 We've got an early lock time for today in MLB DFS, which means my job for today is to get you as much info as I can in a very short period of time, jam it down your brains and allow you to go out to fill out your lineups because lock is at 12, 10 p.m. Eastern on FanDuel 4 today, it's a seven game main slate. So, gonna give you the info you need to fill out good lineups, hopefully in a fast fashion, so you have a lot of time to maximize those lineups. Hopefully get you on your way to have a fine Thursday. Also, we'll talk about the final three games. There's no slate for those yet, but I'd assume there will be eventually. So, we'll break those down later on as well. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Saunders. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Here to break down this seven game main slate with lock set for 12, 10 p.m. Eastern for today. If you're listening to this after 12, 10 p.m. Eastern and want some thoughts on those final three games, I'll put the timestamp for when I discuss those in the episode description over on NumberFire.com wherever you get your podcasts. So, if you wanna get that, skip ahead to there for listening after the fact, but the main slate does lock at 12, 10 p.m. Eastern for today. As far as weather goes, just one thing to note for today that is for the brazen the Giants in Atlanta once again very warm there, 92 degrees. That is a bump up to hitters and a bump down to pitchers. Kyle writes in that game would wanna downgrade him as a result of the weather there. Break down the pitchers in just one second with first day sports fans. There is no better time than today to sign up for Fandall Fantasy. For users who have yet to make a deposit on Fandall Fantasy, you can deposit today to receive two free entries. All you have to do is deposit a minimum of $10 in your Fandall DFS account and you will be instantly awarded with two free vouchers. This is a limited time offer so be sure to deposit now and play for free. Head to Fandall.com or download the Fandall Fantasy app today, eligibility restrictions apply. Go to Fandall.com or download the Fandall app for more details. Pitching preview for this main slate, Kyle Wright is the highest salary pitcher on Fandall checking in at $10,500. Clayton Kershaw is 10-3. Robbie Ray is 10,000. Frankie Montas facing Robbie Ray is 98. Hunter Green going up against Kershaw at 9,000. Alex Wood, Dakota Hudson and Zach Plesack are the others at $8,000 or higher. And it's a pretty weird slate for pitching where I don't feel great about anybody, but the guy to me with the best blend of floor and upside is Frankie Montas. And I feel pretty firm in that. So we'll put Montas number one. He's facing the Mariners here, which is a divisional matchup and somehow Montas hasn't faced him yet this year. So we don't have any familiarity issues which I thought would have been an issue. The key appeal for Montas is that he's a good pitcher. He has a 3.33 skill interactive ERA this year. That is the best of anybody on the slate who gets a full pitch count lead should we space on my projections. 25% strike area for Montas is not all that high, but it's important because he's super volatile. He'll have some clunkers and he has had some recently, but he has blow ups too. He said double digits twice, both those were at home. And that's the same thing with this one for tonight. The Mariners are not a team I want to target with They have a 112 WRC plus there and they're also not a big strikeout team, but they're also not a team we need to avoid. I don't think against righties. So I think I need an avoid kind of matchup to jump off Montas here, given the composition of the slate and we're not getting that. So I feel pretty good putting Montas at the top of my list for this one year. So Frankie Montas at $9,800 is my top guy for tonight. I think the second best option by a decent margin is in the other side of this game. That's Robbie Ray, which means Ray, isn't a good matchup because he's facing the A's and they're not good against righties. They're also not good against lefties, which we have with Ray here. He has a 92 WRC plus or they have a 92 WRC plus with a 29% flight ball rate. And Ray showed last week that he still has a lot of strikeout outside. I had actually bet the under on his strikeout prop and I was worried that a shift toward his sinker would hurt his strikeout rate because it had in his first two starts, but then he went out and hit double digits, double barreled freedom rockets right back at me from Robbie Ray. And I still don't think that move will boost his strikeout rates, but he proved he could have upside in the right matchups and this is one