 On yesterday's show, I recommended a pitcher who led up six runs in his first two innings. I recommended stacking against a guy who had 11 strikeouts and seven innings. And as a thing to watch, another team to consider stacking, I recommended a team that got no hit. So that's bad, and that should not inspire confidence for today, but I guess it does mean we probably have nowhere to go but up. I guess we shall see how things go for today. Either way, trying to lick my wounds and bounce back for today's slate. It is a good one, though. Got a pretty fun pitching matchup out west. We're going to preview that and get you set for Wednesday's main slate. 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 Wednesday's seven game main slate with Lachsefer 705 PM Eastern. And the big duel is in Anaheim between the Rays and the Angels. There we do have some wind out. It is out to center at 16 miles per hour. I would bump up batters a bit in that game, but not too much because the pitchers there are Otani and McClanahan. We'll talk more about them later on. In Minneapolis for the Twins and Astros, winds are in from right at 12 miles per hour. I'd bump down hitters a bit, but it is very warm. It's pretty humid. And I'd also note there is a chance of rain, though it should get there closer to the end of the game. So they should be good to go with that game, but just noting there, some wind and some slight rain chances. We're going to break down our thoughts on this main slate in just one second. But first, a quick reminder to make sure you are subscribed to the NumberFire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. We already have our PGA podcast for this week's AT&T Byron Nelson posted myself and Brandon Cadulla breaking down the main or the slate. They're talking about Scottie Schaeffler, Justin Thomas, other top studs in the field and our view of them plus value plays for this week. Get that by searching for the NumberFire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. Also speaking of the PGA, it is back this week in a big way with a massive daily fantasy contest on Fandal. This week's PGA Eagle contest includes a hundred thousand dollars in total prizes with first place netting twenty thousand dollars. Best of all, it is only nine dollars to enter to get yourself a chance at all that cash. Go to Fandal.com or download the Fandal app. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to Fandal.com or download the Fandal app for more details. Pitching preview for this Wednesday main slate. No shocker. Shohei Otani is the highest-sellered pitcher on Fandal, checking in at 10-8 followed by the guy he is facing. Shannon Clanahan at 10-3. Tyler McGill is ten thousand dollars. Miles Nicholas is nine thousand or ninety six hundred dollars. Nathan Eavaldi is nine thousand. He is facing Ian Anderson. Anderson the lone other guy above eight thousand. He is eighty one hundred dollars. And with this matchup between Otani and McLanahan, I think that we have no choice but to make those two guys our top options of the night. Looking at Otani, I've not been low on him this year. I've been high on him. But I think even being high on him, I haven't been high enough because he's been awesome. And I think I need to change that here and just say we're going all in on Shohei Otani for tonight. And it's for so many reasons with Otani facing the race. He's the top guy tonight. It's the velocity that he had the beginning of last year that is back. Could have been a fatigue thing. And honestly, you could blame him given the schedule he has faced. But the velocity is back and he's using a slider more. It's at a thirty one percent usage rate this year, according to Baseball Savant, up from twenty two percent last year. And it's a great pitch. So it's a good thing if we have Otani pumping that velocity, pumping that slider and it's led to an outstanding start. Thirty eight percent strikeout rate this year for Otani. Only one other pitcher on the slate is within 10 percentage points with him and their most relevant sample. And that is McClanahan on the other side of this game. Also, just a five percent walk rate for Otani, which means he is blowing teams away. Eleven strikeouts against Boston, 12 and one start against Houston, nine and the other against Houston. His two double digit strikeout games were both in the road. And now he is at home for tonight. Based on the race, we have a twenty four percent strikeout rate on their current active roster against righties since the start of last year. They do have some boppers. They've got some guys who can go deep, but they also will strike out. So Otani is a top guy tonight. There is no question about it. I feel very good doing it and diving full in on him, upping the already high view ahead of him, making it even higher because he is so worthy of every accolade we could potentially give him. The number two option, though, is the other side of that game in Shane McClanahan. I think that if you want to pivot off Otani, you do it within the same game and go with McClanahan. McClanahan is the only other guy outside of Otani within 10 percentage points of his strikeout rate in each guy's most relevant sample. McClanahan is at 37 percent. So just about a percentage point lower than Otani. And McClanahan is getting a lot of ground balls. He has a 24 percent fly ball rate allowed so far this year. And it's led to some amazing other peripherals. The match up here is very good for McClanahan as well, because the Angels sneakily have a 27 percent strikeout rate against lefties on their current active roster since the start of last year. That is by far the highest mark on this slate. And again, not a lot of fly balls for them either. That's why I view McClanahan as a great pivot off of Otani. One key reason to still favor Otani, though, is pitch count because I've got Otani projected for 95 pitches. McClanahan is at 87 and McClanahan has not thrown more than 90 yet this year. I thought they would take the reins off eventually, but they have not done so yet. So the strikeout projection for McClanahan is almost a full strikeout lower than Otani's despite having a higher