 It is a Spencer Strider night in Daily Fantasy Baseball, which means it is our job to ask whether anybody on this slate can match the upside of said Spencer Strider. Typically the answer there is no, like there are guys who cannot score him because he could have bad nights and stuff like that, but can they match the upside? That's a very different question. And I think tonight there actually is a guy who is at least in shouting distance of Strider from an upside perspective. I'm not saying that they're better than him, not saying I'm gonna use them above him, but it's at least a discussion tonight versus usually it's a no, it's just Spencer Strider. We're gonna break down who that guy is, Strider's outlook would do with him and how to say some salary and pattern because we're gonna need to do that based on the pictures I like for tonight. Welcome on into the solo shop. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sonness. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire here to break down Friday's 12-game main slate with lock set for 7.05 p.m. Eastern for today. The only weather note on this slate is at Coors Field where there is a slight chance of rain there for the Rockies and the White Sox. They should be good to go, but check back on that later. Coors tends to be very patient when it comes to playing games through rain so wouldn't worry too much there. Just check back on it later on to be safe. We'll dive into Strider, the contenders for his crown and much more. Here in just one second, but first a reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the NumberFire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts later on today. Austin Swame is gonna break down USC 292 a pay-per-view event. That'll be on the NumberFire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Also love Austin on covering this spread to talk about that from a betting perspective. So check out Austin two separate places here today across the FanDuel Podcast Network. As of the solo shop, make sure you check us out on the FanDuel YouTube page and on FanDuelTV Plus to get the video version of these podcasts as well. This week's FanDuel Research free role is now live we're running free roles every week on FanDuel Research to celebrate the transition and thank all of NumberFire's users for their years of loyalty this week. The free role is for, Apple mentioned USC 292, they've got two titles up for grabs we got free prizes as well. Lock is on Saturday evening to find the link and to get yourself entered just go to fanduel.com slash research and click the article that's fanduel.com slash research and find the article with the free play link eligibility restrictions apply. Pitching preview for this Friday main slave Spencer Strider not surprisingly comes in with the highest salary on FanDuel's salaries $11,500 followed by Pablo Lopez at home against the Pirates of 10-8 Brandon Woodruff is 10-5 Michael Lorenzen fresh off a no-hater and facing the exact same team is at 10-2 Sandiel Contra I think he's kind of back at 10,000 we got Kyle Gibson at 99 JP France at 97 Brian Bayer was 9,000 against the Yankees with Seth Lugo, Andrew Heaney, Bryce Miller and Joey Lucchese as the others at $8,000 per hire. Now let's go through Strider first because he is at home against the Giants and they're a good offense but they will strike out. So I do think Strider is fully, fully, fully at the top of the list as always just a question of whether or not anyone else can sniff his upside. We don't always notice how good San Francisco's offense is because they play in a black hole for offense but maybe 107 WRC plus against righties you just got to get him out of San Francisco to realize that their strikeout rate though is 24% which can help upside for pitchers and as for Strider, his results are not always great. His ERA is 4.37 in 16 stars since he started working in more changeups and that's a large sample. So a high ERA there is more concerning than it would be across a 10 star sample. So with Strider strikeouts you would think that his bad at ball data is bad when he has an ERA there given how many guys he strikes out. Strider does let it fly balls but his hard hit rate is just 32%. When you pair that with his 36% strikeout rate Strider should have awesome results. Overall his expected ERA this year is 3.08 his actual ERA is 3.75 so I think that Strider's had bad luck. I think that will regress in the long run and it could happen some here. I have Strider projected for 9.1 strikeouts nobody else is within 1.3 strikeouts of him. I will happily be on him for tonight. So Strider does deserve to the top and he will be the number one guy for the night. Now Pablo Lopez is the one guy who may be able to get Strider a bit of a run for his money. He has a second high of salary tonight so if we go with Strider one and Lopez two it means we're allocating a lot of salary to pitchers in that regardless. But given some of the stacking options I think that's actually the right play. We've got a lot of value there and it says to me I can allow myself to spend up a pitcher without fully depriving myself of upside elsewhere and I do wanna do so. So I'm gonna put Lopez second. He's at home against the pirates and that offense still decent. 