 It will not surprise you to hear me say that Shohei Otani is a top pitcher on tonight's save for daily fantasy baseball because he is tremendous. He is at home. He's in a good matchup. He checks every box. The thing that I see with this slate is if I'm not spending on Otani, I want to get a lower salary pictured in there in order to make my rosters very different from the ones with Otani to give myself a different path to a big point total than the Otani lineups. Another good thing about tonight's slate is we actually have some guys with salaries $2,000 lower than Otani's with very good upside. We're going to break down who those guys are, why I love Otani to begin with, and what you should do with tonight's slate for daily fantasy baseball. Welcome on into the solo shop. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and Numberfire.com. My name is Jim Sonna, signing a senior writer and analyst for Numberfire here to break down Friday's 12 game main slate with lock set for 7.05 PM Eastern for today. Weather notes on this slate. There is a good chance of rain in Cleveland for the Marlins and the Guardians. That could put the game at risk. I think they'll be able to play, but it's worth noting that that game is in danger. Temperature just 52 degrees. So if that game does play, I would downgrade batters there. There is no rain in Minneapolis for the twins Nationals. If it were to precipitate, it might be snow because it's just 38 degrees there. That's a pretty big downgrade for batters. So I think they'll play it despite the fact it's very chilly, but just 38 degrees there. Keep that in mind for your lineups and a big downgrade to batters upgrade to pitchers in that game. And again, check back on the Guardians and Marlins later on to make sure they'll be able to play that one will dive into the pitchers Otani, the rest of the crowd in just one second. The first day reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the number fire daily fantasy podcast, wherever you get your podcast, MLB DFS podcast, every weekday in addition to PGA every week, USC for select events all right here into the same feed. So go search for the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, hit subscribe. And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. The NBA playoffs are here and you can get them in the action right from first tip with Fandall right now. All customers can get a no sweat, same game, parlay every weekend when you bet the NBA playoffs. That's right. Just place a three plus leg, same game, parlay or same game, parlay plus on any NBA playoff game. You'll get bonus beds back if you don't win. 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Louisiana is 1-877-770 stop in Maryland MD gambling help.org in West Virginia. Go to 1-800-gambler.net. Pitching preview for this Friday main slate. No shocker here. Show how Tony comes in with the highest salary on Fandall. He is $11,400. Followed by Anthony DiSclifani at 10-6. We got Freddy Peralta at 10-4. Zach Gallin at 10,000 Seth Lugo is 98. Bryce Elder comes in in 96 with Aaron Nola at 93. Hunter Brown is 91 with Tyler Malley at 9,000 flat. John Gray, Domingo Ehrman, George Kirby, Yusei Kikuchi, Tyler Wells and Nick Pavetta are the others at $8,000 or higher. So you hear a lot of names there and a lot of guys and they have higher salaries than you may think, which is part of why I want to commit to Otani as my top option for tonight. And I love a slate, frankly, where I can just gush over Otani and make my top guy without thought. This is very much one of those. Otani is facing the Royals. That's a big part of the equation here. They have an 83 WRC plus against righties with a 133 ISO, a 23 percent strikeout rate and minimal walks. That is a tremendous matchup for a righty across the board. And Otani has had some good matchups this year for sure, but he's taken full advantage of them. He has a 0.86 ERA. That is a zero as the first digit there. 0.86 ERA, 33 percent strikeout rate, 2.56 expected ERA. The one issue he has had has been walks. But again, the Royals do not draw those. If you want to expand the sample, Otani has still been dominant over a larger span. He's been throwing more sliders across his past 16 starts and he leads the slate with a 30 percent strikeout rate in that sample. His hard hit rate is 29 percent, which is also the top number on the slate. So what you get here is the best picture on the slate, in a great matchup at home. I have Otani projected for 7.3 strikeouts, and that's enough for me to feel great about his outlook here. So Shohei Otani to me is the number one guy on this slate. As mentioned, if I'm not using Otani, I want to have a different roster construction than the Otani lineups. I want to save some salary. And one way to do so is via Aaron Nola, who has not had as good of a year as Otani has. His loss is down. The strikeouts have gone down too, which does make it easier to make Otani ranked higher. But I still have some interest in Nola here. He will be our number two guy across four starts this year. Nola's strikeout rate is just 20 percent. He has a 5.91 ERA. And it makes sense because he is one of the guys who we flagged coming into this year who could have a tough time adjusting to the pitch clock because he