 The headliners on Wednesday night's slate for daily fantasy baseball, our matchers are in cold. These guys are pitching lights out right now. They are back to kind of the form they were before the sticky stuff discussion began. And it's always tough to pass up guys with like a 35% strikeout rate in DFS. The question we have is, can any of the other 18 pitches on the slate match them from an upside perspective? And there is one guy who I think can do so. The problem is, his game is pretty likely to be rained out. So our search for a contender for the top spot between Scherzer and Cole is gonna be tough. So let's dive on and get you set for Wednesday's slate. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast network in numberfire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com. Here to break down Wednesday's 10 a game main slate with lock set for 705, 4 to 90. Mets and the Marlins game is already been postponed from this slate. So if you did some research yesterday, just know that game is no longer there. I would expect it will be joined by the Phillies and the Nationals. That game, I don't know how it happens honestly. It looks really rainy. There's a crazy amount of rain. I will mention Aaronola in the pitching section because he would be awesome if we were able to use him today, but it seems super unlikely. So I would kind of just assume that game's not going to play. If you're looking at this slate, trying to decide where to go, just operate under the assumption that you can't use Nolo, which is a bummer. Cause I do like him. I will talk about him in the pitching section very briefly, but probably not going to happen for today. We'll let you know who we are looking at outside of Scherzer and Cole, if anyone, in just one second. My first quick reminder to check out this week's PGA DFS podcast with myself and Brandon Gedullo. We broke down the tour championship, the unique scoring format for that event. Who could move up the leaderboard throughout the event, our favorite options and much more. You can find that by searching for the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts, you name it, you can find us there. And while you're there, please leave us a rating and review as well. Also, we are back on air once again, later on today, 4pm, talking more MLB DFS. And as always, you can get your questions in. Today it'll be on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, get your questions in on those formats, happy to take them on air and get you set for tonight's slate of MLB DFS. Hey soccer fans, this season, FanDuel and Captain Morgan are teaming up to give you a one-of-a-kind soccer contest. Introducing Captain Morgan's Soccer Pick'Em, a weekly fantasy contest that is entirely free to play. The contest is simple. All you have to do is make quick predictions for Saturday games this soccer season. You will earn points for each correct pick and compete for a chance to win up to $3,000 in prizes every single week. Head over to FanDuel and enter the Captain Morgan Soccer Pick'Em Today. Must be 21 plus to participate. For more details, this is FanDuel.com or download the FanDuel Fantasy app. Eligibility restrictions apply and don't forget to make your game day more delicious and sub in the Captain. Pitching preview for this Wednesday Slate, Max Scherzer is the top guy on FanDuel4 today checking in at $11,500. Garrett Cole right in his tracks at $11,200. Chris Sailor's 10-5 didn't have Sail in the Things to Watch but would note it seems like he's on a pretty low cap in terms of pitches right now, pitches slash innings. He's gone five innings twice, went into the sixth last time but then left after he walked a guy and hit a guy. So, Sailor's 10-5 technically in play, probably not gonna be in my player pool for today. Similar thing for Carlos Rodan who we'll talk about in Things to Watch. He is 10-2, Aaron Nola and that game likely to be ranked out as 10,000. Kevin Gosman is $9,500. Max Freed is 9,000. James Caprellian and Steven Matz are the others at $8,000 or higher. Everybody else is below 7,000 so it falls off a massive, massive cliff. And for me, I think that we're looking at the top of the pool here. It's worth just dedicating this entire opening section to the situation with Scherzer and Cole. I am gonna put Nola in here just to discuss him in case some miracle happens and suddenly we get to play that game. Just not expecting that. So, I'll talk about Nola briefly and how I would rank him in case he's able to go. I wanna start here with Scherzer who is facing the Braves. It's a tough matchup. There's a lot of power in this lineup for the Braves but they will strike out. They have a 24% strikeout rate versus righties and Scherzer is dealing right now. Once the sticky stuff discussion really caught on, they started to enforce things. Scherzer started throwing more changeups. We are up to 11 starts in that sample with more changeups and Scherzer's strikeout rate is 33%. That ranks third on this slate. One of the guys ahead of him is Sale who is not on a full leash. The other guy is Cole who we'll talk about in a second. Scherzer had 10 strikeouts on the road against the Padres last time out. They're not playing great right now, as you know, the Padres but they are still a lower strikeout team and a lower strikeout