 DFS is a very complicated game where sometimes things that seem good can wind up being bad where you are happy about one thing But it leads to sad isn't a different area and I mean specifically for this slate tonight an MLB DFS Shane Bieber's salad I was in on Shane Bieber I thought he'd be the top guy for tonight and Open up the salary pool for today and cities down to eighty six hundred dollars to me That's pretty surprising given that he's facing the Tigers. He's been pitching a lot better recently So I was surprised by that. It's like, okay, cool. My favorite pitcher super low salaried That also means he's probably gonna be pretty popular. So they're pros. There are cons We're gonna have to balance that and decide is Bieber good enough to cancel out the likely popularity Or is that salary so low? We just shouldn't care and you lock him in regardless We'll break that down and get you set for Friday night slate. Welcome on into the solo shot That's right here on the fan dual podcast network and number fire calm My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire calm here to break down to Friday nights 13 game main slate with locks ever 705 p.m. Eastern for tonight couple of rain spots on this slate Specifically out east we got a chance of rain in DC for the Nationals and the Rockies I think they'll be able to play but it's worth checking back on that one later rain It's also possible in New York for the Mets and the Phillies that one seems a bit murkier than DC I would say highest rain odds or highest rain out odds are there rain is also possible in Detroit for the Tigers and Guardians It's low odds most of the night. I think they should be okay, but keeping on that one that does obviously Pertain to Shane Bieber as our potential top guy for today We're gonna break down what I see in Bieber how to handle him and much more in just one second First a quick reminder to make sure you are subscribed to the number fire daily fantasy podcast He got a Coca-Cola 600 DFS preview coming up later on today We got PGA next week USC next week and of course the solo shot every weekday So hit subscribe and if you like what you hear leave us a rating and review as well Hey soccer fans this season fan duel and Captain Morgan are teaming up to give you a one-of-a-kind soccer contest Spice up game day Introducing Captain Morgan soccer pick-up a weekly fantasy contest that is entirely free to play the contest is simple All you have to do is answer 10 questions about Captain Morgan in that week's soccer matchup People with the most correct answers will earn their share of cash prizes head over to fan duel comm slash free game Slash Captain Morgan and spice up game day with a free shot of cash prizes every Saturday No purchase necessary must be 21 plus to enter a location restriction to apply Void were prohibited see full terms at fan duel comm Pitching preview for this Friday main slate Justin Verlander is the highest salary guy checking in at $10,800 Alec Minoa is 10 to show Manaya $9,700. We have Brandon Woodruff at 95 James and Tyone Shane Bieber Brad Keller Carlos Carrasco and Trevor Rogers are the others at $8,000 or higher Now again Shane Bieber is the top guy for tonight But it's hard to figure out what to do with him because that salary is so low I'm inclined just say you use him in cash and I Still give him strong consideration in tournaments because I just think he's so under salary that it kind of offsets the roster rate Liability that he brings with him Bieber's face on the Tigers. That is the second straight time. They've seen him I'm just not sure how much it matters with such a bad offense They have a 70 WRC plus against righties, which is easily the worst in the slates They have 26% strikeout rate in a low walk rate Bieber did let up two earn runs across seven innings against them last time out But he also had 10 strikeouts, which is easily the highest mark. He's had all year That could be a downside buying into him off his high watermark and his strikeout rate is just 24% We've seen Bieber get seven strikeouts in three other starts and His swinging strike rate is 13.2% That tells me his strikeout rate is more likely to go up as the season goes along than to go down Plus the pitch count here is great. He's gone a hundred plus pitches in four of his past five starts I don't really like pushing guys up a bunch based on the matchup But I tend to think that pitch or quality matters more But this matchup is outliersly bad Bieber pitching well enough to make me believe he can blow up again So I will overlook my typical approach and be in on Bieber here The question is again, is it enough to outweigh the likely high roster rate? He will come with so that's why we dive into some other pitchers here on tonight If you decide, hey, I don't want to deal with Bieber whether it be because of the repeat matchup whether it be because of the Roster rate whatever it may be. I do think you've got really good options Along with Bieber at the top of the strikeout board is pretty tight for tonight We got Sean Mania Justin