 The pitching pool for tonight's slate and MLB DFS is pretty fun. If you go to FanDuel.com right now and open up the player pool for tonight, you're going to see a lot of good names there. A pitchers duel out west between Walker Bueller and Anthony Sclafani. Zach Thompson getting a lot of strikeouts in the big leagues, probably over sourced at $9,400, but hey, he's fun. You got Sean Minaya, Charlie Morton, a lot of these good guys in situations where we can use them for DFS, which means we get to be kind of picky and use the guys who actually great out best for us as opposed to just taking what's presented to us. I think that's a fun thing for tonight. So let's dive on and let you know how we should prioritize these pitchers. 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 tonight's eighth game at main slate with lock set for 7-0-5, 4-2-9, and fortunately, just like last night, no big weather to discuss. We should be good to go to play things straight up, pick our favorite pitchers, pick our favorite stats, stacks, and lock them in for today. As always, we are back on air later on today at 4 p.m. for the YouTube, the FanDuel Live Q&A. That's on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter. Make sure you are subscribed there, but also make sure you are subscribed to the NumberFire Daily Fantasy Podcast for the MLB podcast each day. No NASCAR podcast this week as a result of their two-week Olympic hiatus, but Austin Swain will have UFC DFS up tomorrow morning pretty early. So make sure you check that out by subscribing to the NumberFire Daily Fantasy Podcast feed. The Olympics are back as the world's best athletes gather in Tokyo for a summer showdown. FanDuel is giving fans an exclusive opportunity to get in on the action with the USA Gold Medal bonus. All you have to do is head over to FanDuel Sportsbook and place $100 plus in wagers on the Olympics prior to July 26th. You will be awarded a $1 bonus in site credit on each gold medal United States wins at the Olympics regardless if your wagers win or lose. Show your support for Team USA and head to FanDuel today. Must be 21 plus and President Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, or Virginia. I don't think West Virginia is in this promo. Either way, I've got the rhythm of saying them at the end. Either way, it's over Virginia. Bonus issued as a non-withdrawable site credit that expires in seven days. Max bonus, $50. Restrictions apply. See full terms at sportsbook.fanDuel.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 or in Tennessee, call the red line at 1-800-889-9789. If you want some Olympic betting breakdowns, we'll be talking to Whale Cap or Drew Dinsick tomorrow on Covering the Spread. That should be up later afternoon tomorrow, so check out the Covering the Spread podcast for that ease. I think talking swimming. So that should be a blast. We'll have that tomorrow on the Covering the Spread podcast feed. Pitching preview for this Thursday main slate. Walker Bueller is the highest salary pitcher on FanDuel, checking in at $10,500. Anthony DiScliffani, facing Bueller, is $9,900. Zach Thompson is $9,400. Sean Minaya is $9,100. Then we have Charlie Morton, Huang Yong Kim, and Kenton Maeda as the other guys at $8,000 are higher. So a lot of good names on that list. And you could go a lot of ways. I think there are three guys you could pretty easily defend as being the top option for tonight. But when I go through salaries, go through matchups, go through form, et cetera, et cetera, I wind up on Sean Minaya being my top guy for tonight. He's facing the Mariners, and that is a great matchup for a lefty. They have a 92 WRC plus versus lefties with a 27% strikeout rate. That strikeout rate is the second highest mark on this slate. And Minaya doesn't really need that boost. He's a bit of an outlier with the sticky stuff discussion. Minaya has always been a low spin rate, low velocity kind of pitcher, and he's actually throwing harder recently, and his movement is going up. Sticky stuff does not influence velocity, but it's encouraging that his movement is going up as his velocity increases. That's what you expect. Faster pitches move more, et cetera, et cetera. So it seems like we should not ding him at all for this sticky stuff. And in fact, Minaya might have gotten a boost, especially relative to other pitchers. He's performed really well this time. He has a 3.60 skill interactive VRA across seven stars with increased velocity, 27% strikeout rates, and a 6% walk rate. The batted ball numbers are not his strength, but they are a smidge better than average in this time. When you put all of that, put the strikeouts, put the low walk rate in a plus matchup, good things can happen. When we see Minaya take advantage, he has at least six strikeouts and five strike games. He had 11 strikeouts and one of those, and that's despite having some tough matchups. We have seen this matchup before. He faced the Mariners in