 We have got a pitchers duel for tonight, lined up in San Diego. You, Darvish versus Max Scherzer, which is a fun one from a DFS perspective, but also a fun one in real life. And I think that's a fun combination to have. And obviously the focus of tonight is going to be around Darvish versus Scherzer, but also there are some other guys on this site who have upside and I think we should consider them as well. We're gonna run through that, run through my preference between Darvish and Scherzer and get you set for Thursday night. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast network in numberfire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com. Here to break down Thursday night's main slate. Lock is set for 7 0 5, 4 2 9. It is a seven game slate and of those seven games, four of them have weather notes. Fun, love it. There is a healthy chance of rain tonight in Baltimore for the Orioles and the Blue Jays and the Rain Ops increases the game goes along. So I would guess that they should start that game. It is a question more so of whether they finish it. So we'll see. I would check back with the update from Kevin Roth of Roto Grinder to see what he says, but as of right now, I'm assuming we're going to go, but keeping on that one later on. In Cleveland, the rain looks like it'll be clearing out around first pitch. So should be good to go there, but check back on the timeline for that, for Cleveland and Kansas City. In New York for the Mets and the Pirates, winds are out to center at 11 miles per hour. That is a slight bump up to batters, not the best part for hitting, but hey, a bit better for tonight that does not hurt. And in Wrigley for the Cubs and the Phillies, winds are in from center at 11 miles per hour. That's a downgrade for hitters there and it does matter at Wrigley. So upgrade bats in New York for the Mets and the Pirates and downgrade them in Wrigley for the Cubs and the Phillies as always updates on weather coming up later on today. During our 4 p.m. stream, that is on the Fangirl YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages, taking your questions live on air and getting you set for tonight's play. We'll have that tomorrow as well. So make sure you're subscribed there, but also check out the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast V that is where you find the solo shot in audio form every day, but also tomorrow UFC and NASCAR, UFC the Austin Swain. I'll have NASCAR for Atlanta, big weekend of sports coming up. So make sure you're subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast V. The 2021 NBA Finals are finally upon us and Fandal and Taco Bell are teaming up to add an extra layer of excitement to the action. Introducing the Fandal Sports Book and Taco Bell NBA Finals comeback bonus. The terms are simple. 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In Tennessee, call the red line at 1-800-89-9789. Or in West Virginia, visit 1-800-GAMBLER.NET. Let's check out the pitching preview for today. And of course, things do revolve around Darvish, Darvish, Darvish. I can find the two names together. Darvish versus Scherzer, you Darvish, the highest salary pitcher on Fandal checking in at $11,400. We got Max Scherzer checking in at 10-9. Alec Minoa, facing the Orioles for roughly the 37th time this year is 10-3. Taiwan Walker against the Pirates is 95. Then we have Tyler Malley, Zac Eflin, and Tarek Skubal as the others at $8,000 or higher. I think that if we're choosing between Scherzer and Darvish for tonight, for that top slot, which I am personally, the edge has to go to Darvish by a hair. I will say that they are not the only pitchers for today. I do like my value play and I do like one more guy who will discuss and things to watch. There are four pitchers to me worth considering for today. We'll talk about those in a bit, but let's start things off here with the number one pitcher for today that is you Darvish. And it's part because Darvish is at home while shitting the road, but Darvish is also just really good. He's seen his movement decrease since the sticky stuff discussion began. So we do want to zero in on just that smaller sample for you Darvish and he's still been really good. The movement specifically for Darvish has been down over his past four starts. And in that time he has a 2.94 skill interactive ERA with a 33% strikeout rate. His skill interactive ERA 2.94 is still the best on this slate for each pitcher in their most relevant sample. The strikeout rate ranks second. Now Darvish is letting up some impactful contact. He's let up at 45% hard hit rates and a 46% fly ball rate. This is a good matchup for that. I would say that was not true last night because apparently I'll see these Escobarers now the best player of all time, but the nationals overall have a 154 iso against righties. They don't have cows. But right now, which means they're down to, I mean, I'm not gonna count, I'll see the Escobar here. They're down to two actual impactful batters and that's a lot more palatable for opposing pitchers. Darvish has paired the good peripherals with the good results in those two home starts. He has 12 combined innings with two earned runs allowed and 18 strikeouts. And one of those starts was against the Dodgers. Darvish back at home tonight for Shaysa to be, I