Verlander and Brandon Woodruff all with roughly the same strikeout projection So I get to pick the guy in the best situation and to me that is Sean Mania I'm gonna put Mania a hair above those other two Mania's at home against the Pirates the Pirates did just lose Dan Vogelbach And obviously we care less about that against a lefty than a righty But it's also just another competent big league batter being taken out of this lineup. They're also super lefty heavy lineup I would expect four true lefties to be in the starting lineup for the Pirates for tonight Mania doesn't get that very often. He has faced just 45 lefties all year long compared to 154 righties Even with all those righties. We still see Mania pitch really well He has a 3.36 skill interactive er a with a 28% strikeout rate He has had some issues with hard contact and that did bite him last week But I'm not sure the Pirates are really gonna generate enough power for that to matter too much for me Their fly ball rate against lefties is 33% So we should bump Mania down against good offenses because his red flags are legitimate with the bad if all issues I just don't think the Pirates qualify as that especially against the lefty with no Vogelbach in the lineup So I like Mania. I will rank him second behind Bieber and second overall for tonight in 95 If you want to pivot off Bieber, I would say your number one guy to turn to for me would be Sean Mania So Bieber counts as our value play kind of cheating here on the podcast for today But hey our podcast our rules, which means I can just kind of go straight up for the third spot and pick Whoever I want I'm gonna favor Verlander over Woodruff for this third spot And the big difference for me is a matchup Verlander's facing the Mariners and they've been good this year They have a 112 WRC plus against righties, but their ISO is also 112 So not a lot of power, which means Verlander's floor should be very high Woodruff is facing the Cardinals They have a 119 WRC plus against righties with an 18% strikeout rate. That's very low I think that's a tougher matchup for Woodruff than for Verlander And I will let that dictate my decision-making here. I do like Woodruff though. Just want to mention that I do want to mention that I would put him forth first night and how I'm Comfortable with using him, but Verlander does earn this top spot. He's made eight starts He has a 3.15 skill interactive ERA with a 26% strikeout rate. His hard hit rates is very good as well We've seen Verlander face Seattle already this year, but not since May 4th So still some ding for familiarity, but not too much He had eight strikeouts in the first game didn't get much in the second But I've got Verlander projected for 6.4 strikeouts for tonight That is enough to put him forth behind Woodruff, Maniah and Bieber. I'm okay with that mark I'm okay with him at 6.4 and again It's the other stuff the non-strikeout stuff that lowers me a bit on Woodruff So I will put Woodruff fourth Verlander third Maniah second and Shane Bieber at the top for tonight But with three Legitimate ace tier guys outside of Bieber first night I do think you got a lot of wiggle room to deviate from Bieber in Single entry like let's say you're playing one single entry lineup I would probably go Maniah personally I think Maniah will also catch some buzz because he's facing the pirates But I don't think it'll be as bad as Bieber given how low Bieber salary is so for single entry I'm probably I'd probably lean towards Maniah for cash games. I would just say go Bieber and Ride with that but again Woodruff Verlander also worth consideration in those formats Let's move down to the stacks for today stacks a little bit tougher than you might think for a 13 game slate And I think that's evidenced by our top stack being against Chris flexing flexing is facing the Astros and I know we've been going towards them a lot this week and it hasn't always worked out but I do want to do so once again here flexing last year did a good job of Limiting hard contact and it allowed him to do well even with a low strikeout rate That hasn't carried over to this year. His hard hit rate is 47% that is up 9 percentage points from where it was last year his fly ball right also up 9 percentage points and it leads to a 4.98 ERA and his expected ERA is even higher at 6.22 So flexing might be able to turn it around because you know, he's I think long-term a good pitcher But that's across 140 balls in play. That is not a small sample bad at ball numbers tend to stabilize Somewhere between 70 to 100 balls in play and he's about double that So even if flexing doesn't prove he's probably not going to get back to the levels he had last year That spells trouble when it's right get ready to 17% and we've seen it get even worse recently Flexing is let a 5 plus earned runs in two of his past three starts that includes one at home Now he is there again, but he's facing the Astros He held them to one run across five innings earlier on this month But I think they'll have a better Chance to succeed this time around so the