had a super long pace makes sense. He'd have a tougher time adjusting to that than others. But Nola's still a good pitcher, and it seems like things are trending up for him. Nola's swing strike rate has increased every single game so far this year. It went from 6.9 percent in his first start to 13.3 percent last time out. He's also made three of his four starts on the road. And Nola as a times had pretty drastic home road splits. He's at home tonight. He's also in a plus matchup. He gets the Rockies here who have an 88 WRC plus against Reides with a 22 percent strikeout rates and a low walk rate. Even with decreased velocity, Nola's expected the array this year is 3.62. So he should improve regardless and he gets conditions with a plus conditions with a plus matchup at home. So not totally convinced to turn things around because the velocity is pretty low, but there is enough here to make Nola viable. And I'm comfortable putting Nola second on my list in large part because the salary is so down from expectation for a typical era Nola. So might not happen, might not turn things around, but we get a discounted salary. He's trending up. He's at home in a good matchup. I think that's enough to make era Nola the number two pitcher on the main slate for tonight. We also get a bit of a gift with our value play in terms of salaries here because right behind Nola is Tyler Malley. He is right there at 9000, which makes him count as our value play and he's pitching it well. He is he's pitching well. He's at home. He's in cold weather. He's facing the Nationals. I think that makes Malley pretty obvious as our top value option of the slate. The Nationals are definitely a good spot for righties. 84 WRC plus on the current active roster since the start of last year, 129 ISO. Not a big strikeout team. Roughly Lee Gavards there, but they draw no walks literally none 5.8%, very low number. As a result of that, starting pitchers are super efficient against them. Pitchers average just 3.65 pitches per plate appearance against the Royals, which means guys can go deeper in games on shorter pitch counts. That could be a moose for Malley. His max pitch count so far this year is 91. He left after 90 last time out but that was more due to effectiveness than pitch count, which means he could get up to 95, 97 or so in this spot potentially. It's also a much easier manager from Malley because he's faced the Astros and the Yankees as past two starts. And despite that, he still has a 28% strikeout rate so far this year. He's getting more ground balls as well. We're seeing Malley throw a slider now. It was a cutter last year, so a different pitch to be a slider now. So some changes for him were expected and it seems like the results have been positive. I have Malley projected for 6.3 strikeouts here. I think that's enough where we should feel good about Malley as our top value at $9,000. We'll talk about one more lower salary guy and things to watch. I think it's very much in play but to me Malley is the preference. So if I'm not going otani, I wanna say salary and I can do so via NOLA at 93 and via Malley at 9,000. Let's go back here to that NOLA game and talk about our top stack of the night. That's the Philadelphia Phillies and their offense is diminished from what it used to be. No Bryce Harper, no Reese Hoskins. So that's a bummer but they still have guys with upside and I think they could flash that upside here tonight. They're facing Noah Davis who threw five shutout innings in his first start but in that game he had a 5.3% swinging strike rates which is in line with expectations from the miners. We saw him make three AAA starts earlier on this year and his swinging strike rate there was 6.3%. So Davis will be a low strikeout pitcher which means he needs elite added ball data to truly get by. Not sure if he'll have that personally. He made 26 starts in one stop in the miners last year. His fly ball right there was 46% with a 5.5 for ERA and a 4.68 ex-fib. So it's hard to have high expectations when those are the numbers in the miners. So the Phillies have their issues. They have their flaws for sure as an offense but I think that they can get to him here and with the upside individuals they have we can feel good about them. So the Phillies to me, great out as a quality stack. Obviously the upside guys, Trey Turner, Kyle Schwerber, I think Brandon Marsh is showing a lot of that right now as well. They do think that JT Real Muto still has that too despite his slow start to this year. He has a 32% strikeout rate which is rough. His expected WoBo is 310, also rough but he's had more hard contact recently. His barrel rate is 11.6% actually a higher than what it was last year. He is willing to steal some bases. So obviously other guys here have more upside than Real Muto but he also comes with a low salary, 29. So if you want to get Otani with the Phillies, Real Muto I think is a key point within that. So I would not underestimate Real Muto's upside despite his slow start and I want him in my Philly stacks especially if I'm going to Otani and need to save some salary. Speaking of Otani, let's talk about his offense too. They're facing the Royals and the Royals are using an opener today before Ryan Yarbrough. Yarbrough will be the long boy