of those right matchups. Plus the results have been awesome with that pitch. He's gone seven plus innings twice in a row, one of those good starfs was against the Red Sox. So if he can cut back on the hard contact via the sinker and cut back on the walks while still having strikeout upside, he could be maybe not a better pitcher for DFS, but a very good one for DFS, more reliable pitcher for DFS. Personally, I'm gonna put him second. I think you can make the case of putting Ray above Montas, but Montas has a more steady profile right now. He's at home. And plus the A's have seen Robbie within the past month. So there is more familiarity there than what Montas has with the Mariners. So I think these two guys are definitively the top two options tonight. I feel, you know, I like Kyle Wright as a pitcher, but I think that the weather there, the salary, stuff like that, the matchup make me feel very firm putting Montas and Ray above him. The third pitcher is a guy I didn't think I would talk about this year, at least not in this section. And I probably still shouldn't and wouldn't on a different slate, but that guy is Jose Quintana. I'm not super into him, but I'm into him enough to like him on a thin slate for pitching for just $7,200. Big part of is that Quintana is at home in a decent matchup. He's facing the Cubs. The active roster has a 23% strikeout rate against lefties for this year. They also don't draw walks. And that can allow guys to work deep in games against them. Quintana started the year getting pretty good results, but it seemed pretty fluky because he wasn't getting a lot of strikeouts. And I think that Quintana recognized that because over his past seven starts, he has been going with more curveballs and fewer changeups. The curve is actually a pretty good pitch. He has a 32% whiff rate on it according to baseball savant, a 331 Xwoba against it. It's a better pitch than this changeup for sure. So this is a good swap for Quintana. And he actually has solid peripherals in this time, 3.96 skill interactive ERA, good bat at ball data. So he's not a big strikeout guy. He hasn't had more than five strikeouts in any of these starts, but his strikeout rate is 20% and on this slate, you can live with that. I think I would rank Hunter Green higher than Quintana for upside, but so I'm more likely to use Green than Quintana, but we're gonna talk about Green in the next section. I mean, we were talking about him for both. So I'm fine making Quintana my top value of the night, $7,200, really good salary for him. If you wanna go nuts at hitter, which I don't think you'll need to necessarily, Quintana could work, but I think I'll personally rank him below Hunter Green because Green, but Green's 9,000, so I wanna get an actual value play in there. So we'll go with Quintana there. So again, top pitchers for tonight. For today, I should say Frankie Montas, Robbie Ray, Jose Quintana the top value, but Hunter Green above him at $9,000. Let's move now to Stacks. I'm guessing Zach Plesack is gonna be one of those guys who consistently outperforms his peripherals over a large sample. He doesn't get a lot of strikeouts, but he still has good results generally, but that's not as true when he faces good teams and he is facing a good team for today with the twins. Now I will mention, they're less of a good team and Byron Buxton does not play and I would expect him to sit for today. So do downgrade the twins with Buxton likely sitting, but I still think the primary appeals of the stack outside of Buxton are pretty good for today. Plesack got off to a really rough start this year. He led up a lot of runs to start and he settled down since then and that improvement coincides with his velocity stabilizing across his past seven starts. In that time, Plesack has had some good ones. He's led up one or two earned runs in four out of the seven starts, a 4.390 array, which is not outlandishly bad by any means, not auto stack territory, but he's faced a lot of bad teams. Only two of those seven starts were against teams ranked higher than 19th in WRC plus against varieties. One of the others, the exceptions was against the Astros. He led up seven runs there. The other was the Dodgers last week and Plesack was great there. He led up to just one run over six innings, but they had five barrels in that game and 10 hard hit balls. They probably should have scored more than just one run. So basically Plesack got lucky and I'm not sure how long that luck will stick. The twins are a tough matchup again, a 116 WRC plus against varieties. It's pretty hot at target field for today, 86 degrees, the first pitch temperature in Minneapolis. So I think we should