Astros to me are the top stack of the night It's worth mentioning with flexing is a righty that I would give a righty's a bump here because flex is let up a 42% hard hit rate to them with a 51% fly ball rate the strikeout rate pretty even versus righties and lefties So I've been on the lefties on this Astros team a lot recently I'm gonna skew more towards the righties this time around which is good because a lot of the lower end value plays Chas McCormick Jose Siri those kind of guys Tend to be lower salaried. So bumping up the righties for today. I still love Alvarez Tucker Okay, Brantley, but like I'm gonna bump up the righties relative to where I have been previous and relative where I typically am Against a right for our second stack Sorry, I'm gonna stack against Madison Bumgarner against night It still has not been super successful yet, but we have seen some more slips recently So it gives me a window to stack against him here He says in the Dodgers and there is solid offense against lefties with a 38% fly ball rate And we saw them get to Bumgarner about 11 days ago Bumgarner let up three year and runs across five innings and it's part of an interesting stretch here for Bumgarner he's uses curve ball more across his past six starts and I'm curious about why because it has not been a good pitch for him It's not a big whiff pitch for him So it's not I don't think driving up a slight increase in his strikeout rates The X Woba against that pitch is 380 according to baseball savants Which is the highest of any of his pitches by a pretty good margin That does mean that Bumgarner could say hey, this isn't working just go back to Putting that pitch at a lower usage rate But I think it's noteworthy that the results have not been as favorable in this time He let up two earned in the Marlins. She's fine But four under the Cubs last time out including a couple home runs He's let up five home runs in the five stars as more curve balls He didn't let up any to the Dodgers But it's interesting to me that we've seen Bumgarner leaning more in a bad pitch and the results have Started to fall a suit There's a lot of data that says he should address and we've seen some signs that in the results recently too So even if it's not the most comforting thing and even if it has been frustrating to stack against him this year I am going to do so once again and use the Dodgers in this spot I haven't used a lot of Justin Turner so far this year, but I think this is a good spot to do so He's had terrible results against lefties, but his fly low rate is 50% hard hit rate It's pretty good the barrel rate is actually up a smidge from where it was last year So I'll bank on things improving going forward which could start tonight Which means that Turner despite the fact he hasn't really been a focal point for me I'm okay going there for sure for today and it does open up a lot of Viability and some lower sour guys to stack the Dodgers against lefty versus a righty Chris Taylor gets bumped up You get Turner looking a bit better. So that does help for me for sure. So the Dodgers to me the number two stack I want to stick in that same game for the third stack The Dodgers are facing or are pitching Ryan Pepeo Pepeo Has had good results this year both in triple a and the majors, but the underlying numbers are scary As are the numbers from the miners last year And I think that opens the door to stack the diamond backs once again the big thing for pepeo is walks He has a 10 walk rate in triple a In the majors across two starts. He has eight walks and seven innings He had a 10 walk rate in triple a last year and walks are annoying for dfs because it limits the number of balls in play You get three points there versus you know, 18.7 for a home run but they're going to flood the bases and The bad at ball profile is not pristine either We've seen pepeo be a big fly ball guy throughout the miners And that's followed him up the ladder too because he's allowed 16 balls in play in the majors so far 10 of those have been fly balls only four ground balls. He's led up three barrels and seven hard hit balls. So basically despite the good results, he's living dangerously and This is the second time you've seen Arizona in 10 days He led up three year runs across four innings the first time his other star in the majors were against the pirates So it's not exactly Blazing competition in this two-star sample the diamond backs. I think are a pretty fun offense They've got a lot of guys I like using and plus the roof is open for today despite the fact It's 102 degrees their website says the roof will be open. So I think it's a great part for offense Let's just stack both sides and see what happens I do think that the diamond backs Definitely hold their own uh within that stack or sure now within that diamond back stack I've been using them for a bit now and I've used a lot of guys pretty often one guy didn't use initially as pave and smith I just did kind of skipped over him, but He's picking it up his iso against right. He's up to 198. He has a 42 fly ball rate I'm