103 WRC plus against righties but like the Giants they do strike out 25% strikeout rate against righties and that's good for Lopez's upside and Lopez is having a fantastic season. He did have a bit of a blip later in the spring but across his past 13 starts he's been using more curveballs. In that time Lopez has a 3.18 skill interactive ERA with a 30% strikeout rate. His hard hit rate allowed us just 33%. He's been awesome both from a results perspective and a peripherals perspective. And the twins they kinda can mess around with pitch counts quite a bit but they will let Lopez go deep in games. He's topped 100 pitches five times in this stretch. As long as the pitcher is effective and not walk in six guys the twins will let that guy go deep. As a result Lopez has a double digit strikeouts twice in the span. He has eight or more, four other times. So he's been phenomenal. I have Lopez projected for 7.7 strikeouts tonight that is easily second behind just Strider. So I think we should rank in there for DFS as well even if it is a bit costly. So to me, if you're looking for a guy who can't hang with Strider's upside that guy is Pablo Lopez. Everybody else probably not getting that job done. It really is those two guys followed by the rest in terms of the pitching hierarchy for tonight over on FanDuel. For a value play I think both sides of Arizona versus San Diego could be in play there. That's Seth Lugo for the Padre is facing Brandon Faut for the Diamondbacks. The problem is that they just faced each other over the weekend. So familiarity is high. That does decrease my incentive to go here and it does increase my interest in going to Strider and Lopez. I'm still gonna go here favoring Lugo but we'll talk about Faut in Things to Watch. Lugo I think has been a bit underappreciated this year. Maybe this is just me not recognizing how good he's been so far this year but his ERA is 4.16 which is not bad. His FIP is 3.94, good play discipline stats and he's pitching well overall. Most recently Lugo has been using his changeup more often. It's a nine-star sample and his skill interactive ERA is 4.15 with a 24% strikeout rate and a 4% walk rate. He uses numbers to largely hold Arizona's zone in check over the weekend. It wasn't phenomenal but when five innings, two runs allowed, six hits, four strikeouts. So it was a fine start. But now he's back at home. It is a repeat matchup and we should downgrade him for that but I do think he's at least in play. Lugo's salary is $8,800. I would rather spend up for Strider and Lopez but I think Lugo is the top value which tells you I think more about the value plays tonight than anything else. But we'll talk about Faut later on as potentially being a super saver option at pitcher for tonight. Now I mentioned that stacking allows me to feel good about spending up a pitcher and that's because our top two stacks are not gonna run you a whole lot in terms of the salaries allocated to them. Those two stacks are the twins and the Phillies and they combined have zero players with salaries above $3,500. So you can stack both them while using Strider and using Lopez. So the twins are facing Andre Jackson tonight. He is transitioning into being a starter. He wasn't lighting it up as a reliever so I would doubt he does so as a starter. So the twins I think great out well for stacking. We saw this in Jackson's first arcs. He faced the Reds there, lasted three and two thirds innings and led up three runs in that one. His hard hit rate allowed was 60%. And that number has been high all year long. If we look at Jackson as both a starter and a reliever, his hard hit rate allowed is 51% with a 39% fly ball rate. When Jackson was in triple A, we saw kind of the same thing because ZRA down there was 5.86. So I'm skeptical that this starting experiment pays off for Jackson. Kind of seems like it's a, why not? See what happens with the Pirates kind of thing. He's facing a team with a 112 WRC plus against Reides despite the fact that Byron Buxton is still on the IL. So the twins to me really fun stack for tonight and a team that can save us a lot of salary while still getting us upside. And they've got some fun guys cooking right now. Max Kepler finally turning the good bad of bald numbers he's always had into home runs. Matt Walner has played great both in the minors and the majors. Edward Julian hitting for more power than I thought he would. Royce Lewis is fresh off the IL. So I'm super into the twins in this spot. Every guy mentioned there is a salary of I think $2,900 or lower Jorge Polonka is the highest salary guy at 31. He's fine too. So honestly, the twins make it a lot easier to get to Strider and Lopez which is all I want to do for tonight. Mentioned the Phillies are also up there. They're facing Yolan Adon who had okay numbers in AAA but they weren't overwhelming. And now he's facing big leaguers and I think that does give us a green light to stack against him here. Adon made 17 starts in AAA this year. His ERA there was 4.62. It's better than what he had last year when he was in AAA. So that's great. But it's still AAA. His strikeout was just 21% with a 10% walk rate. He did get some ground balls and that was kind of the one positive. We haven't seen much of him in the majors yet but when he has been up there, his swinging strike rate is 8.1%. Again, it's better than it was last year but it's still not where you want it to be. It is possible Adon could figure things out because he just turned 25. He's still a young guy. I just want to see it before I adjust for it. And that to me says I should stack the Phillies against him for tonight. Now we talked earlier about Bryce Harper turning things around. That has come true. He's been fantastic recently but let's talk about Tree Turner. Let's talk about him next. I'm not as sold on Turner turning it around but it's getting a bit better. He's hitting