 As you know, it's pretty rare for me to deem a high salaried hitter or a high salaried stack to be a priority for a Slate in daily fantasy baseball because almost always I want to spend that salary on what's predictable, what's predictive, where I can find the most obvious and highest probability path upside, usually that's via pitchers. Today's Slate I think is a little bit different because there are two stacks that I like a lot that are in tremendous spots and will cost you a pretty penny. And I think that they're attractive enough where I do want to prioritize them even on a Slate where Garrett Cole is pitching. So our job for today is to decide, do we go Cole or do we go with those high salaried stacks? And if we do with the high salaried stacks, which pitchers do we utilize for tonight? Let's dive on in and get you set. 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 today is 12-game main Slate with lock set for 705 for tonight. There is one weather note for this Slate. There is a chance of rain in Chicago for the Cubs and the Reds. Looks like it's rolling out before first pitch, but you'll want to check back on that one later on to make sure that game is good to go. Update on that one coming up later on today on the 4pm stream that is on 4pm on the FanDuel YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages. We will still be doing the MLB Q&A's even with NFL season now here. We will be changing around the order of things eventually. Like on Thursday, we're going to have our Bucks Cowboys preview. That'll be at 4pm. MLB DFS will be at 4.30. Friday, we're going to have our Snake Draft Q&A back with myself. JJ Zacharyson and Brandon Cadulla, that'll be at 4. MLB will be at 4.30. But at least for the start of this week, Tuesday, Wednesday, we'll still be on air 4 to 4.30 with the MLB Q&A. No PGA today because they are off this week after the tour championship last week. But we will still have MLB as always at 4pm. So make sure you subscribe there, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter. And also subscribe to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast Feed because NFL is back this week, our first preview podcast of the year. Coming up on Thursday, 10 a.m. Eastern on the FanDuel YouTube page and up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast Feed after that. Recap podcast 9 a.m. Monday on the FanDuel YouTube page. Solo shot will be at 8 a.m. on Monday. So changing things around a little bit here to account for NFL season, but still plenty of baseball coverage coming your way. You're on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast Feed. Hey, sports fans. Fandals offering exclusive promotion for new sportsbook users. Join Fandals sportsbook today and make your first bet. If you lose, we'll give you a refund up to one a thousand dollars in site credit within 72 hours. Your first bet after depositing will qualify. If you have multiple selections on one bet slip, you'll be the first selection you made. Head over to Fandals sportsbook today and make your first bet. Must be 21 plus and present in Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia or West Virginia. New users only. Max bonus $1,000 site credit. See full terms at sportsbook.fandual.com. Gambling problem. 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 at 1-800-889-9789 or in West Virginia. 1-800-Gambler.net pitching preview for this Tuesday main slate. Garrett Cole is the highest salary pitcher on Fandals. Checking in at $11,300. He is well worth that, but he's also facing the Blue Jays. That will factor into our discussion for today. Blake Snell on a heater is at 10-1. Logan Webb, despite being at Coors Field, is $9,700. Still makes sense, given how good he has been. Max Freed is $9,300. Aaron Nola is $9,000. We have Wade Miley, James Caprellian, Stephen Matz, Eric Lauer and Eduardo Rodriguez as the others at $8,000 or higher. And when I'm looking at this slate, I do want to get to Garrett Cole and I will have some coal tonight. But I don't think he needs to be the top pitcher, given the match with the Blue Jays, given the viability and desirability of the high-sourced stack. So to me, the number one pitcher is going to be Max Freed. And a lot of that's because of the situation he is in. He is at home and facing the Nationals, and they are a beaten-down shell of a team right now. They are better against lefties and righties, but I don't think they're a team we need to fear right now. And Freed is pitching really well. He is not quite in like the Zach Wheeler zone, where he's like amazing in every department, but he's getting there where he's just super well-rounded. He's been using his curveball more over his past 13 starts. This is a very large sample for Freed that has led to both good plate discipline numbers and good bad at ball numbers. He has a 26% strikeout rate with a 5% walk rate in that time. His flyball rate is just 27% and he's not letting up a lot of hard contact. And Freed has put up those really impressive numbers in some tough matchups. He faced the Dodgers and the Giants in his past two starts. And he