 Majorly baseball seems intent on avoiding overlap between Thursday football and the primary games for MLB during the football season. Because once again, just like last week, they've got a really funky slate distribution for today where they've got the games scattered throughout the day. So as always, we're going to work our way around that by doing a split slate podcast for today, breaking down both the early only and the main slates for MLB DFS. Today, let's dive on in and get you set for a split slate podcast. 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 both the early only and the main slate for today over at FanDuel.com. The main slate locks at 7.05. The early only slate locks at 2.10 p.m. Eastern. I think the early only slate is better, to be honest. So I'll try to play that one as well. As always, in order to not inconvenience those listening later on, we'll do the main slate first, then the early only slate. So if you want to skip to the early only slate analysis, check out the episode description, whether it be on NumberFire, Spotify, Apple Podcast, whatever it may be, I'll put the timestamp in there for when the early only slate breakdown begins. If you're listening to this before 2.10 p.m., want to play the early only slate, jump ahead to that spot in the podcast, then come back and check out the main slate as well. We'll break down the main slate in just one second. Week number three is Monday Night Football, the match between the Cowboys and the Eagles. FanDuel is making it even bigger by giving new customers 30 to 1 odds on either team to win. Simply download the FanDuel Sportsbook app today and bet on the most anticipated matchup of the week. See for yourself why FanDuel is America's number one sportsbook. Must be 21 plus and press in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, or West Virginia. New users only. $10 first deposit required. Must wager and designated offer market. Max bonus $150. See full terms of that sportsbook.fanDuel.com. Restrictions apply. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLE or visit fanDuel.com slash RG. In Indiana, 1-800-9 with it. In Tennessee, call the red line at 1-800-889-9789. In West Virginia, 1-800-GAMBLE or die net. In Arizona, call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or TEXT-NEXT-STEP to 533 for two again. Five head. Let's dive now into the main slate for today. It is a four game main slate with lock set for 7.05 PM Eastern. Unfortunately, there is some rain. Four game slate make it kind of dicey similar to the early only slate for yesterday where everything's kind of get wiped out. It's just one game here though. Rain is likely for the Phillies and the Pirates. And it puts that game in pretty serious doubt. The rain chances diminish as the game goes along. Doesn't look great. I'm still going to talk about a picture in that game because I like him a lot, but just note that that game is pretty gross. Pitching preview for the main slate, Lance McCullers is the highest salary pitcher on FanDuel checking in at $10,200. Aaron Nola is 9-1 and Steven Matz is $8,000. Now with Nola, he is in that rain game. So keep this in mind. That game could get wiped out. And I've got my concerns around Nola in general, despite if we just ignore the rain, their concerns aren't hidden specifically. And it seems like the Phillies do too. I still have to rank him first given the matchup. I think he's just too good not to put him first. He's facing the Pirates. They have an 83 WRC plus against righties. They don't generate much pop. And that's a good. And Nola is pitching well from a peripheral perspective. He's been leaning on his sinker more recently, which I never love. But he has a 36% strikeout rate over his past six starts despite doing that. And that's the good. Love that. Good strikeout rate. Great matchup. Love it. The bad is I don't think they trust him to face an order fully a third time through right now. Over the past five outings, here are Nola's batters faced in each game. It's been 1920, 21, 21, 22. And a reminder that two times of the order is 18 guys. So he's gotten that most through four guys a third time in the order. Once he gets the middle part of that order for a third time, they're yanking him. And it's working to their credit. It is working. The results have been solid. And he's getting tons of strikeouts. But it does hurt his DFS outlook. He has no quality start since he almost had that no hitter gets the Padres. So he's imperfect. I think last night is a perfect illustration of the importance of length because Joe Ryan had like a 97% strikeout rate for the twins against the Cubs. But he still got outscored by Ian Anderson because Anderson went deeper in the game. Pitch count matters a lot. And I'm worried about Nola's for right now. So he's not a must play as a result of that, even on a short slate. That is very much noteworthy. But I think that given, you know, it's not 100% certain that they're going to limit him to, you know, 22 or so batters faced. It's not 100% certain that the results may be bad again. I think there's still enough here for me to rank him first. So to me, Nola is number one, despite what I would say are fairly massive and concerning red flags in his profile. Second