Seattle back on June 2nd. That was a second start of the stretch with the increased velocity, and all Minaya did was throw a four-hit shutout with eight strikeouts. I think that same outcome is within his range of outcomes for tonight. So it's a good slate for pitching. There are a lot of good pitchers for tonight. He is on the road, but to me, Sean Minaya does deserve to be number one on our list for this slate. As far as number two, it's actually a guy I think is pretty under salary, checking in at $800. So technically our value play for tonight. That guy is Charlie Morton. It is a revenge game. It was four starts of the Phillies for Morton, but you will not deny me of my revenge game glory. It counts for sure. It's not a bad matchup here for Morton. The Phillies against righties have a 90 WRC plus. Their 159 ISO is the fourth lowest on this slate, and they have a 24% strikeout rate. Now, the Phillies do draw walks, but Morton doesn't really issue a lot of those. He's basically cut out his sinker over his past six starts, and the walk rate in that time is down to 6.5%. It comes with a 31% strikeout rate and a 3.27 skill interactive ER rate. That skill interactive ER rate at 3.27 is the best on this slate by a pretty decent amount. He also has a good bat of ball data. This game is on the road, which can always lead to issues, but Morton actually has been good on the road. He has a better ER rate there. His strikeout rate goes up a smidge, so no real concerns for me with Morton. I think that he's great, and I want to treat him as such. I think that both he and Minaya are under sourd. I think that Morton should be around 9.5%. Minaya closer to like 9.7 or so. I'll take those discounts and rank those guys 1, 2, 4, 2, 9. The third pitcher for me is Walker Pueller. Morton is the value player at 88, so we can go to the second stud for the third slot. And the reason that Pueller is lower for me than Minaya and Morton is Matchup. He stays in the Giants, who are a really good offense. They rank second on this slate in WRC+, they rank first in ISO, and they draw walks. That's why I can't get too high on Pueller, despite the fact that he's very, very good. And that's why I want Minaya for cash games. But Pueller does have upside. The Giants will strike out. They have a 25% strikeout rate versus Reides. Pueller is one of the pitchers whose movement has decreased recently. Specifically, it dipped four starts ago, which is right around when they started doing the checks for sticky stuff. And that's noteworthy for sure, but Pueller has still been effective in this time. He has 3.53, skill interactive ERA, with a 29% strikeout rate and good, bad at ball data. So he's declined, but he's still been very good. 10-5 is not a bad number for this lady. He is the highest salary guy, but I think he's appropriately salaried. I worry a bit about familiarity. This is his fourth start against the Giants. He's done really well against them, but that's a lot of exposure to his repertoire, and that's a little bit concerning. So I will get to Pueller for sure. I think that he is the most talented pitcher on this slate, but I want to have more exposure to Minaya more than first, and then I will get to my Pueller just because I think that the overall outlook for those guys is better in my eyes. So to me, it is Minaya won, Morton 2, Pueller 3 in terms of pitching, which means we actually have a lot of salary flexibility for our stacks, and we'll get to routes for using that. My favorite stack for today is actually a lower salaried one, and that's the raise. Facing Cal Quantrell, he was in the bullpen for the first part of the season for Cleveland, and when he was there, he had great bad at ball data. He was not letting up much hard contact, but as Quantrell has gotten stretched out, those bad at ball numbers have regressed, and I think we can stack against him with the raise for tonight. Quantrell didn't throw more than 60 pitches in a game until June 19th. At that point, on June 19th, or I guess, yeah, on June 19th, or the start before that, either way, he had allowed a 32% hard hit rate in the season. The guy was about 39%, so that's a great mark, really above-average stuff out of Quantrell at that time, and it scared me out of stacking against him. He has made six starts since then, though, with an elevated pitch count, and in those six starts, his hard hit rate allowed is 47%. That is despite having a start against the pirates in which he allowed just three hard hit balls the entire time. That is included in this stretch. Since then, Quantrell's been kind of getting smoked left and right, and it's led to some pretty rough outings. He led up six runs to the twins, four runs to the Tigers. Overall, his ZRA is 5.28%. His strikeout rate in this time is 13%. So this makes sense. If you're letting up a lot of balls and play, which you are with the 13% strikeout rate and a bunch of those balls and players struck hard, you're not going