had nine strikeouts in that Dodgers game. He also had nine against the Nets at the end of July. So what that means is that Freed does have a path to upside. And his salary at $9,300 gives us more flexibility to load up on the high-sourced bats that I really do want to prioritize for today. So, no, I don't always pass up a high-strikeout pitcher to save salary. In fact, I very rarely do that. I think in this spot, though, it's a pretty fair trade-off because Freed does have upside. He's got a really good floor, too. And it is a difference making salary at $9,300. So I'm OK, quote, unquote, settling for Freed here and using the Savians on the high-upside bats. So to me, I think that Max Freed grades that well enough where I am OK, making him my number one pitcher for today. I think that Zach Allen is the other guy who will let you load up on some high-sourced bats without totally sacrificing a path to his ceiling. He's down to $7,900. He's facing the Rangers, and that's a big part of it here, too. They have an 83 WRC plus against Reides with a 146 ISO. The Rangers don't draw many walks, so they are a plus matchup. And now they lose a DH tonight with this game in Phoenix. The low walk rate that I mentioned before is a great thing for Gallon because he has been getting strikeouts recently. He has a 26 percent strikeout rate in his eight starts where he's been using his fastball more often. But his walk rate is 9 percent. And that's an issue that Gallon has had in the past. It's hurt him at times in this stretch as well. So I don't expect the walk rate to just magically go down. We do want to go at Gallon more hard in situations where he's facing teams that don't draw a lot of walks. And the Rangers fit that very well. He's a more appealing pitcher in situations like this. In this eight game stretch, Gallon had nine strikeouts against the Rockies and Coors. He had eight against the Dodgers at home. So he's been put in some tough spots, but he's still performed well. And this spot tonight is not as tough. He's at home facing a rough offense, losing a DH. So he's not going to score as well as Cole, but he's going to get you a lot more juice out of your hitters. Like if you want to get to Mookie Betts and the highest desirable giants for tonight, I do think that it's a situation where Gallon makes a lot of sense and I think it is a tradeoff I am OK making. So to me, Zach Gallon, despite being imperfect for a lot of reasons, is still a guy I would like to use for today. So if you are like me and you decide I love the Giants, I love the Dodgers, want to get to both those teams, I would say Max Freed and Zach Gallon are your top two options. With that said, the Giants salaries are not all that high. They've got a lot of midrange guys. They've got a value guy in there, too. So you can potentially stack them specifically with Garrett Cole for tonight. The Dodgers might be tough, but I think the Giants can work and it might be a bit cumbersome. And you will need a viable second stack, but you can make this happen. So I am going to have Cole despite his $11,300 salary. Cole is my number three pitcher for tonight. He's in a tough matchup facing the Blue Jays. And that's another part of why I'm going to go to Freed first over Garrett Cole for today. But Cole is filthy right now. He's been leaning more on his slider over his past six starts, which has helped him regain the dominance that he had earlier on this year. He has a 2.37 skill interactive ERA in that six start sample. He has a 40 percent strikeout rate with just a 6 percent walk rate. And he's also letting up hard contact at just 29 percent of the time, which is the best mark on this slate. So if we're looking at like this from a performance perspective, not accounting for matchups, salary, et cetera, et cetera, Garrett Cole is on his own planet right now. The matchup is tough. Luckily for us, we have seen Cole in some tough spots in this recent stretch. He has faced the Red Sox, the Rays and the A's in this time. And he's had at least eight strikeouts against all three of those teams. He did let up earned runs like that. That Rays game, despite getting like 10 strikeouts, is not a shiny pinnacle of, you know, showing why we should spend up for Garrett Cole tonight. That's why he's third on this list, not first. But if you have double digit strikeout upside, you deserve to be in our player pool, even if we do want to spend up at hitter. So I'll have less coal tonight than I have of freed and gallon, because, again, I do want to prioritize them first. But Cole will be number three for me. And I want to have enough to benefit if he blows up once again. So in terms of exposure for me tonight, it is freed one gallon to coal three could maybe talk me into some other guys. But I think that I feel pretty good ranking those three at the top of my list for today. So that's the thought at pitcher. Let's talk about stacks. And it's been kind of the underlying thing throughout the day for today. And the reasoning why we did want to try to find some salary for pitchers because the Giants, the Dodgers, to me, far away the