 All of our complaining in the past two days about the pitchers available in MLB DFS has finally paid off because not only did we get rid of having to go at super terrible situations for pitching, we got one of the most ridiculous pitching slates I have seen on a non-opening day in a very, very, very long time. Once I list through the pitchers in the player pool for today, your jaw should drop if you don't already know who is starting. It is a fantastic slate, one of the favorites I've ever seen. So we're going to run through basically everybody, let you know where I'm at on them, how I view them in terms of rankings, my favorite guys, and hopefully grind out some stacks that great I will offer tonight too to get you set for what should be a fantastic slate of MLB DFS. Welcome on into the solo shop. That's right here on the FanDual Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. We're here to break this Wednesday's slate, so make sure you get your lineups in early to account for that. So 6.40 p.m. Eastern is locked for this main slate. The good thing is outside of just the awesome starters, there's no weather. So we are flying pretty. It's going to be one of my favorite slates of DFS in quite some time. Before we dive in, though, quick reminder to make sure you are subscribed to the NumberFire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. It's not just MLB DFS podcasts, we of course have PGA. Our PGA championship preview is up with myself and Brandon Gadoula breaking down this year's field, giving our rundown of the studs, value plays we like, roster construction, everything you need to know to hopefully fill out some good lineups and win some cash. Speaking of that, the PGA is back in a big way this weekend with a massive Daily Fantasy Contest on FanDual. This week's PGA Mega Eagle Contest includes $400,000 in total prizes with first place getting you $100,000. First of all, or best of all, it is only $9 to enter to get yourself a chance at all that cash. Go to FanDual.com or download the FanDual app, eligibility restrictions apply. Pitching preview is sick for tonight on FanDual. The highest salary pitcher on FanDual is Garrett Cole, checking in at $10,600. Pablo Lopez, 10-5, Max Scherzer, 10-4, Lucas Geolito, 10-3. Shohei Freikin' Otani is 10-1. Kevin Cosman, who's been arguably the best pitcher in baseball this year, is the fifth or sixth highest salary guy. He's 98. Zach Wheeler, 95. And then we have Dayton Dunning and Blake Snell as the others at $8,000 or higher. My goodness, the number of Cy Youngs on this slate and future Cy Youngs for some of those guys as well, it's an amazing pitching slate. And because of that, I don't want to gloss over anyone. Usually we just do two studs and a value. I can't do that for today. So rather than focusing on just those two studs, I'm going to run through quick thoughts on each of the top options and I will rank them after accounting for situation and salary. But ideally, you can listen to my thoughts on these guys, these very brief thoughts on the side, what you want to prioritize, what you value and rank them based on that. Let's go through each of these guys. Kevin Cosman is at home facing the Mariners. He has been lights out this year. 2.21 skill interactive. Yeah, Ray, that is the second best mark on the slate behind Shohei Otani. The Mariners are not a high strikeout team. They're at 20% against righties, but like, my goodness, Cosman's disgusting. Sherser is the other top guy who is at home for today. He's facing the Cardinals. They are not a great offense against righties, but they also don't strike out that much. They have an 18% strikeout rate, which is tied for the lowest mark on the Slates, but Sherser, 33% strikeout rate for him. That is third on the slate behind Otani and Gira Cole. Speaking of those two, let's get to them next. They are both in the roge. That's why, you know, wanted to go through the home guys first. Cole is facing the Orioles. I've talked about them the past two days too, and it didn't go great last night for James and Tyone, but again, nobody I wanted to use a pitcher did well last night. They're a non-threatening matchup for a righty, a good righty. They got a 23% strikeout rates. Cole's strikeout rate is up to 33% in the five starts with his fastball usage being up. That's a very good number. Otani is on the road against the Rangers, which is a good matchup for him. They have an 84 WRC plus against righties based on their current active roster with a 22% strikeout rate. Otani strikeout rate, as mentioned, is the highest on the slate, 35%. I do want to note, though, that his velocity did decline a bit his last time out. I had the over on his strikeout prop and he went under. So maybe it's like a little post tilt situation. But noticing that, I would say, just given the amount of wear and tear on that guy, like without much he plays, I already plays, that stuck out to