stack the twins here even with Plesack not being a disaster as a pitcher and even with Buxton, I assume not playing for today. This is a spot where we do want to bump up the left, which is part of why I'm okay with Buxton likely sitting because Plesack has just a 12% strikeout rate against them this year. Their ISO is 188. So Max Kepler gets a boost. We have a rise. I've been more okay with than usual recently. I'm still not super enthused by his upsides. So I prefer other guys, but you know, whatever, I guess he's fine. Alex Kiriloff, Trevor Larnack, all could be key options here. Obviously, don't gloss over Carlos Correa to Double Dong last night. If Buxton were to miraculously play, cool. But I think the left, he should be our key targets in this one. Now talk about Hunter Green earlier on. I think that he is the third right pitcher of the night. He actually has the highest strikeout projection based on my numbers. But I also think the Dodgers are the second best stack. So it's an interesting dilemma that you don't get with a lot of guys inside of Hunter Green. The reason I'm high in green is that he is improving. Over his past eight starts, he has been cutting back on his foreseeing fastball usage. He's throwing more sliders and mixing in some changeups, the occasional sinker in there, and it's working. He has a 31% strikeout rate this time with a 26% hard hit rate allowed. The result's been very good too. That's why I've got green as my third right pitcher. But he's still letting up a ton of fly balls. His fly ball rate is 58%. Let up a couple of home runs and four earned his last time out. He's let up four plus earned runs and three out of eight stars in the sample. And that's why we should consider stacking against him. Even if opposing batters have a non-existent floor, like he helped contribute to a no-hitter earlier on this year. So it's a non-existent floor. They have a path to a ceiling. It's a pretty clear path via the long ball. That's what we're searching for here. So I would sprinkle in green as a pitcher, but it'd also be high in the Dodgers hitters for stacks. It's a very weird situation. We don't get it a lot, but I think that we probably should handle it this way with green just based on the way things tend to go with him. In doing so with the Dodgers, I would bump up the righties. Green is not throwing his change up to them, which makes sense, righty and righty, change ups don't tend to be high usage pitches there. But he's throwing just fast ball slider in that situation and his fast ball stinks, which gives the opposing guys an edge, opposing righties. So Trey Turner, Will Smith, Justin Turner to an extent get bumps up. Chris Taylor I think is the best value here at 25. The reason I'm lower on Turner is that he's pretty bad against sliders. Whereas Taylor Smith and Turner at least fine, or Trey Turner I should say are, I would bump down Justin Turner due to his numbers against sliders because he'll probably see a lot of those against green for today. So be high on the righties in this spot, but be a bit lower on Justin Turner specifically. Our third stack is going to require us to use a bad offense against lefties or an offense that's bad against lefties. It is either the Marlins or the Guardians. The Marlins are in a worse park and they're putrid against lefties, whereas the Guardians are just bad and in better parks. Made the Marlins righties for one-offs. You could consider that, but I don't think they're a full stack type situation due to their overall numbers against lefties. The Guardians are facing Devon Smeltzer. Smeltzer was really solid open the year, but he's come back to our sense then and that was pretty predictable because the peripherals have said that he's a guy we can stack against. It's a 5.09 skill interactive for Smeltzer. He has a 12% strikeout rate and a 44% fly ball rate. The one thing he is doing well is suppressing hard contact. He has a 37% hard hit rate in this time, but that's a lot of fly balls to try to work around for Smeltzer. He hasn't been able to do it recently. He's led a multiple home runs in three straight games. One of those was against Arizona, which is a super lefty heavy lineup. So Smeltzer's struggling and I don't want to stack the Guardians against the lefty because they are pretty bad, but I will do that here. I think they're the number three stack and I also wouldn't blame you entirely if you put them above the Dodgers given what Hunter Green can do. It does help in stacking the Guardians at Fromio Reyes's back. He is one more powerful rightie to have here. We can include in stacks. He hit the ball really well during his rehab assignments. He went deep in