 Finding upside a pitcher tonight and daily fantasy baseball is simple because we have Spencer Strider, what else could you possibly need? At hitter, it's a bit different because a lot of the pitchers on tonight slayed our skilled at either suppressing hard contact or suppressing fly balls. We want hard contact and fly balls and tonight we mentioned to pick either one or the other. So the pitching section, easy. Stacking section, not so much. We'll break down what y'all offenses I'm okay with despite the red flags and get you ready for Tuesday, Wednesday night in MLB DFS. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the Fandwall Podcast Network and NUMBERFIRE.com. My name is Jim Saunders. I am a senior rider and analyst for NUMBERFIRE. Here to break down a seven game and main slate on Wednesday with lock set for 707 p.m. Eastern for tonight. The one weather note onto this slate is that in New York for the Mets and the Rays, winds are in from left at 11 miles per hour. I would downgrade offense a bit there. As far as the temperatures for tonight goes, not a whole lot in terms of good weather for tonight. We only have two games or three games with temperatures above 61 degrees and a lot of those involving very good pitchers. Corbin Burns, Spencer Strider, Nathan Evaldi and then a couple of guys with weird bad at ball profiles in Drew Smiley and JP France. So we want to seek out hot weather. It might be kind of tough for tonight adding to our dilemma when it comes to stack. And we'll talk about what that means and more in just one second. The first day reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the NUMBERFIRE Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts or PGA DFS podcast for the PGA Championship is now up breaking down our thoughts on roster construction, the course, core plays and much more get that wherever you get your podcast you can all show the show over on the Fandall YouTube page along with every episode of the solo shot. If you like what you hear, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or leave us a five star rating over on Apple podcasts. The second leg of horse racing's big three is here and Fandall is the best place to bet the preakness stakes because right now all customers get a no sweat preakness bet up to $20. That means you'll get up to $20 back if your win bet doesn't win. Bet the preakness with America's number one sportsbook just visit racing.fandall.com for your chance to get a no sweat preakness bet up to $20 this Saturday. That's racing.fandall.com, age and residency, restrictions apply, offer valid on first win wager, refund issued in Nong, the travel racing site credit that expires on June 12th, 2023. Restrictions apply see terms at racing.fandall.com gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER. Pitching preview for this Wednesday main slate, Spencer Strider justifiably, the highest salary guy on Fandall coming in with a salary of $11,500. Garrett Cole is 11,000 flat. Nathanian Baldy is at 10-8. Corbin Burns, 10,000. Chris Bassett back up to $9,500. JP France, 93. Kode Senga, 92 with Drew Smiley at 9,000. We have Brian Beyo and Peyton Battenfield as the others at $8,000 or higher. Now, when Spencer Strider is on the slate, you probably know who our top pitcher is going to be. That's going to be Spencer Strider. And so that is no different. It should be obvious he is the top guy for tonight. I think that if you look at the other good opposite of the slate, they're fine. But Strider, even relative to Cole, Ivaldi, Burns, et cetera, separates from the pack. He's facing the Rangers, which is not a fantastic matchup. They do have some power in their bats, but they will strike out 24% strikeout rate against righties on the current active roster this year. And they also don't have drawn out plate appearances. The Rangers active roster averages 3.86 pitches per plate appearance against righties, which is better than average for this slate at least. And that's good for Strider, who, as we know, is hyper inefficient in that regard. He does still rack up strikeouts despite that, though. He has eight plus strikeouts and 12 consecutive starts. He's hit double digits in five of those 12 starts, including each of his past two games. Plenty of those 12 starts have come on the road, which is where he is for tonight as well. That's not a massive concern here. Strider's batted ball beta has been at least good enough to get by. We have a 17 start sample on him with his slot usage being up. And in that time, he has a 39% hard hit rate with a 39% fly ball rate. Obviously you'd like those numbers to be better, but when you let up so few balls in play, it's a lot less of an issue. I have Strider projected for 9.7 strikeouts tonight. That is a very high number. He is tops in the slate by 2.5, and I'm very happy to load up on him here. So Spencer Strider, to me, deserves to be at the top of our pitching pool, even with a salary at 11.5, we can make that work with the offense as we'll want to stack for tonight. The second slot tonight behind Strider is pretty tough to decide. It's between Nathan Yevaldi