here is Lance McCullers. I'd be very okay putting McCullers first if Nola gets rained out. Like, I think that like he's fine enough where I can be like, okay, he's actually the top guy on the slate, not the top guy out of obligation. McCullers, no late concerns. He went 110 pitches his last time out. So clearly, they feel good about him. I don't mind the matchup either. He's facing the Angels. They are really struggling down the stretch. Their WRC plus against righties is down to 98. The strike area for them is up to 25%. And it's also good matchup for McCullers specifically because they don't walk that much. McCullers has been upping his curveball usage for his past 10 starts. It's a bit odd because his slider has been pretty good. And his strikeout rate is or his walk rate, I should say, is back up in the stretch. He had been getting the walk rate a little bit down a bit, but it's up back into 10%. So 10% is kind of high. And that means we want to use these guys against teams that don't draw as many walks. And he does get that here. Strike area for McCullers is 27%. His fly ball rate very good at 25%. If we look at that 10-star stretch, we do see McCullers having you get the quality start bonus five times. He has 3.22 ERA. So I wouldn't be opposed to ranking him above NOLA if you wanted to because, again, length matters a lot in MLB DFS. I just think the strikeouts in the matchup make me put NOLA first. I think they're both fully viable options. If you tell me that NOLA's game will not play, that's when we get a little bit hairy for this main slate. I honestly don't know where I would go for the third option. So if we get bad news in the rain, check back at 4.30 p.m. today for the Q&A. We'll talk about it then. It's pretty hairy if we lose NOLA from a pitching perspective for this slate. As far as the stacking goes, I do want to jam in the Blue Jays even if it means I have to lean on their value plays in doing so. They're facing Michael Panetta. This is their second straight start versus Panetta. And the first time Panetta was able to weave his way through some trouble, he let up just one earned run. But there were two more unearned runs against him. And I think Panetta might have gotten a bit lucky in that game. The Blue Jays put 19 balls in play in that game. That's a big number, or against Panetta specifically. That's a big number. Two of those were barreled, two out of 19. Ten of them were hard hits, more than half were hard hits. That should turn into more than one earned run. Now they're seeing him for a second consecutive start. I'm not expecting that to go a whole lot better for Panetta even though this one is at home for him. So I think the Jays should sit atop our list from a stacking perspective for today. Now with colors that tend to, that's not for aggressively high salary, but it's enough where we didn't need to find some value. You can't just go with Vlad, Semyon, et cetera, et cetera. We got to find some value here. So I want to rake them and just kind of give you my thoughts on these guys based on the way things play out right now before we see what the lineup looks like. My favorite of the non-high salary guys is still Alejandro Kirk. Kirk has a 170 ISO versus Rides. That's enough. He tends to hit more in the middle part of the order, which I will definitely take. So Kirk is number one. Number two is Gritchick if he plays. That's not a guarantee by any means because it is a Rides. So he could get pushed out of there. Do you like the power there? Number three might actually be Jake Lamb. Lamb has a 205 ISO against Rides. He's probably going to hit ninth if I had to guess, but in this offense, it's actually fine given the salary Lamb has. Number four is Corey Dickerson, just not as much power as Lamb, as Gritchick, as Kirk. And then Danny Jansen, if he plays over Kirk, depends on where he hits. He's more sensitive to that from me than Lamb because, I mean, Jansen's had good power this year. I'm just not sold and it sticks. So I think Jansen depends on where he bats. But for right now, if we assume it's Kirk who catches, I'd say Kirk, Gritchick, Lamb, Dickerson, the ranking of the value plays within the Jays. For the number two stacking option, I don't feel great about it, but I do think we should stack the Rangers here. And that's scary. They're really bad against lefties. And I've used multiple left-handed pitchers against them this week alone. It's just hard to pass up their matchup. They're facing Zach Lauther, who's getting his shot in the rotation for the Orioles. And it's gotten up to a rough start so far. His ERA is 8.74 since he joined the rotation for good. His skill interactive ERA equally scary at 6.08. And he's just had rough numbers across the poor from a peripheral's perspective. It is just a three-star sample, though, in Lauther's defense. So it's important to dig in a bit more to see if that's legit. When we do dig in more, though, we'll see that he had a 6.53 ERA in AAA. He struggled in the bullpen of the majors as well. He did get more ground balls in AAA. That's kind of the one positive here for Lauther and the one thing he could potentially lean on. We just haven't seen that in the majors so far. I think everything here says we should stack