his first game back in the big leagues too, but also struck out four times. So nobody's perfect. The strikeouts less of an issue against Smeltzer than other guys. So I'll be high on Fromio Reyes at $2,500. Oscar Gonzalez went deep last night. He's been one of my favorites for a bit now. I'll be in on him again at $2,600 for tonight as well. So Fromio Reyes, Oscar Gonzalez and Jose Ramirez, all really good options within this Guardian stack. I will do some Dinger picks here, just for funsies for this main slate. And speaking of Jose Ramirez, he will be the boring home run call for the main slate. A lot of fly balls against lefties, no strikeouts. It's too easy. So I would say Jose Ramirez is the boring home run call for the main slate. The fun one, I'll go Alex Kiriloff. I went to Trevor Larnack last night, didn't work. Could have gone Max Kepler, but that doesn't seem as boring. So I'll go Kiriloff here. Again, hit the ball really well in triple A when he got sent down. He's been, okay, since he came back up, a lot of hard contact in that time. So he's not this big of a fly ball guy, which means I didn't want to be as high in him for Dingers, but still fine with Kiriloff. So the home run calls for the main slate, Jose Ramirez and Alex Kiriloff. That's all we got here for the main slate. Let's talk here about the late slate. If you are listening to this and don't wanna play the late slate, see ya. Have a good day. We'll talk to you tomorrow for Friday's slate. But the late slate here, don't have a slate up yet, so no salaries. But on Joe Musgrove is my top pitcher on the late slate. He's coming off the COVID IL. He apparently did test positive, but he didn't miss that much time. I think he was out on the 16th, so about a week exactly. So I think he should still be stretched out. Probably an indication there weren't a lot of sentence with Musgrove. He has a 26% strikeout rate, which is the highest on this slate. The Philly's pretty good offense, but not invincible. So I would say that Musgrove is my top pitcher of the late slate for tonight. I'm not totally opposed to Frumber Valvez. Think of these kind of interesting, but very risky, obviously, against the Yankees. For Stacks, my favorite is the White Sox facing Dean Kramer. Kramer has made just three starts so far this year, and he hasn't been bad, but he's led up enough hard contact and enough fly balls for us to feel good about stacking against him. The White Sox got Tim Anderson back, so they're healthier now than they were. That should help them get out of the full season slump they've been in, it seems like. So I think that that could work out pretty well, and I would rank the White Sox highest for stacking. Second for me would be the Orioles in that same game. Facing Johnny Cueto is not bad, but letting up a lot of balls in play, 40% hard hit rates, and a 46% fly ball rate. Orioles are a good enough offense to be lively. They did well last night for us, so that game overall is the best for stacking. Whether it be the White Sox or the Orioles, it's also the warmest game of the night slates. So I would say White Sox, Orioles, both prime spots to go for stacking if you're playing that late slate. Mr. Funzees will do some Dinger calls here, because why not? For the boring one, I'll go Anthony Santander. I think that just in general, he's a tremendous hitter, underrated, went deep last night off at Lefty, but still someone who has a lot of power no matter who he's facing. So Anthony Santander will be my primary guy there. As far as the fun one, I'm gonna go with Andrew Vaughn. Vaughn, I just think that this White Sox team, even though he's facing a righty, Vaughn is still really good batter. He's finally earned more full-time playing time, even against righties. So I'll go with Vaughn. Home run calls for the late slate. Anthony Santander and Andrew Vaughn, assuming again that that late slate is posted, which I would bet that it will be, I don't think they'll miss out a chance on the chance to post the slate. So I'd bet there is one up. Musgrove is a pitcher, White Sox and Orioles is the top two stacks there. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shop, but we'll be back once again tomorrow to break down Friday's main slate. Also USC and NASCAR are all in the same place. So make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast scene wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. If you've 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 the FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your MLB DFS lineups. We'll talk to you once again on Friday to get you said for that main slate. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.