and Garrett Cole. Cole is on the road against the Jays, whereas Nathan Yevaldi is at home against the Braves. It might be dumb, but I think I'm going to give Yevaldi the edge here in the number two slot behind Strider. Yevaldi's looked great so far this year. His most relevant sample is his past seven starts because he didn't throw many splitters in his first earth this year. I've seen it a lot with guys that throw splitters, you know, want to ease their way into that pitch. Usage has been up since then though, and it's been up relative to where it was last year as well. And in that time, that seven start sample, Yevaldi has been lights out. His skill interactivity array is 3.03. He has a 27% strikeout rate with a 3% walk rate and he's also getting ground balls. So the rate stats for Yevaldi are very good, but he's also getting a huge leash right now. He has gone 113, 107 and 113 pitches, his past three starts respectively. And we saw Yevaldi get 12 strikeouts in one of those games. He's facing the Braves tonight. That is a very tough matchup because they do draw a lot of walks, but they also will strike out. I have Yevaldi projected for 7.3 strikeouts tonight, which is enough to be viable. And it's also enough to give him the slight edge over Garrett Cole, though both these guys are fun and both these guys will be in play on most slates. So to me, the breakdown of pitch tonight is Spencer, Strider one, I'll go Nathan, Yevaldi two, Garrett Cole number three and all three guys, really good options and guys who can feel good about putting into our lineups. As for the value play, Brian Bayo has had some decent starts recently, gets a high strikeout matchup at home tonight. And I think there's enough there to make him our top value on the slate. Bayo is facing the Mariners at home and they will strike out 25% strikeout rate versus righties on the current active roster this year. Bayo himself, not really a high strikeout guy. He's at 21% across nine starts since he cut back on his foreseeing fastball in favor of his sinker. Typically not gonna be a high strikeout move and it has not been one for Bayo, but he is working decently efficiently. He's had five plus strikeouts in three consecutive games. He had a 15% swinging strike rate against Atlanta last time out, which is as high as he's had so far this year. And he also in that game through 100 pitches, which is a career high. He gets ground balls, get some strikeouts, been getting more whiffs recently, at least in that Atlanta game. He's at home against a high strikeout team. I don't think Bayo has the juice to hang with Strider, Yevaldi, Cole, but he's not bad. And all those guys, Strider, Yevaldi, and Cole have had some issues with batted balls, so it's not a given that they will perform tonight. So I think that Bayo is worth a consideration here at $8,500. I don't think it's the worst idea to consider him at that mark. I do wanna talk about one more picture and things to watch, we'll get to them there, but as of right now, Bayo is my top value of the night. That's the easy part, the pitching. The stacking, not so much. It is pretty tough to identify stacks at check every box. And that's why the White Sox are our top stack tonight. Their offense has not been great so far this year, and they're still missing at least one key piece. So they might not turn it around super, super soon, but I think they've got some fun pieces and they get a good match of Forced Knight, which puts them at the top of my stacking list. They're facing Peyton Battenfield, who is struggling with hard contact. He has allowed a 50% hard hit rate across six outings in the majors so far this year. And enough of those are in the air as well. He's letting it pay 13.6% barrel rate, which leads to a 5.36 expected ERA. The actual ERA for Battenfield is a bit better, but given all the hard contact he's allowing, all the impactful contact he's allowing, I'm not sure I expect that ERA to stay where it's currently at. The minor league numbers for Battenfield show he's not likely to be a high strike out guy. And we have seen some blips in the results despite the overall good numbers in the ERA category. But a foreign runs twice so far and those came against the Tigers and the Rockies. Both games were in Cleveland. So he was at home against good teams and he sputtered. So yeah, the White Sox are not great. The temperature for tonight is lower than he'd like it to be, but neither are the other teams that have gotten to Battenfield. It's not like a situation where he's been getting beat up by bangers. So I think that does give us the green light to stack the White Sox here and feel pretty good about it. And also does help here at the White Sox that they have gotten some fun pieces back. You on Moncada, Jake Berger are both back. Moncada, before he had the IL, very small sample, but a 256 ISO in that time. He had a 41% hard hit rates and he's had some hard contacts since getting back as well. The rehab center from Moncada, pretty solid too. Berger this year, a 333 ISO went deep last night and that's just against righties, a 333 ISO against righties. So