against him, even if it means we're doing so, with a really, really bad team. I think the good thing with the Rangers is that there are some individuals I don't mind. I know that that is the lowest bar you could possibly set, but that's not true for every team. So there are some individuals here I can get behind. Two of those are Adelaide Garcia and DJ Peters. Those two guys have plenty of pop. Peters has his flaws, for sure, from a strike area perspective, but he can hit the ball pretty hard. Andy Abanyez has started to hit the ball much better recently. He's been hitting third or so against lefties as well. So I don't mind Abanyez. I'm okay with Charlie Culberson and Nick Solak. So this can be very scary. It is scary. I'm frightened just talking about it, but I do think that the Rangers are a good stack for today, despite the fact they are wretched, wretched, wretched versus lefties. So the Rangers, number two behind the Blue Jays, and it does help that their low salaries make it a bit easier to get to the Blue Jays for today as well. That wraps up the main slate. Let's move now to the early-only slates. If you listen to this after 2.10 p.m., see you at the Q&A at 4.30, 4 o'clock for the Thursday Night Football Preview and tomorrow for the Friday Slate Breakdown. The early-only slate is a five-game slate locking at 2.10 p.m. Eastern. It's a pretty good one, though. There is no weather to discuss here, so there's no Nola situation. We are good to play this thing straight up, and there are three really good pitchers on this slate. We've got Max Scherzer checking in at $11,300. Logan Webb is $9,800. Adam Wainwright is $9,500. Chris Bassett checks in, $93.00. Good to see him back out there on the matter for that scary, scary, scary line drive off his face. Charlie Morton, Hugh Darmish, and Adrian Hauser are the others that $8,000 are higher. Now, not only do we have good pitching options for today, but I think one of the better ones is one of the lower salary guys in Charlie Morton. Charlie Morton is $8,600. I think he is a solid play for today, and I'm very okay being high on him. He's not as highly regarded as Scherzer or Webb, but I think he's in a great spot tonight, and a big part of that is the matchup. He's facing the Diamondbacks. They have a 79 WRC plus against Reides. Their ISO is 134, with a 25% strike out rate. It does help Morton that the roof is closed for today. It's been open the past three games, but that closed once again for today because it is a day game, but to hang with Scherzer and Webb, you need to be good. You don't need just a good matchup. You got to be good yourself as well. Morton is that. We are up to 13 starts on him since the velocity on his curveball increased. He has a 3.53 skill interactive ERA in that time. His strikeout rate is 28%, and the bat of ball bait is looking pretty good recently too, because his hard hit rate is 31% in this span. He's had some tough matchups in there. He had nine strikeouts against the Yankees, eight against the Reys, and he's had good results too, because he's allowed more than three earned runs just once in this 13 start sample. ERA from Morton at 3.00, so he can get strikeouts. He's in a plus matchup. Park not as bad as it was the past couple of nights, given the roof being shut. It's a really good combination. I'm okay being high on Morton here. Even with really good competition, I'll take that discount and put Charlie Morton number one for this early only slate. Between Webb and Scherzer, I am okay going with Webb over Scherzer by the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest hair. Scherzer is at course. It scares me just enough when his salary is 11.3. If he were the same salary as Webb, I'd probably go Scherzer, because I prefer the upside that Scherzer brings from a strikeout perspective, but I think that when you give me the discount, I'm okay taking the better park factor going with Webb. Webb is facing the Padres. They're not the biggest strikeout team, but I think they're a team that he could handle. We're up to 10 starts on Webb in his current state when he's been leaning on his sinker a bit more, and his numbers in that sample are absolutely absurd. He has a 2.71 skill interactive ERA with a 28% strikeout rate and a 4% walk rate. He does all of that while also having a 19% strikeout rate. That should not be legal. He has not faced the Padres in this time either, so they're not familiar with him. That's a good thing. Webb has 10 strikeouts once, nine strikeouts twice, eight strikeouts, and two others, and his ERA is 2.20. It's not just the peripherals that love him. He's a good pitcher. The results have been there too. The Padres are not a pushover. They have a 101 WRC plus against Reides, and their strikeout rate at 21% is very good. I just think that Webb is too good of an overall pitcher for me to pass him up at $9,800. I will be there tonight for sure, and I think that he is a great option. To me, it's more than one. Webb 2, Sherser 3, very comfortable having Sherser in my player pool. I just want a tiny bit less of him than I have in Webb, but if you're looking for just raw ceiling, I think Sherser has the slight edge of their overlogan Webb. As far as the stacks for the early only slate, you say