more power in August than he was before. He's striking out less as well which means more balls and play and more balls and play for Tree Turner means more chances for stolen bases. So I'm not as steadfast in saying Turner is back as I was with Harper a couple of weeks ago but it's always better for him than it was. It's going the right direction even if it's a bit more incremental than it was with Harper. So Turner to me $3,000 totally fine for tonight. I prefer Harper at 35. We'll happily go there but Turner becoming a play for DFS once again. Finally the White Sox are going to Coors field tonight. Not a huge fan of their offense in general and that's why they're just third on this list but I do still think they're worth a look here. They're going to be against Peter Lambert. Lambert is still getting stretched out into being a starter. He's made five starts with a mostly full pitch count in that time. Lambert skill interactive ERA is 5.17. He has just a 14% strikeout rate. The bad at ball data is decent for Lambert which is worth noting and he has better than average numbers for both his hard hit rate allowed and his fly ball rate allowed. That's likely why the ERA for Lambert is pretty good at 4.32 but we have seen some cracks recently. The Brewer's and Dodgers both got to Lambert outside of Coors field and now he's at Coors taken on the White Sox. So they're not a great offense but it's Coors field. So I am okay going at the White Sox here. As for our guys within this stack we're up to 77 plate appearances on Yohan Moncada since he returned and his ISO is just 099. He has no steals. So it hasn't been great. So we know we'll be on Luis Roberts and Eloy Jimenez assuming that he does play but after that I'd probably rank Andrew Benintendi above Moncada with the weight where things currently stand because Benintendi also lacks power but he's more willing to run. So it's a pretty thin team for stacking not a lot of guys who are super, super enticing but they're still fine to check out. So the White Sox, okay stack for tonight. Number three for me behind the twins and the Phillies who I do like a lot. Things to watch for tonight. The thoughts on the Rockies are pretty similar to the White Sox not a great offense but they're facing Michael Kopeck who is still walking everybody and that can let up some big gains. The Rockies occasionally do a big gains despite the fact their offense is bad. So the Rockies are a consideration for sure when it comes to other stacks. I mentioned before I don't mind Brandon Faw's a pitcher. He's $6,800. He's facing the Padres and he looked awesome against them over the weekend. Eight strikeouts across five and two thirds innings. He's been using fewer foreseeing fastballs since he came back up and it does seem like it's helping. So if you wanna save a bunch of salary I think Fawd is probably your guy at 68. I don't think you'll need to for tonight honestly which is why I'm not leaping to do that. I think the better move is to spend up a pitcher spend down a hitter but you could go there if you wanted to with Fawd. Finally, Joey Lucchese is coming back up for the Mets tonight. He was pitching okay in triple A but not shutting people down which is similar to what he was doing in the rotation in the majors earlier on this year. He's facing the Cardinals tonight. Baking it lefties pretty well. So I don't mind giving the Cardinals a run for stacking against Lucchese especially got salary to burn maybe some one-offs with the studs and the team could work. Let's finish up here with some Dinger calls for this Friday night. The boring one gotta go Bryce Harper again starting to hit the ball really well once again. It's fun to see. I love Bryce Harper. It's great to see him back being what we know he can be. So I gotta go Bryce Harper as my Dinger call for tonight. But the fun one, let's go Matt Wallner. I think he still counts as fun despite the fact he has been ripping Dingers both in triple A in the majors and his batted ball numbers in the majors are really, really fun. I don't regard him as being like this massive power hitter but his barrel rate is very high. Our hit rate is very high facing a good match up for tonight as well. So we'll go with Matt Wallner as the Dinger call alongside Bryce Harper for Friday night. That's all we got here for today on the solo shot but quick scheduling announcement beginning next week. Tom Becchio is gonna be filling in for me on Mondays and Tuesdays for the solo shot. I'll be with you Wednesday through Friday. So still five days a week for the solo shot but Tom with you for two days. I'll be with you for three days on the latter half of the week. It'll be that way until the start of NFL season. So be a lot of fun. Make sure you're subscribed to get those podcasts as they go live in the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed. Also check us out on the Fandall YouTube page and on Fandall TV plus and make sure you also check out Tom on Twitter at Tom underscore Vecchio one new Twitter handle for Tom. At Tom underscore Vecchio one to get notified as he posts this podcast each and every day, Monday, Tuesday and I'll be with you Wednesday through Friday. If you got any questions for me I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S you can also follow Fandall Research at Fandall Research. Want to thank you all for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your MLB DFS lineups for tonight. We'll talk to you once again next week. Have a fantastic weekend. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandall podcast network.