team than the Braves specifically. That's why Scherzer is on this list. It is not a matchup I want to target with the Braves but I do think that when it's a pitcher as good as Max Scherzer, I can make an exception. I mentioned that Cole has a higher strikeout rate than Scherzer at his most relevant samples. Let's go through him next. His most relevant sample is the nine starts with more sliders and his strikeout rate in those nine starts is 35%. We've seen Cole let up hard contact just 34% of the time. He's looked good. Since he returned from the COVID IL, he has made three starts and he's had nine strikeouts and two of those. One of those starts was against the Angels and that is the team he will face tonight. The swinging strike right there was 16.7%. It's a very good number. And Sebastian's had since he was on the COVID IL but now Cole is facing them for the second time in four starts. This game is on the road. So there are a couple of dents in the armor for Cole. I think the matchup overall in a vacuum is better for Cole than it is for Scherzer but a couple of issues working against him specifically kind of a close to repeat matchup in this game being on the road. Obviously the strikeouts are very fun though which is why he is still in this discussion. Just very briefly on Nola, if we had access to him I would love him because he's facing the Nationals, 85 WRC plus against Reides, 133 ISO, really rough team and Nola has been awesome. He has a 32% strikeout rate over his past 10 starts with altered movement on his fastball. His 3.06 skill and track of ERA ranks third behind Salem Cole. He's facing Washington, great matchup. So if the weather clears out, I'll be very on an era Nola but I just don't think that game will play. If it does play, I would rank Nola second in this top tier. Scherzer would be first. It is a tough matchup but he is unreal right now. He is at home, they do strikeout. Scherzer's number one. Nola would be second thanks to the matchup. Cole is third. It's not the matchup really again that scares me away as much as it being on the road and it being the second time the Angels had seen him within a couple of stars. So I would happily bump him up to second if Nola gets wiped out due to rain but if we can get access to Nola, he would be number two for me for tonight. I wouldn't be shocked if by the time you're listening to this though, that game is gone. So again, Scherzer one, potentially Nola two, Cole three but I'm very happy to put Cole second if we don't get access to Nola. The value options on this slate are, I would dean them at night there. I think that's pretty fair. I don't think you can feel great about anybody there. So I will use the closest guy I can stomach to being a value. He is not a value in the usual definition of below $9,000 but like, you know, I'm not doing it. It's pretty rough below 9,000. The closest guy I can get there is Kevin Gosman against Milwaukee. He is $9,500. So again, above our usual limit but Max Reed is the only other guy lower salary than Gosman who I could recommend potentially but for Reed is just $500 less. He's on the road facing the Dodgers. So I'm just gonna talk about Gosman instead. If you want a true value play, good luck. I, my best wishes, that is all I can say. Milwaukee, who Gosman is facing is not the auto target offense they once were. The William Davis trade really did help turn things around for them. They have a 24% strikeout rate against Reddy's. That is like five percentage points better than it was at one point this year. It is still higher than the average though and Gosman is a guy who can take advantage of a high strikeout rate. Gosman this year didn't initially use his splitter a ton which makes sense. It's a pretty grating pitch on pitchers. So it makes sense to ramp up into that but he's been at full use on the pitch for the past 15 starts. Strikeout rate in that time for Gosman is 27%. He has a 3.89 skill interactive ERA. He is walking guys and he's letting apart contact which is why I talked about NOLA before. If I can use him at 10,000 I would do it over Gosman in a heartbeat. Just again, don't think NOLA's game will play for today. The upside is there though for Gosman. He had seven strikeouts a couple of starts ago. He had eight and nine, a few starts before that. And a lot of the bigger games for Gosman have come at home which makes sense because his strikeout rate there is 30% and it's also a great part for pitching. So I am okay with using Gosman but I really do think the proper way to play this late tonight is to build around Scherzer and Cole and then NOLA if we can. The odds that one of those two or three guys is the highest scoring pitcher on the slate is very high. So my focus for today is getting up to those guys, locking them in, taking the high score and trying to identify value in the hitters. Speaking of which, let's move now to our stacking section and it will focus around offenses that we can use with Scherzer and Cole. That does mean some good stacks will get de-prioritized a bit. So the Yankees are a team that I do like to stack for today just harder to stack them in terms of value. We'll talk about Cleveland in terms of a lack of value but we do need to try to identify teams we can stack while using Cole and Scherzer. One team that you