or yeah, that's sorry I missed that part. Terms apply, gambling problem. Off to a great start today. Call 1-800-Gambler in Colorado, 105-224-700. In Iowa, 1-800 bets off. In Indiana, 1-800-9 with it. For confidential help in Michigan, 1-800-270-7117. In Tennessee, call the red line, 1-800-889-979. Or in West Virginia, 1-800-Gambler.net. Pitching preview for today's Slate Lance McCullers is the highest salary pitcher on Fandal. He checks in at $10,500. We have Robbie Ray at $10,000. Followed by Adam Wayne right in $9,700. Sandy Alcantara is $9,300. Then Shane McClanahan, Austin Gomber, Julio Urias, Charlie Warden, Kenton Maeda, Dylan Cease and Logan Webb are the others at $8,000 or higher. So there's no Scherzer type guy for tonight. There's no super high upside guy in that realm. But there are some really good pitchers, underappreciated pitchers I would say, with upside. And one of those guys is Lance McCullers. And I was super into McCullers last week. He was facing Cleveland at home and it wasn't ideal because he let up four runs in five innings. But I want to go back to him tonight. And a lot of it is because last week, looks a bit fluky. He had eight strikeouts across 24 batters faced. He walked just two, which is not a bad number for him specifically. And that's a continuation of the strikeout binge that McCullers has been on recently. Over his past five starts, McCullers has been throwing more sliders and fewer curve balls. And it seems to be working out pretty well because his strikeout rate in that time is 32% with a 3.38 skill interactive ERA. He has at least seven strikeouts in all five of those games. And he's taking that skill into a plus matchup for tonight. He's facing the Mariners who have a 91 WRC plus versus righties with a 26% strikeout rate. So they will draw some walks, which means it's not a perfect matchup, but it does help the McCullers is very good on the road. His strikeout rate has actually gone up on the road this year, which is pretty rare for a Houston guy. We talked last night at Belize Garcia, how his strikeout rate goes down in the road. That's not the case for McCullers. And it all combines to make me feel pretty good about him here. So it's not a bad pitching slate. There are some guys I do like, but I do think McCullers is the top guy on this slate. The other guys I like are all value plays. And that's not to say I don't like some of the other guys in the upper range. I mean, Robby Ray's in a tough spot. Sandiel Contra has been struggling, Adam Wainwright, been very good, but facing Cleveland on the road at the DH. So I am okay skipping over the rest of the studs in dipping down to the value tier for the other two pitching recommendations for tonight. One reason why I'm willing to do that is because Charlie Morton is down there. I don't know why he's down here. His salary never goes up, but I think that I will take advantage tonight at $8,600 and go with Morton once again. He's facing the Mets and he had a string of two straight starts against them at the end of June and he dominated. He had 18 strikeouts across 13 innings. There has also been a month in between now which means the familiarity that they may have had then has hopefully worn off. And I think that gives us wiggle room to go back to him tonight. Those two Mets games were at the start of a super impressive stretch for Morton. He's up to a string of seven consecutive starts with at least seven strikeouts. He had 11 in one of those games and that 11 strikeout game came against the New York Mets. It was also on the road which helps for tonight with this game being in New York. And all those starts came after the sticky stuff memo was released. We know that Morton, you know, in his current state can do really well against this offense. Interestingly enough, Morton's velocity on his curve ball has been up over his past 10 starts. He has a 28% strikeout rate in that time. He's had tremendous bad at ball data. The only issue has been a few too many walks to drive up his pitch count. The Mets, not a super high walk team at least. You know, they're not low, but they're not a high walk team. And their strikeout rate is right about lead gathered at 24%. So I feel very good about where Morton himself is right now. And the matchup isn't one I think we need to avoid. I think it's pretty easy to put Morton second on our list behind just McCullers. I might put him second on our list, not considering salary, like just straight up, you know, McCullers won Morton two, but then once you give me $8,600, he's a no brainer. So Charlie Morton to me easily number two. And I would say he is very much in the same tier as McCullers contending for that top spot for tonight. Now again, Morton is technically our value play here. But again, I do think the other options I want to consider for tonight are also value plays. One is Kenta Maeda. The other is Dylan Cease. Maeda is on a team that is not competing. It doesn't seem like he'll get traded. I wouldn't think so given how team friendly his contract is, but that does add extra uncertainty with the twins not necessarily going all out to win games right now. I think they had Michael Panetta around 85 pitches last night that's, it's in my mind at least. So that's going to push me on to Cease in the three spot at $8,200. He's facing the Royals. It is a tough park for tonight because it is 92 degrees out. So that doesn't help by any means, but it's not a bad matchup. The Royals have a 91 WRC plus versus righties with a low walk rate. Not the biggest strikeout team. So if we're looking at just strikeouts, Kenta Maeda does have the advantage in that department, but they are a team that Cease can do well against. He's been pitching really well recently. He's lowered the usage on his foreseeing fastball over his past nine outings, allowing him to use other pitches. And that plan has worked out pretty well. He has a 3.43 skill interactive ERA in