strikeout mantra, despite being a pretty high strikeout guy himself. The pitch count doesn't matter a lot. But looking at Otani, it is it is very much possible McClanahan could outscore him. That's very much within his range of outcome. So I'll be here on McClanahan, but I want to make sure I have more exposure to Otani between these two guys. But overall, it's going to be a true blast to watch. And the fun thing for us on the East Coast here, that game does start pretty early because it's an afternoon game, an evening game for them in Anaheim. So even more excited to watch that game early on. I honestly would not recommend going with a value play for today. I think that if you want to deviate from Otani and McClanahan, I don't know, you're probably looking at McGill. Tyler McGill is being your top option, but he's not a value play. He's around 10,000. I don't know if I'll get to a value play personally for today. If you do want to go down there, though, my top guy would be Ian Anderson. And it's a bit odd, admittedly, because Anderson skill interactive ERA is 5.07. It's that low or that high, I should say, because he has a 14% walk rate with a 17% strikeout rate. That's closer to stacking against him than using him as my top pitcher. But a couple of things give me hope that he can turn this around. The first thing is his swing and strike rate is 13.5%. Anderson last year had a lower swing and strike rate, but a strikeout rate was up to 23%. So we should see his strikeout rate climb as the year goes along. He also is getting a good number of ground ball still. He has a 52% ground ball rate across those five starts, and that's kept his ERA reasonable while everything else has been pretty bad. So if Anderson starts converting the widths into strikeouts, things would look good for him in a pretty big hurry. It's hard to tell if that will happen because his CSW percentage would factors in called strikes as well. That's pretty low, and that's a good indicator of what to expect. Called strikes matter, too, and he's not getting a lot when you factor those in. People just aren't chasing as bad pitches enough. So either he needs to get them to chase those pitches or put the ball in the zone more. And that's why I prefer Ohtani, McLanahan, and even McGill because I'm not making a recommendation based on hope there. I'm not making a recommendation based on expecting changes, whereas Anderson, you kind of have to do that. There is at least cause for some optimism here. I'm willing to use Anderson, but only as a sprinkle type option because I'd set better options elsewhere. So to me, I think it is a slate where you stack the studs, go from there. It's not really a situation where you want to get too excited about the value plays, but if you do want to use one, Anderson would be my guy. Let's move now to the stacks for today and then to the top, the Cardinals were facing Braddish and he had 11 strikeouts and seven innings. It was really bad. They still scored three runs in 2022. That's not bad, but it was bad. They had a good matchup, I thought. They had good weather and both those elements aligned once again today. So we're going to give it another shot and stack the Cardinals despite what happened last night. This time they're facing Spencer Watkins. Watkins is a different picture this year than he was last year. He's added a slider and he's throwing that slider 17 percent of the time and it's working out pretty well for him, too. But even with that slider, he still has a stackable profile, the overall picture of Watkins. He has as many walks of strikeouts and five starts, it leads to a 5.28 skill interactive ERA. His hard hit rate allowed is 40 percent, and those are numbers we are fine stacking against. The one thing he is doing pretty well is getting more ground balls. He has a 29 percent fly ball rate allowed, and that's pretty good. But I'm not sure if it's enough to overcome the really rough plate discipline numbers and the hard contact. The ERA for Watkins is 3.22, so he's done it well so far. But did let up a couple of home runs to the Angels. He let up three runs to the Twins in four and two-thirds innings last time out. So again, the Cardinals are not great against righties, but I think they can get the job done here. And the key thing is that Watkins has really struggled facing opposing righties. He's letting up a career 6.53 slugging percentage against them. And Goldschmidt, Aronado, Juan Yepes, all these guys, O'Neal, they're all right handed batters. And I think that we want to try to target a lefties against them, but B, righties who have reverse platoon splits, Watkins is that. So I think to me we can feel pretty good about the righties for today and feel good about the Cardinals in general, despite the fact they're not that great against righties and they did struggle in last night's game. So the Cardinals, to me, the number one stack for today. Number two is the Astros facing Chris Archer. And Archer probably won't be out there that long, probably around four or so innings. The Twins are giving him a very short leash, but I'd expect the Astros to do well while Archer is in there. Archer does have a 4.00 skill interactive ERA this year, which is pretty good. It comes with a 24 percent strikeout rate, which is also good. It's the rest of his profile that makes this stack what I want to go to. He has an 11 percent walk rate, 44 percent hard hit rate and a 48 percent fly ball rate. All those numbers are higher than where you'd want them to be. He's facing the Astros here. They have a 118 WRC plus against righties, which is the highest on the slate by a pretty good margin. They've got good play discipline numbers. They're not the most powerful team always, but they have good individuals who can hit for upside, hit for power, which works for me for sure. So Archer probably not going to maintain the nice start he has had. And I think that that allows me to stack the Astros here, especially again with the temperatures being warm, high humidity at Target Field, I think the Astros a good number two stack for today. Now, one guy who has not torn it up this year is Kyle Tucker. His