might not think of in that regard but I do think works depending on how the lineup cranks out is the Chicago White Sox. I think they've got to be the top stack for today. We got good matchups elsewhere and we'll go through those in a second but the White Sox are the one good offense. We've gotten a super plus spot. In facing Max Krannick, Krannick is coming back up from AAA where things weren't really going so hot. His ERA was 5.10, he had a 19% strikeout rate. His walk rate was good but that means a lot of balls in play. We like that scenario for stacking a lot. ERA over five, low strikeout rate, low walk rate and those were his AAA numbers. In the majors, Krannick has a 4.96 skill interactive ERA across five starts. His hard hit rate 39% with a lot of fly balls. All that led to a 7.20 ERA in that very small sample. Now, Krannick has to face a team that's as healthy as it has been all year long with Yasmini Grondahl being back. Everybody is basically here for the White Sox and it's making me want to stack them quite a bit. So it's really hard not to be in on the White Sox here. The hope is that Yasmini Grondahl plays. He has caught back to back games given the knee injury. I would doubt he catches today but he could DH, it would mean no Andrew Vaughn but that's not a huge loss against the righty. Grondahl has been awesome all year. He has been on a power binge since he came back. I would love to be able to use Grondahl at $2,800. So I hope he's in there. I also hope Brian Goodwin plays. That would kind of be dependent on a Tim Anderson is sitting out again with his injury. So we're a pro Tim Anderson podcast. We hope Tim Anderson plays. If he doesn't though and Goodwin plays I would be okay with Goodwin. So check out Goodwin, check out Grondahl. Since our Hernandez is not the worst option either could have some value on this White Sox team despite the fact they are pretty good and we don't view them as being a value stack. Couple of teams that I think could give us some like almost minimum salary guys are the Twins and the Royals. Let's go through them now because if you use those teams maybe you can stack the Yankees with Cole or Scherzer kind of doubt it, but it's worth a shot. Starting with the Twins, I was on them last night. Didn't really go super hot but I am back on them once again. The first thing that I love here for the Twins is the matchup. They're facing Justin Steele who is transitioning into the rotation. The first three starts for Steele have not been great. He has a 5.08 skill interactive ERA. His fly ball rate is 39%. So he's losing one of the keys to his success when he was a reliever and Steele's walking a lot of guys. That is a profile we can stack against. And you could have done so successfully with some pretty rough teams earlier on that Steele was facing as he was transitioning to the rotation. So I think that that's number one. We can use lower level teams against Steele, the Twins not the highest level team right now but that's encouraging for them. The second reason that the Twins bring us some really good value. It's not just valued in that they have lower salary guys in the lineup but they've got some guys with power and that's kind of hard to come by. So I think it's wise to be in on the Twins here leaning on that value to spend up a pitcher and get to guys like Byron Buxton, Josh Donaldson and Jorge Palaccio. You're not gonna get all three of them in there but you can't get at least maybe one of them in there. The two key guys here in terms of value are Brent Rooker and Ryan Jeffers. The last time they faced a lefty those two guys at seventh and sixth respectively and that's high enough for us to like them. Rooker has a lot of power. Jeffers has a 254 ISO versus lefties. So those guys are like the keys for me. I am willing to use Rob Ruff-Sneider. He hasn't had a good isolated slugging this year but he does have a 44% hard hit rates and a 40% flat ball rate. That means that the power could come eventually. So Ruff-Sneider, Rooker, Jeffers, all guys I'd be willing to go to to give myself a lot of flexibility in terms of my second stack but also making it easier to get to Scherzer and Cole. So I would check out the twins, check out those three values specifically and see what you can make work. Other team I mentioned there was the Royals and I think that both sides of this game between Kansas City and Cleveland are pretty stackable. Kansas City is the one that brings more value so I'm gonna ride with them here and we'll go through Cleveland in things to watch. Kansas City is facing Logan Allen. Allen has been up and down between AAA and the majors. He has a 7.95 ERA and AAA. It's 7.53 in the majors. It should be pretty obvious why we'd wanna stack here. I do wanna note that Allen did have a pretty massive velocity spike in his most recent start. That was against the Red Sox, very good team versus lefties and Allen held them to just one run over six innings which is pretty easily his best start this year. There are a couple issues with that start. The first one is that his swinging strike rate was still 6.8% and that's actually lower than his season long mark. The second is that he still led up a 50% hard hit rate. He got some ground balls but those ground balls were well struck. So he didn't get whiffs and he led up hard contact. That's what we want for stacking. So even off the good start last week, I am still fine stacking against Allen here. I think the Royals do great out really well. The goal here when stacking the Royals should be to get to Salvador Perez. I mean, like he's $3,400 which seems kind of high for a Royals guy but also for a dude with like 97 home runs this year that also is not that high. It's actually 38, I was close enough. 