the White Sox are not perfect by any means, but they're better than they were. Now that Moncada and Berger are back and I think there's enough here to make them viable. I think we can get to five guys or four guys in this lineup very easily for stacking. So to me, I feel best about the White Sox and I feel pretty firm in saying that based on the rest of the stacks available on this slate. The other Sox are also in the stacking consideration, the Red Sox facing Marco Gonzalez who has looked better recently, but there are still some issues with his peripherals. And I think we can stack the White Sox against him. Now I do think some of the shifts that Gonzalez has made are going to stick and be good alterations for him. His cutter last year was a pretty bad pitch. He had a 372 expected WoB against it and he threw that pitch 20% of the time. So 20% usage on a pitch that was not good to him, probably not a great formula. We did see him cut back big time on that cutter in his third start this year. And he's been throwing it less often for the past six starts now, that's a good thing. And so it's not a surprise to see Gonzalez's ERA him at time at 3.98. It's been a good shift and I don't think that's a fluke. But it's still not perfect. Even in just those six games, he has Gonzalez has led up a 4.70 skill interactive ERA with an 18% strikeout rate. So minimal strikeouts, even if it is more than it was last year and he's letting up a 37% hard hit rate. That's better than average, but it might not be better enough if that's a phrase we can use to get by with how few strikeouts he gets. We saw some of the downsides of that when Gonzalez faced the Jays. He let up five earn runs across three innings. So you can still get to him. The bummer here is that the Red Sox have a ton of lefties, especially the best batters in this lineup, pretty much all left handed. But despite that, even with that account of four, they still have a 105 WRC plus against lefties, which is above average and definitely not too bad. So I think we can still stack them despite the fact that Gonzalez is a left handed batter. They have a lot of lefties in the lineup. Gonzalez last year actually had a worse Woba against lefties and righties. That's partly because only the best lefties would stay in the lineup to face him. So that is some selection bias there for sure. But I think that all things considered, the Red Sox, a viable stacking option for tonight. It also does help that a lot of the righties are lower salary. Keke Hernandez sounds like he should be back for tonight, Justin Turner, as it lefties well enough. Rob Reft-Sneider, not regarded as a high upside bat, for good reason, but his ex Woba is 366 so far this year, makes decently hard contact. We were looking at him just against lefties. He has a 185 ISO since the start of last year. He can occasionally add a steal. His salary is $2,400. Should have bat pretty high in the order. So if you wanna get to Strider, I don't mind it. I would probably be looking to get two lefties in a Red Sox stack. With Rafael Devers being one of them, I think that he's good enough against lefties to justify that for sure. Tristan Casas plays, he's been good against lefties in a very small sample this year. Yoshida good against lefties too. So I think he can have to be okay taking on two lefties if you stack the Red Sox, but that's fine by me. I don't mind Turner, Hernandez, Ref Snyder, but I only want two of them if I can influence it at all because they're not the highest upside guys. Connor Wong is okay too. But if you wanna stack the Red Sox, just go in with the mindset of, I'll probably need to use a couple lefty on lefty situations within this stack. As mentioned, all their stacks in the slate involve serious imperfections, primarily the bat of balls. So we're gonna either target guys to suppress hard contact or who limit fly balls. I think our best option is going to be going out one of the ground ball guys, which means stacking the bets against Josh Fleming. Even though the wind is in tonight, Fleming is the ground ball guy, it's not ideal by any means. Fleming will start for the race today. He has primarily worked as a bulk reliever for them, but he's not gonna get any strikeouts. He has a 7.2% swing and strike rate this year and he's walking too many guys as well, but Fleming is getting ground balls as he always has. He has a 62% ground ball rate this year, which is up from 59% for his career. But if you look at Fleming's career, it's still a 4.82 ERA, it's 5.40 since the beginning of last year. So teams, despite the ground balls, are still scoring on him. He's just letting him too many base runners and the way to strand base runners is getting strikeouts, but he doesn't do that. So let's have ground balls, let's have balls and play, walk skies, let's guys on base and then they get in just because so many guys are able to get on base. Then after Fleming, then that's the face to raise bullpen, which is definitely not their strength. So it's not fun. I hate targeting ground ball pitchers, but I do think on this slate, it is the right call. So to