me. So just keeping that in mind, Pablo Lopez, I think, is probably a bit underappreciated still. He's at home against the Nats. His skill interactive ERA 2.76 with a 28% strikeout rate, tremendous bad at ball numbers. And, you know, the Nats are slightly above average from a matchup perspective in terms of strikeout rates. But like, that's fine. Actually, slightly below average, I should say. But Lopez is great. That's why he's in this discussion. That's why he's number two in terms of salary. I don't blame him. Zach Wheeler also at home against the Rays. They have a 24% strikeout rate against righties. So they 95 WRC plus Wheeler's velocity was low. His first two starts and we got four starts of that being back up. But his strikeout rate is bounced back to 28%. Just tell some slight lingering reservations about Pitch Count with him because the affiliates in general have been very weird with that this year. Finally, Lucas G. Lito is coming off the COVID I.L. I'm not sure what his Pitch Count will be because of that. He stays in the Royals. They're still a decently low strikeout team. So those two things do ding him for me. All things considered, I'm going to rank Kevin Gosman number one for today. I prefer guys who are at home and Gosman has the edge about Scherzer in terms of like what he's looked like this year. He's facing a higher strikeout team. So Gosman is one number two. I'm going back and forth on. I think I'm going to put Garrett Cole there. It's between Cole and Scherzer, I think, you know, Scherzer is at home, but Cole, I like the matchup more. I like what he's been doing recently a bit more. So I'm going to put Cole second. Let's go Cole second, Scherzer third. I'll put Otani fourth. If it weren't for the dip in velocity last time out, I'd probably put Otani like second, at least. So that's the one thing that does concern me that I got a nitpick on a loaded slate. So I'll put Otani fourth. Pablo Lopez is fifth for me. I don't use five pitchers ever in DFS. Might break that rule tonight. I do want to get some Pablo Lopez in there. I want to get Otani, Cole, Scherzer, Gosman. I might break my rule for tonight. Typically, I stick to three, two or three at pitch. I try to keep things super concentrated. I might break that rule for tonight, though, to get Lopez in there. I would not be shocked at all if he winds up being the highest scoring guy. Most likely we'll not get to Wheeler and Gilito. I got to make the cutoff somewhere. It's a bummer, but I think it's necessary. Just too good of a slate overall. So to me, it is Gosman, one, Cole, two, Scherzer, three. Otani, four, Lopez, five. And that's where I draw the line for tonight. As a result of all these 6666 studs, I'd probably be opposed to a value play here personally. You just need a lot of juice to overcome all those odds. You need a lot of guys to fail for a value play to be the highest scoring guy on tonight's slate. I would rank Dane Dunning highest among the value plays. His pitch counts are up finally. He's facing a higher strikeout opponent. The Angels are very, very good, obviously, but they do strikeout. That's why I prefer to pay up. But if you really want to save, he'd be my preference there. But overall, just a loaded slate. And if you disagree with me and think, hey, I love Zach Wheeler. I want to use him tonight, cool. That's totally defensible. There are a lot of guys you can defend. So dig in a bit. Do some research beyond just what I mentioned. Decide where you wind up on these guys and act accordingly, because I do think it's a slate where you have a lot of leeway to play things, however you would like to do so. The problem with having absurd pitchers on an eight-gain slate is that eventually, you got to find some stacks. It's tough if everyone's facing a Lopez or a Gosmin or something like that. So stacks are a little bit tougher. I do like our top couple ones, though. And the first one here is going to be the Myang, the Mormons. I think Josiah Gray is going to be a good pitcher one day because he gets strikeouts. And that's the first major obstacle to becoming an ace. But for right now, Gray is allowing some pretty rough-batted ball numbers. And I think we should stack against him until he rains that in. That means stacking the Marlins for today. For the season, Gray has a 44% heart-hit rate allowed with a 51% fly ball rate. This is a really rough combo, but it's also in line with where he was at last year. The fastball specifically has been getting crushed for Gray. And I think that he knows this because he's cut back on the usage of that fastball in his past four starts. He's throwing more sliders instead. And I think that's a very good change for him. And I think it's encouraging to see that shift occur. But even in that stretch, he's let up a 52% fly ball rate with a 41% heart-hit rate. And that does include a game against these very same Marlins. And it was at home. He