that nine start sample with a 31% strikeout rate. He has one of five pitches in the slate with a strikeout rate above 30%. But some of those guys are in shake your samples or shake your matchups as with Robbie Ray. So from a strikeout perspective, from an upside perspective, Cease is one of the top guys for tonight. The batted ball data for Cease is more middling, but again, we're allowed to focus on upside here because we've got McCullers and Morton for cash games. I think both those guys are viable for cash for tonight, which means we can sell out for upside in the third slot and focus just on tournaments. Cease has that upside. So again, we need guys who can separate from the pack. The way to separate from the pack at picture is get strikeouts. McCullers can get those, Morton can get those, and so can Cease. The Royals have not seen Cease since May 16th, so they're not familiar with his stuff. So I'm willing to ride him here after I get my allocated exposure to McCullers and Maeda. Once I get enough of those guys, then I'll go to Cease 3rd. I feel very good putting Morton and McCullers above him, so it is going to be pretty definitively those at the 1-2, and then I'll go Cease 3, Ken to May 8th of 4. We'll talk about a fifth pitching option in Things to Watch. Before that, do that though, we gotta go to stacks, and we have some flexibility with stacks for today because McCullers are 10-5, not that high-salary, and then the other guys are all value plays. We can kind of afford ourselves some luxury and going with them some studs, which means we can use Trey Turner and Wonsoto and stack the Nationals. And the Nationals are a very different team against lefties than versus righties. They're fine against righties, they're not like actively bad, but they're very boring. I think it's the word I would use for the Nats versus righties. Against lefties, their WRC Plus shoots up to 116, where they 190 ISO, that is the second highest ISO onto Night Slate, and they get a good matchup with they lefty for tonight. They are facing Matt Moore, he has been struggling since he came back to the rotation, at least from a peripheral's perspective. He has a 4.88 skill interactive, he already crossed five starts with a 19% strikeout rate, that is despite nine strikeouts in one game against Miami. So he had a high strikeout game and is still not really working it in the strikeout department. He's also leading up a 42% fly ball rate, and that can lead to dinger issues in a dinger friendly park against a powerful team, and we get all those things for tonight. We saw the Braves get to Moore last week, let up two home runs and six total earned runs, and I think we should feel good about the Nationals from a stacking perspective here. So again, we can get to the studs, Soto, disgusting versus lefties, despite being a lefty, Turner obviously very good too. We can potentially get some value to Ryan Zimmerman if he plays, he's got a lot of power at $2,600. They also did just promote Carter Kaibum, I would expect him to play a decent amount down the stretch. He wasn't like mashing in AAA, but he did hit for a lot more power against lefties than righties. So $2,200 potentially batting in the top two thirds of the lineup. I can get behind that for sure. So we should have the salary to get to the studs, but then maybe Zimmerman, maybe Kaibum has some value here as well. For our second stack, we gotta go back to Garrett Richards, which stinks because he did show some signs of life last week. If you were watching that game, you saw some pretty fun pitches from Richards. It was actually interesting and I was not enjoying it because I had stacked the Blue Jays, but then as the Blue Jays saw him more, they started to get him. They started to make some hard contact and get some damage against him. And now Richards has to face them a second consecutive time, which means we unfortunately should stack them once again here. And that nice start for Richards might not have been a fluke because he has added a changeup to his repertoire recently. He reportedly learned that pitch from Eduardo Rodriguez, which is a good person for him to learn a changeup. And it hasn't been a bad pitch for him. In the four starts with the changeup, he's had minimal walks, the fly ball rate is 31%, the hard hit rate is 39%. So he's better now than he was when the sticky stuff memo first came down. But if we look at just those four starts, the strike area for Richards is still just 15%. He is letting up a ball and play 80% of the time. And that's a tough recipe for success against such a powerful lineup. I don't think he'll necessarily be an auto-stack going forward because again, he looks like he has gotten better, but this is an elite offense, seeing him for a second straight game and they did eventually get to him last week. And that's enough for me to stack the Jays once again for tonight. Another thing that does help here is that changeups are better for countering guys with the platoon advantage. So if you're a righty, you want to throw changeups to lefties. In other words, righties are impacted the less. And the blue Jays, they've got a couple righties in their lineup. And we want to stack them with the forgiving salaries of pitchers. So we should be able to get to Vlad, should be able to get to Simeon, Bichette, et cetera, et cetera. We do have some value here with Gritchick and Lurdez-Guriel. They can be the keys if you want to stack McCullers and get those super, super high salary guys. And then we can make it work given Guriel and Gritchick are both $2,700 or lower. Finally, for our third stack, the twins have lost a lot of oomph recently with the Nelson Cruz trade and the Alex Kiriloff injury. But at least against lefties, they still have a lot of guys I'm willing to use. So I want to stack them tonight against Tyler Alexander. Alexander has been pitching long relief all year. Now he's getting stretched out