me, the Mets are the number three stack here despite the wind, despite the ground ball matchup, despite their face in the race, I think they are number three for tonight. I think Starling Marté is pretty interesting here. He got pushed down to six in the order because he was struggling so much, but his hard hit rate is up since going down there. It hasn't resulted in any extra base hits yet, which is a big issue for DFS, but he can get upside via speed. His salary is $2,700. I'm not sure if Marté is breaking out of his slump yet, but the speed means he could still be fine for DFS even without going deep. So Marté, tentatively buying back in, I was in on him earlier this year, which did not work out very well, but tentatively buying back in, in case the shift down the batting order can ignite a bit in his bat for right now. Things to watch forward, and I'm not really sure what to do with my Clevenger. I've been stacking against him and that has worked pretty fine so far, but his peripherals have picked back up since he went back to his cutter three starts ago. He's facing Cleveland, so it's our revenge game here. This offense has been retched so far this year and now Jose Ramirez on the bereavement list. So probably not gonna get a whole lot better. So I'm probably okay going here for one-offs if you wanna go someone like Josh, I guess not, you know, I think you can go some routes here with the Guardian's offense, but I don't know, it's not great, especially if Josh and Taylor can't play, it's not ideal. So they're fine for one-offs, but I'm not actively seeking them out by any means. I'm not sure if Matthew Liberator will be added to the Fando player pool for today. He's not in it right now, but he's at least somewhat interesting if he is added at some point. The Cardinals AAA team was letting Liberator go deep in games earlier this year. And you'll see it a lot in AAA, but he's hitting like a hundred pitches, 97, 98 pretty consistently. He's facing the Brewers who with a ton against lefty, so we saw last night at Jordan Montgomery. If Liberator is added, his salary, I'd probably need it to be like $8,300 or lower. If it's down there, I'd be okay taking a swing at him potentially above Bayo just because there's a bit more unknown in the positives of Liberator than there is with Bayo and it's a good matchup too. So at least check out, you know, when you open up your Fando player pool, type in Liberator, see if he's in there. I'd still prefer to go with Strider, Evaldi and guys like that, but I think that Liberator would be a consideration if he is added. Two other guys with annoying batted ball profiles for JP Frans and Drew Smiley, both those guys facing each other in Houston, which is one of the few warm games on the slate. Smiley has led up just a 29% hard hit rate this year. France, great at suppressing hard contact in AAA and his hard hit rate is 33% through two starts in the majors. I don't mind stacking out of the Astros of the Cubs, but I am worried that the batted balls would continue to be an issue here. So keep that in mind for sure. When it comes to stacking for today, nothing's perfect. Maybe you wanna go just go with the good weather, go with the Cubs and the Astros, but it's tough regardless. Dinger calls for today. Talk before about how if you're gonna stack the Red Sox, you have to be okay using left-handed batters in a lefty-on-lefty matchup. I think that's more okay with Rafael Devers than with most guys. This year been very good against lefties in a small sample. Go back the last couple of years, the numbers, the power numbers for him were not as good against lefties, but they were still fine. I think that given how good he's been overall, I think it's okay to be high on him in the situation. And I think Devers also do for some positive regression given how hard he's hitting the ball right now, decent plate discipline numbers. So like Rafael Devers, the boring, a run call for today. The fun one, let's go Jake Berger. I know maybe it's not boring given, I think he has like nine home runs or something like that so far this year, but making a lot of hard contact. He's barreling the ball right now, even against righties and gets a decent matchup against Battenfield for tonight. So home run calls for today, Rafael Devers, Jake Berger. And if you think Berger is not quite boring or fun enough, we'll go Gavin Cheats as the alternate home run call from that White Sox versus Guardian's game. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shot. We are back once again tomorrow to break down Thursday's main sites. So make sure to subscribe to the Number Fire daily fantasy podcast. And also check out our PGA DFS podcast breaking down the PGA championship. If you've got questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the Fandwall Podcast Network at Fandwall Podcast. Want to thank you all for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your NLB DFS lineups. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow to break down Wednesday or Thursday's slate. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandwall Podcast Network.