still not going to be as high on him as I am Dalton varshow josh rojas David peralta christian walker, but Smith is higher for me than he was previously and If you've got four legit guys you can use in a stack That's pretty enticing. It is a bit of a bummer that you know, you got varshow and walker both At catcher slash first base varshow does have outfield too But then you've got a lot overlap because smith is also first place this first base at slash outfield That may put a lid on roster rates, you know, because you've got three guys So I'll have first base eligibility, but it is kind of a bummer with flexibility Good thing is that smith and varshow both have outfield. You're running to peralta having outfield out of thomas mccarthy stuff like that, but That's the only downside with the down and backs to me is that it's a lot of outfield and catchers But I think that's okay for me for sure and hopefully you can get some infielders from the dodgers with guys Like turner and other turner, etc. Etc. Let's talk about things to watch here The red socks have a super super high implied total for today It's actually the highest on the slate and I understand why because that offense is cooking right now Trevor story could get that implied total by himself, but I don't think how bradish is that bad He said rough results His peripherals are better So the red socks are fine definitely would consider them for stacking but again going back to single entry type stuff I probably will not use them in single entry just because I think they'll be a bit more popular than it should be I've got a lot of good options for tonight. I think that can avoid them And just hope that they don't blow things up for sure Which they could because they're the red socks and bradish has had his struggles But we'll see how that goes the forecast doesn't look great in dc So I didn't want to spend a full stack on the Rockies that the game wasn't gonna play But if that game plays I do like them facing Aaron Sanchez who's had some big struggles this year, especially against lefty So charlie blackman ryan McMahon could be good one-offs and I would use sam hillyard if you were to play But the Rockies in general I would are a team I'd monitor for stacking for today as far as the Brewers go. I'm pretty conflicted. They're facing Dakota Hudson And every number says to stack against him except the fly ball rate. It's very low and that matters a lot Hudson has not been bulletproof, but he has been good overall And I think that that his bad at ball suppression is actually a skill So I'm fine with the Brewers, but I don't want to go too crazy because it's not fully optimal to stack against a guy with a Fly ball rate that low and with results that good don't really want to go too crazy there But I will consider them for sure. Let's finish up with some dinger picks here for tonight And this one is actually based on uh sportsbook odds because I was uh Perusing things this morning. I had some extra time this morning. I like alex bregman a lot He was plus 5 30 to go deep against chris flexon and talk about flexon's issues with right-handed batters earlier bregman hasn't been tearing it up recently But still putting the ball in the air against righty is still not striking out That's that's a 5 20 now. So that's come down a tiny bit, but not enough where i'm scared off I think that bregman Maybe just he's a boring one in general because he's a good good batter But I think that uh, if you're looking for a bet bregman worked out pretty well too I do like him in this spot So alex bregman the boring homerun call the fun one will be justin turner Kind of stretching a bit on the fun one there because he's $3,000. He's an established guy But he's been bad this year. The results have not been good So expecting some upward progression here from justin turner So the homerun call is for today alex bregman and justin turner That is all that we have here for today on the solo shop pretty fun slate though I think you've got fun ways to play things. I like slates where I Can probably guess for people will go but have good pivots off of that shock and pivots that I like And can feel good about either way. I don't want to pivot just to pivot I want to pivot uh to guys who I think can beat that guy. I think we have that For tonight and mlb dfs Do not forget to subscribe to the number fire daily fantasy podcast seed because our nascar podcast the coca-cola 600 is coming up Later on this morning and of course pga ufc each week as well So search for the number fire daily fantasy podcast so you'd hit subscribe You like what you hear leave us a rating and review if you have any questions for me I am on twitter at jim sonnis j i m s a n n e s You can also follow the fan dual podcast network at fan dual podcast big Thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your mlb dfs lineups Have a fantastic weekend. We'll talk to you once again on tuesday no podcast monday due to memorial day talk to you once again Tuesday this has been the solo shot right here on the fan dual podcast network