as a starter for them. He profiles the person we will likely want to stack against. If you look at Alexander, including his time in the bullpen, he has had a 28 total appearances. His strike rate is 20% with a 5% walk rate, which means he's letting up a lot of balls and play. He has let up a 45% fly ball rate with a 38% hard hit rate. Now you're taking those numbers and likely declining them or making them worse because he's gonna go longer in games because you can't throw as hard. So you expect each individual number to go the wrong way as a guy gets stretched out. We saw the twins take advantage of that two starts ago. He went three and a third innings. It was his first start back in the rotation. He had just one strikeout, let up two earned runs in that time. This will be the fourth time that Alexander has faced the twins since July 9th. Two earned relief, but then that one start. But you combine that together and the twins know what's coming. So we do downgrade the twins significantly with Nelson Cruz being out. It matters a lot that they will not have that bat in the lineup, but even after doing so, I still think this is a good stack for tonight. The one big benefactor of Alexander's low strikeout rate is Brent Rooker, he's $2,100 and he's a guy who strikes at a time. Not quite Miguel Sineau, but kinda close. But he also has massive power again, some more two Sineau. He has put a ball in the third deck in two straight games. So for $2,100, I can take on a high strikeout rate especially against the low strikeout pitcher. And I would also expect Rooker to bat at a pretty impactful spot in the lineup for tonight. So I'll start there. I really love Mitch Garver who plays at $2,500, but I think Garver's caught the past two days. So Ryan Jeffers may start and send and Jeffers also has a lot of power versus lefties. So whether it's Garver or Jeffers, I think the twins catch it tonight will be in play from a stacking perspective and we'll talk about them in just a bit as well. But first let's talk about things to watch for tonight. I didn't get to shame McClanahan in the pitching section but I think he's at least on the radar for DFS now. The big thing for him is pitch count because early in the year they were not letting him go deep in the games. But the past two starts, McClanahan has gone 91 and 93 pitches. Those are his only two starts this year above 90. So it's still not high enough to love him for DFS because you do want like 100 or so pitches if you can but it's high enough to at least consider him. McClanahan has a 30% strikeout radius past five starts with less movement on his foreseen fastball. The Yankees aren't at full health. So I could definitely see using him here. I would rank him fifth behind the colors, Morton, Cece and Maeda but 15 games slayed. I think that the fifth ranked pitcher is least worth considering. So check out McClanahan, see if you like what you want. Make sure you're counting for a reduced pitch count for him relative to others but I would at least put him in your consideration set for tonight. Now I originally did want to stack the Cubs today. They're in a good spot against Vladimir Gutierrez, let's up a lot of fly balls and has been letting him more contact recently but how do your Bayez likely out tonight? They do get downgraded. It's not a certainty that Bayez is out but it sounds like he probably won't be playing for today. So I still think the Cubs are good for one offs. Chris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Wilson Catreras, et cetera, et cetera. If Rafael Ortega plays a minimum salary, I can get to him as well but they're just not as fun of a lineup without Bayez. So Cubs are in play but they do get downgraded likely with no Javier Bayez for tonight. Finally, I am down with the Phillies against Eric Feddy. He had a good outing last time out but that was against the Marlins. The Phillies are not great but they are a tougher spot than the Marlins are. Feddy isn't getting strikeouts, he's letting him too much hard contact so the Phillies work as a stack. I just can't push them too high because like the Cubs, they're not an elite offense. So the Phillies and the Cubs are considerations but I'd rank them behind the Nationals, Blue Jays and Twins for tonight. In the spirit of Dinger Tuesday, let's finish up here with some homerun calls for tonight. The boring one will be going back to the Blue Jays because why not? We'll go with George Springer. He's been absolutely disgusting since coming off the IL. Very good versus righties. Richards will let up balls and play. He will let up hard contact. Maybe not all the fly balls but I think there's enough there to love George Springer for tonight. The fun one is going back to the Twins and I said Twins catchers before purposely and I'm gonna keep that same phrasing here where my phone homerun call is the Twins catcher. Whether it's Mitch Garver or Ryan Jeffers, I think they're going deep tonight because they both can thump lefties. Good park for hitting tonight so give me George Springer and either Mitch Garver or Ryan Jeffers for tonight as the homerun calls and happy Dinger Tuesday to all who celebrate. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shop but as mentioned we are back twice later today with the PGA podcast at 10 a.m. on the Fandil YouTube page. We also have our Q&A going on later on 3.30. Brandon is talking men's golf. I believe women's as well. And I will have MLB at 4 p.m. So make sure you swing by the Fandil YouTube Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages and subscribe to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. If you have questions for me before 4 p.m. I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the Fandil Podcast Network at Fandil Podcast. Thank you everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck for tonight. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandil Podcast Network.