think a good matchup despite Chris Paddock getting blown into oblivion last night. So I think that is enough for Darvish to be the top arm of the night. So to me, you Darvish is number one. Scherzer is second though. So let's talk about him. His salary at 10.9 I think is too low and it's low enough to flush out concerns we may have around him in this spot. As you probably have heard, Scherzer was one of the guys mentioned in a story on the spider attack from the angels clubhouse attendant. So clearly we want to zero in for him too on his most recent starts to see how he's doing. And the thing about Scherzer is that, sure the sticky stuff probably helped but the other big help for Max Scherzer is being angry. He's like Jose Bautista of pitchers where if he's angry, we're not gonna like him and he's pitching really well. In the five stars for Scherzer since the sticky stuff discussion began, he has a 3.19 skill interactive ERA with a 33% strikeout rates. He is allowing just a 23% hard hit rate. He's done that both on the road and at home. Three of his four full starts in there were on the road. He had a 12 pitch outing at home, left due to injury was on the IL but three of the four full starts were on the road. He did face the Dodgers in his one home start really tough matchup but Scherzer had eight strikeouts over six innings of one run ball. The one potential negative is that Scherzer hasn't been quite as efficient with his pitches in this time. He has gone over 100 pitches in all four starts. So the length is still there but he has faced less than 23 batters twice. So the pitches per plate appearance seems to be going up for Scherzer right now and there could be an issue here because the Padres have a lot of good plate discipline. They draw some walks, they don't strike out that much and that could inflate his pitch count and it's part of why I prefer Darvish over Scherzer for today but he's still elite and I think that for me I don't wanna overlook him because of one flaw in his profile. So to me, it's Darvish one, Scherzer two, they are in the same tier to me and I wanna have my exposure levels to them decently similar. I would give the edge to Darvish overall but I do wanna keep things pretty even between the two because they both have really good ceilings for today. Feel better about Darvish's floor feel the same about their upside. Floor is not a great thing for our value play but ceiling is there. So let's talk about Tyler Malley and I think that he is kind of the obvious guy from a value perspective for today. He is $8,900 and facing the Brewers. Brewers offense is playing much better of now so this is not a matchup based recommendation. It's all about what Malley himself is doing. For Malley, the change in his movement actually began a bit earlier than it did for other pitchers. The movement on his forcing fastball has been down over his past seven starts and in those seven starts Malley has still been stupid good. He has a 3.03 skill interactive ERA with a 34% strike area. That's actually better than Darvish and Scherzer and the best number on the slate but he also has good batted ball numbers. He has a 33% hard hit rate allowed with a 32% fly ball rate allowed. The lone concern with Malley in his profile has been walks. He's an 8% walk rate in that time and that can drive a pitch count but the Reds seem to be getting Malley a longer leash right now. He has been at 102 pitches or more in three of his past four starts and the results have been pretty good in this time too. He has the 3.46 ERA in this time. He's had at least six strikeouts in every game even with four of those seven starts coming on the road. He actually had a 12 strikeout game so the ceiling's good. The 12th strikeout game came on June 16th in the exact same situation he is in tonight on the road facing Milwaukee. I don't think Malley's floor is as good as Darvish's or Scherzer's but his ceiling is. He had 12 strikeouts, he can do that. So he can reach that ceiling. It's a good ceiling. He can get there. So to me, I think that all three of these guys are playable tonight. I do think there's a fourth guy who's playable. We'll talk about him in things to watch as well but I think that I kinda wanna have relatively even exposure to all three. Part of that's because I wanna stack the Jays and that's a bit tough to do if you're going with Darvish or Scherzer's or Pitcher but I really see nothing here to lead me to believe that Malley is not worth the consideration there. So it's a pretty even night. The headliners are obviously Scherzer and Darvish but I do wanna make sure I get enough Malley and again, we'll go through one more Pitcher in things to watch as well. Before that though, let's talk about these stacks for today. We were on the Blue Jays last night against Matt Harvey. I liked them in that matchup. I love them tonight if the rain lets us use them. This is a better matchup than they had against Matt Harvey as hard as that may be to believe. There are two big differences here for the Jays tonight versus last night. The first one is that I think Harvey is better than Keegan Aiken. Take that for what you will. The second thing is Aiken is a lefty. That is crazy dangerous against this current Jays lineup. Aiken is really struggling in the rotation. He settled