top two stacks. And I would like to get to a lot of bull for today. Let's start the Giants. They are at Coors Field, and that means that they go from having the worst park factor in baseball to having the best. It's also a very good matchup. They're facing Chichi Gonzalez. Gonzalez's velocity has been down for a while now for about the past two months. And in those seven outings, he has a 5.65 skill interactive ERA. His strikeout rate is 11 percent with a 6 percent walk rate. That means he's letting him play 82 percent of the time. And that's a course field. We want to limit balls and play a course field. Gonzalez is not doing that. He's doing the opposite. And forty four percent of those balls in play are hard hits. Only thirty nine percent are on the ground. That is going to lead to Calamity, and it has. He has a six point nine one ERA in this stretch. That is even with three of the seven appearances being on the road. Now he's facing the Giants. They have a 108 WRC plus against Reides. They have a 200 ISO, even with so many of their games being in a really bad park for offense. They get extra base hits. I think that they are an elite level staffer tonight. And I will do what I have to to be in on them here. And luckily for us, the salaries aren't that bad. You know, it's not to the point where, like, you can easily stack them as coal, but, like, you can make it happen. They've got Brandon Belt, Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford all at thirty three hundred dollars. We can get there with coal. Tommy Lestella is twenty seven hundred dollars. He actually lead off against a righty a couple of days ago. He has a thirty six percent fly ball right against Reides. So I'm very willing to use Lestella. And I think that he is the best value play on this slate. So although I'm putting coal third on my list, I would not I would not assume you can't stack coal with the Giants. I think you can. So I'd at least give it a shot for today, because I think you can make it work. And it won't be that difficult. But it does mean you're going to have to go a little bit salary conscious with your second stack. Part of the reason why I put coal third as opposed to first, despite the Giants, middle and salaries, is because I want to spend it for the Dodgers, my second stack as well. So I do think that they great out really well here. It may be tough, but it is worth it for sure. They're facing Jay Hap. Hap is still having issues. He faced Cincinnati last week and they are a team that's pretty rough against lefties, despite some talented individual batters. And they beat him up. They scored seven runs against him in just one inning. He allowed two home runs in that time with no strikeouts. And we've seen Hap have other blowups in the stretch. The good performances he has had have mostly just come against Pittsburgh. Like he's faced them three times in the stretch and he's dominated them. But the Dodgers aren't Pittsburgh. They have a 108 WRC plus against lefties. They have a 196 ISO, a 38 percent fly ball rate. So it's a tough matchup for Hap, who has slipped up in lesser spots. And I think the Dodgers are great. If the Giants weren't in as good of a spot as they are, I think they would be a no brainer for the top spot tonight. The Dodgers would be that is if the Giants weren't as good as they are. The Dodgers would be our top stack for today. They'd be the top stack on most slates, but I'm OK, putting them second. And again, prioritizing them on this slate, despite the fact they are very high salary. As far as the Dodgers individual batters go, they are a lot of their guys are good against lefties and righties. You know, whether they have a lot of lefties who can do lefties well. The guy to me who gets the biggest bump up against the lefty is Chris Taylor. His ISO against lefties is 245. It is 169 against righties. He's still able to get some stolen bases off of lefties, too, which is a nice talent to have. So I don't use Taylor much against righties. It's going to be a bit over sourced for me there, but it's a different discussion against lefties. I will be in on him here at thirty four hundred dollars. I think that he's tremendous. Will Smith at the same sourced tremendous. He should play today because he was off yesterday. So I do think that Taylor and Smith midrange plays in the Dodgers who can grade out well. And you could go with the strategy of peppering the midrange Dodgers. And passing up the Giants and a Cole situation and then going to the lower sourced second stack. But to me, if I'm getting just one of these two teams with Cole, I'd rather go with the Giants over the Dodgers. Now, as mentioned, we're trying to get to Cole with the Giants or the Dodgers. We need a lower sourced second stack to make it work. I think the Orioles work for that spot. They're facing Jackson, Coar. Coar just came back up last week for his first start since June, and he did pitch really well. He held Cleveland to two runs over six innings. And he had six strikeouts. That was much better than he was previously. There were still some issues, though. Primarily, Coar let