had 10 strikeouts there, which is very good, but he still let up four-and-runs in five-and-two-thirds innings, which is kind of the story you get with Josiah Gray. He will get strikeouts, but there are some issues when he doesn't get that third strike. I'm fine with that from a stacking perspective. So even in a non-elite park like Miami, I do think that the Marlins kind of have to be our top stack for today. They are underappreciated offense and won in a good spots. I wanna act accordingly on a tough slate for stacking and rank the Miami Marlins number one for tonight. As we discussed previously, Jazz Chisholm is the priority on this team for stacking against a righty. I do wanna touch briefly on Brian De La Cruz because he may not play. He's a righty. And that could squeeze him out of the order, but they've had him start against a righty three consecutive games. And when he's been in there, he's been really good. He's expected WoB is 361. He's drawn some walks, decent strikeout, right? It seems like the Marlins are pushing the arrow up on De La Cruz because he's been getting starts more consistently. And I will have him on my radar if he plays. So Jazz Chisholm is the building block priority number one, no questions asked. But De La Cruz is someone if he's in there again, I'm pretty open to. I think that I've seen enough where I can be convinced to use him. He may not play again because again, I think they wanna get Hayes Asanjas in there a bit, but De La Cruz at least very interesting if he does play. I'm gonna put it to the Blue Jay second for stacking. They're facing Marco Gonzalez who has a good ERA this year, but some of the stuff under the hood is very dicey. Gonzalez has always been a low strikeout guy and things are getting worse in those departments. He has a 6.5% swing strike rate this year, which means his 15% strikeout rates is probably gonna stay low unless something changes. He's also letting up a 41% hard hit rate with a fly ball rate of 38%. That leads to an expected ERA of 5.40, which is much higher than his actual ERA of 3.38. We have seen him have some cracks in the facade against pretty good teams. He let up three home runs to the twins in his first start this year. He let up two to the Astros on May 2nd, two to the Rays on May 7th. So we've seen good teams get to Gonzalez at times. He can have some good starts too, but it's hard to ignore the upside he gives opposing batters based on the low strikeout rate and the very good batted ball numbers. That's especially true when it's a righty heavy lineup, which is exactly what the Jays have. So I think we need to be high on the Jays here for stacking against Gonzalez for tonight. Now you could make an argument they could be above the Marlins as well, but for the full season, the Jays have been very okay with batting Santiago Espinol in the middle of the order. And I've been pretty resistant to using him. I viewed him as a lower upside guy, but Espinol bit hit fifth against two lefties over the weekend. And I actually like looking into him for today, I do like him more than I thought I would. He does put the ball in the ERA decent amount. He's making decent contact this year. He can swipe a bag. So we still have my favorite guy here and among the non-elite guys, I'm still gonna prefer Matt Chapman because I love the Dinger side that he has, Teoscar Hernandez at $3,000, Boba Shad also is under Saturday at 34. But like, so Espinol is not number one among the value plays. I like Chapman and Hernandez more, but I'm higher on Espinol now than I was earlier in the year. And I am receptive to him, including him in stacks. I'm a team that I'll have a lot of exposure to. So Espinol to me, better than I thought he was going to be when I started to look into him. I'm gonna put the Yankees in the third slot here. It's not something that I wanna do because I like some of what Jordan Lyles has done so far this year, but like I said, it's a tough slate for stacking. They've had success against him and there's been some funkiness for Lyles recently. Specifically, Lyles velocity isn't what it was to open the year. On his foreseen fastball, his velocity in his first three starts was 92.6 miles per hour or higher each time. It has some top 92.2 cents and his past two starts specifically, it's been under 92. We see a similar pattern with his off-speed stuff too, his curveball and his slider. And seeing Velo go down as we get away from the colder days to me is a pretty big red flag because warmer weather leads to higher velocity, but Lyles is working the opposite direction. It's led to some rough results. He led up three home runs and six earned runs to the Yankees on April 26th. He led up four runs of the Tigers last time now, but most importantly, he's letting up hard contact and fly balls again, which he was not doing earlier in the year. So I respect Lyles and what he has done and it would be fun if he could