97, 38, whatever. Either way, a lot of Dinger Salvador Perez, I want to get there. But there are a couple of guys who showed power in triple A who could make it pretty easy to get to Perez at $3,400. The big one for me is Edward Olivares. He could hit cleanup tonight. He had a 226 ISO in triple A. It's 221 in the majors as well. So I do like Olivares. Emmanuel Rivera had a 319 ISO in triple A. He has a 48% hard hit rate in the majors. Hasn't translated to great success yet but I think it could eventually. Rivera, $2,400. Olivares, $2,100. I think those two guys can be big keys helping you get to Perez and Scherzer or Cole. So the twins and the Royals are the teams you want to turn to when you're looking for like these almost minimum salary guys who can go deep. And I think that all those guys, to me, hyper viable for today. Let's move to things to watch and stick with that same game talking about Cleveland. They're facing Jackson Kowar. Kowar pitching pretty well in triple A recently. He had a 34% strikeout right there now. But the quick peak we got at Kowar in the big leagues earlier this year didn't go so well. So I'm fine using guys against him. I prefer the Kansas City side due to the salaries and due to the matchup. But, you know, Cleveland definitely works. Bobby Bradley specifically went deep again last night. So it seems like he's getting healthier again. I like him a lot at $2,500. So Bobby Bradley, to me, pretty solid option for today. I will be excited to be on Carlos Rodan in the future. And I would love to use him tonight. I just don't think I can. And it's not about him, not about matchup. It's all about pitch count. Rodan came off the IL last week and went 67 pitches. I'd expect him around 80 to 85 tonight. That likely means he'd be fully stretched out after this, but probably not for tonight. So hopefully Rodan works that pitch count up so we can be back on him in the very near future. But as for just tonight specifically, I'll be taking more of a wait-and-see approach. The Yankees are a tough team to stack with Cole and Scherzer, which is why they weren't in the top three, but they're awesome via the salary to get there. They're facing Paqui Notton, which is a tremendous name. Notton does get some ground balls, but everything else says we can stack against him. So maybe you can get some Gary Sanchez and Luke Void as one-offs here, but I'm not expecting to be able to get a full stack here. I will say though, like if you've got like $3,800 left, put Giancarlo Stanton in and don't look back. Like you need, I think for one-offs, they are at a great spot. So to me, the Yankees are a solid team today. I'm just not expecting to have a lot of salary to burn to get to them for myself. Let's finish up here with the Dinger calls for today. The boring one will be the guy we talked about before, Salvador Perez, 38 home runs this year, facing Logan Allen, lets up a ton of balls in play, lets up a lot of hard contact. I think that Perez is just too good to deny right now. So Salvador Perez will be the boring home run call for today. The more fun one, I didn't get a chance to talk about the Blue Jays at all in the stacking section. They're facing that Harvey for today. So should probably talk about them at some point, but I would assume that we get Corey Dickerson in this lineup and Dickerson has only five home runs so far this year, but his numbers with the Blue Jays show, I think he can actually go deep. Facing Matt Harvey, unfortunately, George Springer got hurt again last night. So should increase the odds that Dickerson plays. I think Dickerson has a good shot to go deep tonight. And if you can stack the Jays, feel free to do so. I just ranked them below the Yankees in terms of like high salary stacks below the white socks as well, just because Harvey has been a tiny bit more competent recently. So check out the Jays. I like Dickerson for a home run. I like Salvador Perez for a home run. And hopefully that will allow you to get to Max Scherzer or Garrett Cole for tonight. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shop. But once again, as always, we are back later on today for PM Eastern on the Fandil YouTube, Twitter and Facebook pages breaking down your questions, taking them live on air and getting you said, for tonight's slate of MLB DFS as the lineups come out. 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 Fandil Podcast Network at Fandil Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to the Fandil or the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast to check out the E-Check Fantasy Podcast. Myself and Brandon Cadulla breaking down the tour championship to get set for what should be a fun weekend of golf at Eastlake. We'll talk to you all once again on Thursday to get you set for that main slate. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandil Podcast Network.