to have the best results. This game is also in Cleveland, which is awesome for Tampa Bay, from a park factor perspective. So I think the Rays honestly deserve to be at the top of our list, and the salary saving we get allow us to go nuts with our second stack, which I would like to do, because there are two high-solid stacks that I do like. So I think the Rays really, really fun here tonight. And with the Rays, we do want to favor the lefties. Quantrell's strikeout rate goes up against lefties, but he lets them more impactful contact against them. So that's exactly what we want to go with the Rays anyway. Brandon Laos and Meadows-Ali plays here. I think Jimon Choi should start to hit for some power pretty soon. He has a 39% fly ball rate against righties, with an 11.5% barrel rate overall this year. I would bet that we see an upside game out of Jimon Choi in the not too distant future. So Jimon Choi, $2400, both Laos and Meadows are right around $3,000 too. So you can stack them easily and have salary to burn for your second two stacks. And that's good, because my other two stacks are a little bit spendy starting off with the Rays. They are definitely diminished without Ron Bacunha Jr. They lose their best overall hitter, and it's especially tough against the lefties, because it neutralizes Freddie Freeman a bit. He's still good against lefties, but he's not as good as he is versus righties. Despite not having a Cunha, despite them facing a leftie, I do still think the Braves are worth a look here. They're facing Matt Moore. Moore has made four starts since he returned to the rotation. The results have been good, but the peripherals are more concerning. He has a 4.64 skill-interactive ERA with a 21% strikeout rate. He's letting up a fly ball 44% of the time, and there is enough hard contact in there as well. Now, Moore is not allowed more than two earned runs in any of those four starts, but he's faced some pretty weak competition, specifically last week faced the Marlins, had nine strikeouts there, but that nine strikeout game is included in his 21% strikeout rate. I don't expect a similar outing here for tonight, against the Braves. Now, it is a bummer, obviously, to not have a Cunha, but I think the remaining pieces here are still good enough to rank them in the two-slot here behind the Rays. The main righties here are Ozzy Albies, who is disgusting against lefties. I adore him tonight, $3,600. I'll go to Freeman II at $441, but Danzby Swanson, Austin Riley, all those guys, kind of the core plays within this stack. I would also mention Orlando Arcia and Guillermo Heredia, lower in the order as being potential considerations. Heredia has good power numbers and a limited sample versus lefties. Arcia has not had a click yet in the Big Leagues, but he was just outstanding in AAA before he got promoted, and I feel like that AAA guy is still in there somewhere. So I will take some swipes here to see if he can carry to the Big Leagues. I think that he's at least worth a look. I'm probably not going to need the Sour Savings realistically, but if I decide to go braids red socks as my two stacks, I might need a value play in there. And I think that Arcia or Heredia could be those guys for tonight. I mentioned the red socks there because they are the number three stack for me for today. Facing Jordan Montgomery. Montgomery is not a bad pitcher. I have used him in DFS this year, but the problem is they've seen him a bunch, especially recently. They just faced him last week, and they had a couple barrels against him. They got a lot of hard contact, and they scored three runs and six innings. That is identical to the line they had against him on June 26. Now, three runs and six innings does nothing for us in DFS. Who cares? That doesn't matter. But this will now be the third time they've faced him in the past month. That can't be a good thing. Montgomery does lag behind many of the other pitchers on this slate as well from a peripheral's perspective. The velocity has been down over his past seven starts. In that time, he's letting up a 41% fly ball rate. His skill interactive ERA is 4.32, which is not bad for most slates, but it's on the lower end for tonight. We haven't seen a blow-up outing for Montgomery yet in the stretch, and we may not get it here, but the building blocks for a blow-up are in place. And I think that the Red Sox makes sense here in the spot where we have the ability to get to JD Martinez and others. So Montgomery, again, a good pitcher, and not a guy I typically stack against and have used in DFS, but I think for tonight, given the familiarity, given that the Red Sox are very good versus the lefties, given we have salary to burn, I do think that it makes sense to go against him here. There are a lot of guys in the slot. I'm not just Martinez who hit for pop against lefties. You got Martinez, Xander Bogart, Hunter Renfro, and Kike Hernandez all having ISOs higher than 200 versus lefties. Bobby