into his current pitch mix in his second start since he joined the rotation and he's made six starts since then. In that time, he has a 5.04 skill interactive ERA with a 20% strikeout rate and an 11% walk rate. He is letting up hard contact 47% of the time. His fly ball rate is 40% and what that does, it leads to a lot of base runners and a lot of hard contact. Shockingly, that's not a good combination. You let up base runners and then you let up hard contact. That's how you get multi-run dingers and you get crooked numbers in a hurry. Aiken's single-game ERA has been 11 or higher in four straight starts. We don't wanna look at single-game ERA. We wanna look at single-season ERA sometimes, but just illustrate the point, it's been rough. He had one of those starts come against the Blue Jays. He allowed two home runs and six earned runs across four and one-third innings. So they've got a ton of righties in this lineup and it'd be rough to face him as a lefty in general. That's especially true when things aren't going that great to begin with. So I think we gotta load up on the Jays one more time and it's not gonna be a team that's easy to stack with Sharerser and Darvish. Like I said, we're not getting a lot of value plays here but the mid-range guys are very much worth getting to. TeoScar Hernandez is one of my favorite plays in the slate. He's $3,500. That's not cheap, but I think he's under salad of how good he is versus lefties. We'll talk about TeoScar in a later segment on the show. A little teaser for that. But we also have Randall Gritchick at $3,600. Lourdes Gouriel is $3,300. These are not value plays, but they are affordable plays when you're using Sharerser and Darvish. And I think those guys have enough juice to justify building round all three and then seeing maybe you can jam in one of Vlad, Beshad or Simeon or George Springer. We'll see, but I think that all those guys worth targeting. So even if it does mean you're passing up like the true-truse does and just building around Gritchick, TeoScar and Gouriel, that's fine. I'm okay with that. So it's tough, but I do think that we should be trying to do that for today. The other thing to do when you're stacking the Jays is pair them with a second lower-sourced stack. And there are two teams I think are worth considering there from a lower-sourced perspective. The first one is the Tigers. They're facing Jay Hap, and Hap is really struggling right now. That's been true for a while. So Hap has been making changes. He is now going back to his slider, which is a pitch that he had lowered the usage on earlier this year. We have a five-star sample on Hap since he made that shift back to the slider and hasn't really helped. He's led up a 46% hard hit rate with a 44% fly ball rate. It's a really gross contact profile, and it comes with a 19% strikeout rate. Not surprisingly, the results for Hap have not been good. He allowed at least four runs in three of those games. He allowed multiple homers in three games too. And some of those games came against teams that really struggle with lefties. The Tigers are up to 20th and WRC plus against lefties. So we look at the full season numbers, they've been below average. But that's actually better than four to five teams Hap has faced in this time. He has faced a lot of bad teams, and he's still had bad results. And the Tigers ranked 20th now, but they've been awesome since like May 1st or so on. They've been really good. So I think it makes a ton of sense to stack the Tigers here and bask in the Dinger upside that they present. One guy worth highlighting here who might not play is Zach Shortz. If he does play, he'll probably about seventh, but Nico Goodrum just came off the angel list yesterday. So not sure if Short will play. Short is a big strikeout guy, but when he makes contact, he does so with authority. 232 ISO for him before being promoted from AAA. His barrel rate in the big leagues is 15.8%. So he does strikeout. He might not play if Goodrum is back in there, but I do think that Short is really fun as a punt play to help make the Jays stacks a lot easier to get to. And honestly, like most guys on this Tigers team are lower sourd. Eric Haas is awesome. He's $2,900. That's easy to get to. Willie Castro has been hitting the ball better recently. He's $2,500. So I think you can make it work and get to the Tigers for sure. And it can allow you to have more exposure to the Jays for your other stack. The other value stack I like for today is the Mets. They're based in JT Brew Baker, and Brew Baker was pretty interesting earlier on this year. He was getting strikeouts. The ground ball rate was decently high as well, but Brew Baker hasn't been able to maintain that. So the Mets to me on the menu for tonight, Brew Baker over the past four starts has been leaning harder on his curve ball. He is using fewer force emers to compensate for the increase in curves. And that curve ball is a really good pitch for him. So he should be doing this. The problem is that the increased usage on the curve ball is not enough to erase the issues he's having elsewhere. The strikeout rate in this time is down to 20%. Brew Baker is letting up a 40% hard hit rates with a 45% fly ball rate. And it's not like a spin rate thing because the spin rate for Brew Baker last time