Kikuchi. The velocity has always been a big topic of discussion with Kikuchi. I get excited every spring because their reports are that his Velo is up, and often it is, and there are really good spurts that it'll have at times as a result of that. The recent stretch for Kikuchi has not been one of those good stretches. His velocity has been down over his past seven starts, and it's not going well. His skill interactive ERA is 5.14 with an 18% strikeout rate. His hard hit rate is up at 55%. Again, League Irish, there's about 39%. So 55% not great. Shockingly, the results have not been great either. His ERA is 6.91. He's gotten clouded by Houston, which makes sense because they're a very good team, but he also let up four runs through the Royals in one start, three runs through the Royals in another. Even without Ramon Lloriano, the A's are a pretty good team against lefties. They've got a 105 WRC plus with a 174 ISO, and I think they can do well here. So I don't want to use batters facing Kikuchi because I like rooting for him. I've got him in a Dynasty League, where I'm trying to win a championship right now, so I don't really want to root against him, but I think it is the right thing to do here, and I'm okay stacking the A's against him right now. I'm guessing most of you listening know this, but it is worth pointing out just how good Matt Olson is against lefties. He actually leads the A's in both WRC plus and ISO versus lefties. His strikeout rate is 18%. That's absurd. So when you pull up Kikuchi's numbers versus lefties, you're going to see that he's done very well against them. I think their Woba is maybe 205. I might be quoting that stat wrong, but I think it's very, very low, but doesn't get a huge strikeout boost against them, does still let a fly ball to them. So the peripherals say, you know, it's not the worst idea to use lefties against him. I'm okay using Olson here. I know most of you know that Olson's good against lefties, but I do want to reiterate, don't just auto stack the righties on the A's against the lefty. Matt Olson is still a priority no matter who they are facing. The second stack for me is in Arizona. Again, it is a bummer that the roof will be closer today because it does downgrade the offense, but I still think we should stack the braves here. They're facing Madison Bungarner. He is really struggling in four of the five key categories that I log on my sheet. And it sounds like he's having trouble gripping the baseball right now. As a result, he has thrown fewer curveballs as past six starts. Makes sense because like if you're having a tough time getting a grip, you're not going to throw as many curves, you're not as confident in that pitch. And it's likely some really bad advanced numbers. He has a 5.24 skill interactive ERA in that time. His strikeout rate is 17%. He's letting up a lot of fly balls. The one area where Bungarner is still doing well is suppressing hard contact. The hard hit rate allowed is 33%. That's helped keep his ERA in check at 5.21, but he's gotten hit hard by some bad teams. The pirates scored four runs against him. The Mariners scored five runs twice. So yes, he did do well versus the Astros last week, but just three strikeouts there. And that's not enough to scare me off of stacking against him going forward. I think we should stack the Braves and all of their powerful righties here and feel pretty secure in doing so. When we talked about the Braves earlier against righties, I've been heavily on Adam Duvall above Jorge Soler. They're facing the lefty tonight. And I think that does flip where I would go Soler over Duvall versus a lefty. Soler's iso against lefties. It goes up to 297. That's much lower versus righties. Duvall is good against both. But I think that Soler, with the boost that he gets against lefties, deserves to be a little bit higher on our list. So I still love Duvall. I adore him. He has massive upsides. He's got a 58% fly ball right against lefties. He's stupid. But against lefties, I'm okay. Ranking Soler a tiny bit higher between the two. Ideally, we just get both. That's the ideal solution here. But if you had to pick one, I'd put Soler a hair above Duvall. Just against lefties, against righties, very much Duvall against lefties, a hair favoring Soler. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shot. As a reminder, we do have our MLB DFS Q&A breaking down the main slate later on today. That's at 430. They'll be preceded by the Thursday at football preview. Brandon Gadoulos in breaking down the simulations for Panthers versus Texans. That is at 4 to 430. I'll be on at 430 to 5, breaking down the main slate. Hopefully, we get good news on the weather out in Philadelphia. If you've got more questions for me before 4pm, 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. Make sure you go subscribe to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Tune in at 10 a.m. for the NFL DFS Heat Check podcast, or check it out on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Good luck to all of you with both the early only and the main slates, and we'll talk to you once again tomorrow to wrap up the penultimate week of the regular season of MLB DFS. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.