Dahlbeck is in there, too, if he winds up playing for tonight. Among the lefties here, Rafael Bevers, easily the best mark. He has a 171 ISO against lefties. So there are no real weak spots here. Even in a non-Siv matchup, I like the Red Sox a lot. I would say you can probably stack the Red Sox and the Braves together with Minaya and Morton, but I do like the Braves quite a bit. That's why I was willing to go to them and I'll use the salary savings here to splurge, maybe stack the Braves and the Braves and then get in JD Martinez as a one-off, something like that. That could work as well. So I do like all three of these teams a lot in the rays. Despite not needing the salary savings, still a team I want to get to for tonight. Let's move now to things to watch. I am guessing that at some point today, Blake Snell will get some buzz because of the matchup. He's facing the Marlins, so I get it. John Lester was effective against him a couple of nights ago, but Snell is really struggling. Over his past six starts with more forcing fastballs and fewer change-ups. He has a 5.20 skill-interactive ERA with a 14% walk rate. He is letting up a ton of hard contact, so I get why people might want to go there. It's possible he doesn't get any buzz. Like, that could happen for sure, but I don't think I can do it myself right now with how bad the form is for Blake Snell. Albert Alsela has not been throwing a slider much since he returned from a short stint on the IL, and it's led to a pretty big step back for him. In those starts since coming back, he has a 20% strikeout rate. Hard hit rate is 47%. He's led a multiple home runs in each of his first four games back. Alsela faces St. Louis tonight. I am not a big fan of stacking them, as you probably know, especially versus righties, but I end down to do it here. I love Tyler O'Neill's upside as a one-off. I think that he is, like, if I were to just say on outfielders who I like disregarding stacking, O'Neill would be near the top of that list among the one-off outfielders for today. So I think that O'Neill, specifically a guy, I will be willing to turn to within even non-St. Louis stacks for today. Finally, if you want some more one-offs with upside, I check out the twins. They're facing Andrew Heaney. I have a hard time stacking against him because he gets a lot of strikeouts, but he lets up a lot of hard contact and a lot of fly balls. His hard hit rate and fly ball rate are both north of 40%. He needs one of just two pitchers on this slate to do that in their most relevant sample. Another guy is Zach Thompson starting for the Marlins. So Nelson Cruz, Mitch Garver, Josh Donaldson, Jorge Polanco has been on a power binge recently. Those are all guys who could poke one out here. And I think we should be pretty high on them. So the twins, another team to turn for one-offs, maybe stacks potentially, but I'd rank them behind St. Louis and rank them behind the top three stacks as well with the Rays, Braves and Red Sox. Speaking of the Red Sox, let's move to our Dinger calls for today. I do think that it's a good spot to go to JD Martinez here, facing a lefty. He's seen this lefty a bunch of times recently. So JD Martinez, the boring home run call for today. The fun one maybe doesn't quite count as fun because he's a guy with a salary above $3,000, but I like Dan's B. Swanson. I think that he kind of gets overlooked within these Braves stacks because obviously Albie's is just disgusting. Freeman is very good. And then Swanson's like the third fiddle here. Especially against lefties. So I'm okay being high on him. I think that Swanson is a priority for today and someone I want to get to fairly often. So the home run calls for today, JD Martinez and Dan's B. Swanson, Akhil Badu, did go deep last night. So trying to build on that once again for today. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shot. But as mentioned, make sure you swing by once again later on today at 4 p.m. I had a question over on YouTube from Tech and Fitness asking if this is live. It is live. We'll also be live and taking questions on air later on today at 4 p.m. Eastern on the Fandle YouTube Twitch, Facebook and Twitter page. So Tech and Fitness, if you want to swing back at 4 p.m. today, I'll take your questions live on there. We can talk process, we can talk stacks, one-offs, pitchers, whatever is on your mind. We'll talk about that today and each and every day right here on the Fandle YouTube Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages. Also, once again, make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts and if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. If you have questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis. J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the Fandle Podcast Network at Fandle Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck tonight. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandle Podcast Network.