now it's actually up from his full season mark. So it's not like a spin rate thing. It's a pitch mix change. And it hasn't seemed like it's worked out. It's possible that the big league hitters are just figured out what Brew Baker was doing. And especially with the contact profile with what it's doing right now, lots of fly balls and lots of hard contact. I do think it is worthwhile stacking against him with the Mets for today. It's not because of the weather, but the weather doesn't hurt, I would say for the Mets for tonight. It also doesn't help that the Mets are a lot healthier now than they've been all year long. Brandon Nimmo is back, Jonathan Yar is back. The one guy who's a semi-recent returner, I'm not super jazzed to use is Jeff McNeil. McNeil's been back for, feels like a very long time now. He still does not have an extra base hits. He had a walk off hit yesterday, but like still no extra base hits. He's not the highest upside guy to begin with and it seems maybe even a bit worse now. So I am down to stack the Mets, but I am good skipping over McNeil in those Mets stacks. There are some guys who I just, I don't really want to use some of them, they can burn me. McNeil might be that guy. Maybe that's a mistake because he's going to bat a really good spot in the order. He is low salary at $2,600, but I don't know, I'm just okay being a tiny bit lower on him for tonight just because I don't think the upside necessarily is there for Jeff McNeil. Mention before that there was a pitcher I like outside of Darvish, Scherzer and Tyler Malley and it shouldn't be a surprise that that guy is Taiwan Walker. He is firmly a consideration for today. He hasn't been throwing his splitters much recently, which could be a concern because splitters typically are pretty impactful pitches but honestly like it hasn't been that for Walker. It's been a pretty bad pitch for him this year. He has a 28% strikeout rate and four starts with reduced usage on that splitter. He's facing the pirates today. So the reason I went Malley over Walker for the third slot is because I like Malley's upside more but I will not push back on anybody who wants to roll out Walker in this spot. And I think that he's worthy of exposure too. So really fun pitching slate. I think you can go anyway between Darvish, Scherzer, Malley, Walker even Alec Minoa is in play too. But to me I do think it's ranking Darvish one, Scherzer two, Malley three, Walker four, Minoa five for tonight. If you want some more value hitters preferably as one-offs or like a three-man stack I'm good with Cleveland against Danny Duffy. It's hard for me to like stack them fully because Cleveland is so bad against lefties but Duffy hasn't looked good since returning. Oscar Mercado's back played pretty well in triple A. Harold Ramirez is $2,500. So those two guys plus Frommel Reyes they could be a good three-player stack race. I think under salary two at $3,300. So Cleveland mini stack of like three guys maybe if they're like a four, three, one situation but you know, I can't go get too high given how bad they are versus lefties but they are number four for me for tonight. The weather is bad and wriggly but I think that you can get some one-offs in the Phillies as well. Albert Alsolay has given up a lot of hard contact since he returned from his finger issue and it's led to a lot of dingers, couple home runs in all three starts since he came back. So I would say the lefties here, the big consideration, Alsolay has had issues with lefties even when he was pitching well earlier this year. So, Odubo Herrera for value is good if he plays. D.D. Rigoris if you need to feel shortstop but if Brad Miller plays if he sneaks in the lineup I could consider him too. So Phillies are interesting for some value if you need one-offs, same thing for Cleveland but the sacks for me are the Blue Jays, the second team Tigers and the Mets for tonight. Let's finish up here with some home run calls. I said it before, we'd be talking about Teoscar Hernandez later on. Let's do that here because he's really good against lefties. He's good against everyone, says Teoscar Hernandez, but especially good versus lefties. I think he's under a salary of $3,500. He's going deep twice tonight. You heard it here first. Teoscar Hernandez, your Dinger call of the day. The fun one, a little bit more off the radar is Eric Haas for the Tigers. He has a 448 ISO against lefties. A lot of fly balls, it's a small sample but Haas was the guy who had power in the minor leagues too. So the Dinger calls for today are Teoscar Hernandez and Eric Haas and we'll see how those play out. Be sure to get your Dinger calls in today during the 4pm stream on the FanDuel, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages. Swing by there, 4pm to ask your questions, get your Dinger calls in and talk some baseball later on today. Also make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. We're at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, I think maybe, I don't know, radio.com, whatever. We're there, find us and if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. If you have questions for me before 4pm, 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 with your MLB DFS lineups for tonight. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.