slugging percentage entering last night was under 400, which is not where you want to be and also not what you expect. But I think that should improve because the barrel rate for Tucker is actually a bit up from where it was last year. His fly ball rate is still very good. He is still swiping bags and the key components for upside are there. I think the power will come soon and he can still steal bases until then, which is why Tucker is going to be my guy for tonight. I will continue to be there, despite a somewhat slow start. I think that he is a building block for the Astros stacks until he gives you a reason not to. And I don't think we've seen a reason not to yet. So Tucker building block for the Astros for sure within our number two stack of the night. Number three, talking about Aaron Sanchez, his velocity is up. His first three starts the national, which is a good thing. But the profile is still underwhelming. Which means means I am OK. Stacking the Mets against him. The sinker velocity for Sanchez is 92.6 miles per hour. It was 90.2 last year. So up 1.4 miles per hour, it was 93.9 back in 2019. So he's not back to 2019 levels yet, but he is up a lot from where he was last year. But he had some decent results last year, too. His ERA was 3.06, but it was across the 35 innings. The peripherals were not as good in that year. And the peripherals look similar this year. In those three starts, despite the increased velocity, Sanchez has a 5.5 percent swing strike rate. It was 7.9 percent in three starts in AAA. So he's going to let up balls and play. And a lot of those will be on the ground for sure. You're still getting ground balls. But in a small sample, his hard hit rate allowed is 60 percent, which is a very big number. He struggled with that back in 2019 as well, which is part of why his ERA in that year was so high. This year, Sanchez has let up at least three in runs in each start. He's pitched in tough situations, though, to be fair, he faced the Giants twice and his other game was at Coors Field. So tough situations. But the Mets aren't too shabby. They got a 112 WRC plus against Wrightys. They get a park factor upgrade for today as well, leaving City Field. So Sanchez is doing some things well, specifically the ground ball in the Velo, and I would still I still think I'd rather be going against him than being on him for the situation, which pushes me to stack the Mets in this spot. One guy I might be a bit reserved with when stacking the Mets, though, is Eduardo Escobar. And typically I love Eduardo Escobar. I think that he in the past has been pretty underrated from a DFS perspective because the big fly ball guy, but his hard hit rate this year is down quite a bit to 29 percent from 34 percent. And we know that fly balls have not been as valuable this year as they have been in the years past. Plus Escobar is striking out a bit more, so I'm not going to cross him off. But typically if I saw Escobar in the high two thousands in a team I wanted to stack against the right, he had probably pretty high on him. I think he'll be more of like a rotational type guy. Try to build around some others and feel better about them, still including Escobar in there, not glossing over him completely. But lowering exposure a bit because the underlying numbers for him so far this year are at least a bit concerning. Let's finish up here with things to watch. I think you could get some one offs on both sides of the Tigers and the A's. A's are facing Joey Wentz in his debut. Not the best triple A numbers, not terrible, but you know, not the best. He's a lefty. So I think we bump up Ramon Laureano and Sean Murphy again, mostly from one offs, not really looking to stack the A's against the lefty. Tigers are facing Zack Loog. He projects to give up a lot of fly balls. He's a righty, which means Austin Meadows would be the primary target for me here. So more so one offs and Tigers A's than going with full stacks. I think it's fair to consider the twins against Jose Arcidi today, where Arcidi has struggled with hard contact and fly balls. His strikeout rate is low as well. So I wouldn't stack the twins if Byron Buxton can't play because they're already down Carlos Correa and if they can't have both those guys, the line is pretty bad. But if Buxton is in there, they're fine. So dependent on what the lineup looks like, the twins could be a stack in consideration for today as well. I'm not sure the Royals are starting for today. It sounds like there's a shot at ones that being Brady Singer, which would probably make me pretty meh on the Rangers. They'd be below the twins, probably below the A's and the Tigers, too, because Singer is a ground ball guy, didn't let up a lot of hard contact last year. He's not fully stretched out yet. I'd project him from about 80 pitches if he does start, but still not wouldn't be super high in the Rangers. Maybe a pretty middling play for me if Singer were to be the guy who is out there. All right, home run calls for this Wednesday slate. The boring one telegraphed earlier is Kyle Tucker. I believe the power will come. He's hitting some barrels this year still. It's tough to hit homers for a lefty at target field, but Tucker still a very good baseball player. So I'll go with him for the boring call again for the fun one. I'm actually double dipping with our home run call from yesterday. And that's one yet as for the Cardinals didn't go deep. But yet as is a righty benefits and Spencer Watkins reverse platoon splits. Yep, as great numbers in triple A. So I'm doubling down going back to him once again. Our home run calls for today. Kyle Tucker and one yet as that is all that we have here for today on the solo shop. But as mentioned, our PGA DFS preview is already posted over on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Go find that wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. If you've got 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. Let's hope that today goes better than yesterday. Probably can't get a whole lot worse. So we'll see how it goes. Good luck to you. We'll talk to you tomorrow. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.