up a lot of hard contact. Eight of the 15 balls in play he allowed were hard hits. And not many of those were on the ground either. We also saw Coar let up some runs when he was in the minors before he got called back up. Like he was getting strikeouts, but he was letting up earned runs. So because of the strikeouts, the Orioles are not in a slam dunk spot. But they're also not a bad offense. They're WRC plus against righties is up to 98. They have a 39 percent fly ball rate. They have a 170 ISO, and they're in a good park as well. Coar's not bad. It's possibly figured some things out while he was in the minors. And there is some potential there. But there were still some flaws last week, though, when he had that really good game. So I think we have the leeway to stack against Coar here. And I will be doing so for tonight. One of the guys who will work well with the strategy of trying to use the Orioles to get salary flexibility is DJ Stewart, if he plays, they have faced a ton of lefties recently. So Stewart hasn't played all that much, but he does tend to play versus righties. And the lack of playing time has pushed Stewart's salary down to $2,500. But he has a 207 ISO against righties. He has a 51 percent fly ball rate. And in this park, that is double long upside. And that gives you a lot of flexibility. So I want to be high on Stewart here, assuming he does play. I think that he makes a lot of sense at $2,500. And I will be in there for tonight. He's not like the best hitter all around, but he can go deep. And I think that that is pretty attractive, honestly, where he's $2,500. And I do need the salary savings, for sure, out of my hitters. Let's talk about some more potential one-offs and stacks in things to watch. The Royals could get us in value in that exact same game. They're facing Alex Wells. Wells has led up a 54 percent hard hit rate this year, with just a 16 percent strikeout rate that is a tremendous combo to stack against. I'm not expecting to have a bunch of salary left over from one-offs. So, you know, it's tough to say Jamon, Salvador, Perez, not about the Montesey. But like, if you do that salary, those guys are amazing. I love them. Otherwise, Edward Olivares could hit cleanup for a minimum salary once again. So Olivares is salary saver here on the Royals. Perez, Montesey, great one-offs. If you can get there and you could just go with a Perez, Montesey, Olivares stack, not opposed to that by any means. I think that that does gray out pretty well. But overall, the Royals is another spot to go to for tonight. Two other offenses I like for one-offs or potentially stacks are the A's and the Reds. The Reds are facing Adrian Sampson. Sampson is getting stretched out as a longer option for the Cubs. And things haven't necessarily gone great from a peripheral's perspective. In the shorter role, his results are good, but the peripherals are not quite as good. Tyler Naikwin, $2,900. He could be a fun one-off as well. So Naikwin in there, Olivares. And I think those are the primary lower salary guys here. As for the A's, they're facing Jimmy Lambert. Lambert has spent most of the year in AAA. And he had got a lot of strikeouts, 32 percent strikeout rates. But he still had a 4.98 ERA because he was walking way too many guys. The strikeouts have not been there for Lambert in a small sample in the majors. He's led up a lot of flypalls on not as high in this A's stack because the parking which is taking place. But I can still get to some because the matchup is pretty good in the offense. Solid, despite the fact they have petered off a bit recently. So for one-offs, the Royals, the Reds and the A's. But I'm ranking them behind the Giants, Dodgers and Orioles for tonight. Let's finish up here with some Dinger calls. Going back to the teams we discussed in the stacking section, the boring home run call is Brandon Bell. Brandon Bell has amazing power, is usually mired in a terrible park, but now goes to Coors Field, facing a righty, let it slip a lot of balls in play. Brandon Bell to me, just way too obvious as a home run call for tonight. The boring one, let's talk about DJ Stewart. Again, 51 percent fly ball right versus righties in a great park for hitting. Facing guy who will probably let up some hard contact in the majors. I think that's enough where we can like him quite a bit. The home run calls for today, Brandon Bell and DJ Stewart. That's all we got for today here on the solo shop, but we are back Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Still a full week of the solo shot coming your way here on the Fandal YouTube page at 9 a.m. and up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed after that. So make sure you are subscribed to Fandal YouTube page and also subscribe to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Fandal Podcast Network at Fandal Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Hope you all had a fantastic Labor Day weekend. It's NFL season. Going to be a fun week. We'll talk to you all once again in the very near future. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandal Podcast Network.