keep this up, but there are some pretty big cracks here and on this slate, those cracks allow us to stack the Yankees and feel pretty good about despite the fact that I do respect what Lyles has done. As far as platoon splits go, I do want to bump up the lefties here. Lyles led up a 45% fly ball rate to lefties last year versus 36% for righties. The strikeout rate was also lower for lefties. It's been kind of similar in a small sample this year. It's more so via the ground ball rates to lefties than the, than fly ball rate, but ground ball rates lower for lefties. That's good, lower strikeout rates. So I'd bump up Anthony Rizzo, bump up Joey Gallo who is now 0 for 10 since I decided to start using him again. So that's great. I'm probably not going to get to Aaron Hicks if he plays, but I will be high on Rizzo and Gallo just because we've seen Hicks struggle a lot with them specifically the strikeouts and fly balls. And that's where those two guys can excel. So I think that those two guys to me deserve a bump up not above Stanton or Judge, but a bump up relative to where you typically have them in relative to Glibert Torres, Josh Donaldson, DJ LeMayhew and others. Things to watch for today. I mentioned Lucas G. Alito's pitch count earlier. I'm also unsure what to expect from Blake Snell. He's made three rehab starts before coming back up. In those rehab starts, he went 44, 67 and 59 pitches. Now the 59 pitches came across five innings. So it was likely a spot where they were like, hey, we're happy with what you've done. Get out of here and go on your way back to the big leagues. I currently have Snell projected for 80 pitches. I think on a slate this good, we can avoid him. And it is a tough match up at the Phillies too. So no Snell for me tonight based on those factors, but I am uncertain of where to project him with a pitch count perspective. Not sure who will start for the pirates yet. It was supposed to be Mitch Keller, but he's in the bullpen now. It's not very warm at Wrigley for today, about 58 degrees. The wind is in at about seven miles per hour. So it's not a perfect spot, but it's a thin slate for stacking. I would not be shocked if the Cubs wound up being in a decent option, but just keep in mind the weather's not ideal necessarily for stacking for today. Finally, I would consider the Mets for one-offs or maybe for some stacking if you need a fourth option. They're facing Jordan Hicks and the transition for him to being a starter has been a bit rocky so far. Not as many strikeouts, a lot of walks. His ERA in five starts is 5.09. And the one reason I wasn't looking to stack against necessarily was it just doesn't let up a lot of fly balls. And that's why they're lower on this list. But other issues do put the Mets in play for today. If you need an option beyond the Yankees, Marlins and the Blue Jays. Let's finish up here with our Dinger calls for today. I gotta go Jazz Chisholm. I just, I love him as a player. I love the matchup that he's got today against Josiah Gray. Don't love the park, but the matchup very good. So Jazz Chisholm, any excuse I can get to talk about him and use him in DFS, I'll take it. He will be the boring home run call for today. The fun one is Matt Chapman. I talked about him on Monday, I think it was. And he was like two for 30 or something like that in his previous 30 played or at bats. And he went yard there. And I think that that's kind of what you get with Chapman. You get a lot of streakiness, but you get some Dinger upside. And I like that for sure. I could have gone to Oscar because he's his salary, 3,000. I try to keep things below 3,000 here for the fun home run call. But we'll go Chapman. So the home run calls for today, Jazz Chisholm and Matt Chapman. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shot. But once again, a reminder, go check out our PGA DFS podcast, getting yourself in the PGA championship. Just search for the number of fire, daily fantasy podcast eat wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, hit subscribe, leave a rating and review. You like what you hear, we also did betting preview of the PGA championship. If you are inclined to do that instead. That was with Andy Molitor of Betzberts. Got his thoughts on some outrides, some non-outrides he likes this week his you the course and much more that's in the covering the spread podcast feed. I'm on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the Fandual Podcast Network at Fandual Podcasts. Enjoy this glorious, beautiful, magnificent slate. Pick the picture you want, dive in, feel free to kind of go whichever way the wind blows you, but I think it should be a fantastic slate. Cherish it while you can because as we saw the past two nights, it's not always a given. Good luck to you. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow for more MLB DFS. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandual Podcast Network.