which means they'll delay Yarbrough being out there against this lineup which is probably a good thing because he's a lefty and the Angels can obliterate lefties. I'm not sure it'll be enough to keep this offense in check though. Yarbrough does a good job of suppressing hard contact but the rest of his profile is pretty rough and it negates the good in the contact suppression. Last year in a similar role to what he's expected to have tonight, Yarbrough had a 4.40 expected ERA. He hasn't looked great to open this year in a shorter role. It's a very small sample so I don't want to put a lot of stock in that but if we just take last year's version of Yarbrough and put him in this matchup against the Angels he'd probably struggle. Plus the Royals bullpen, even if Yarbrough so I've got him projected for like six year so pitches the bullpen beyond him is pretty poor. They had the second worst active roster skill interactive ERA since it started last year. And I think that all adds up to making the Angels a quality stack here even with the opener being in play. So the Angels to me great out well for stacking for tonight and you can't use a Tani for the stack which is a bummer but totally fine by me regardless. I do think this is a good buy low spot for Brandon Jury who has been brutal so far this year. A lot of strikeouts, his barrel rate is down. That's pushed his salary down to $24 and he may continue to struggle because you look at the past week or so things have not gotten better. He's not trending up but it's a very low salary for a guy who we know can crush lefties and he's in a plus matchup. So I'm fine giving Jury a shot here despite the fact that the more recent data frame is not super encouraging. Typically I do wanna see some signs of life some hard hit balls and stuff like that. You're not getting that here at Jury but I think there's enough in the tank still to feel good about him. So concerns for sure but still a guy I wanna turn to for tonight. Our third stack went ahead to Milwaukee. I hope they close the roof at American Family Field or whatever it's called now because it's 53 degrees in Milwaukee and if they close the roof that would make it a better park factor for tonight. So check back on that if they decide to keep the roof open it would be a slight downgrade. I think they might but regardless the brewers are in play. Facing Nick Pavetta here really struggling with hard contact open this year and across three starts Pavetta you don't wanna overreact because it is a very small sample but it's really bad. 59% hard hit rate allowed, 53% fly ball rate you know numbers 10 percentage points lower in both those categories would still be rough. 59-53 is bad and it leads to a 6.03 expected ERA. Last year Pavetta had troubles with hard contact too with a 45% hard hit rate allowed. He was able to navigate around it because he got enough strikeouts but it's a very risky route. We can get blow-ups against him in certain situations. Now the brewers will strike out they have plenty of guys will do that so there's some risk in here but they can put balls in the seats. So it's a power matchup against a guy who lets a lot of high hard contact. So the brewers to me are a good tournament stack as a result in this spot. Lefties have had the upper hand on Pavetta the past couple of years which is great for Roddy Tiles obviously Christian Yelich has a 56% hard hit rate so far this year and he can steal bases. So he needs to loft the ball to hit more power but with the increased prevalence of the running game I think that Yelich still grades out well for DFS because of the stolen bases and because he's at least hitting the ball pretty hard. I'm not as fond of Jesse Winker personally due to the lack of running. If he were to run a bit maybe I could get there but I think that it does give a boost to Tiles and Yelich for sure, very high on them and then we can get to the righties after that. Things to watch, let's go back to the pitching discussion and talk about one more value guy worth considering. That to me is Domingo Armand. He pitched great last time out, 11 strikeouts there. He did have to wash some sticky stuff off his hands so hopefully doesn't get Scherzert here but maybe he comes back to earth if the sticky stuff is not there but eight strikeouts in his first start this year too which means that Armand has upside. Now he's facing the Jays which is a tough spot which is why I prefer Mali but Armand is at least in play. So between Nola, Mali and Armand you have routes to being different from Otani line if you don't go Otani, I think that's a good thing for tonight. Sticking to that same game, I think the Yankees are phenomenal for one offs and I don't mind stacking them either. They're facing Yuseki Kuchii who is much better this year than he was last year because he's getting more strikeouts but he is still letting up a ton of hard contact and a ton of fly balls and you don't wanna do that at Yankee Stadium. Yankees have a 126 WRC plus against lefties with a 196 ISO, great stadium for home runs. So I'll be high on the Yankees here. If you wanna put them in the top three for stacks you wanna put them number one, I think that's fine. I probably wouldn't put them first but I could see putting them as high as second. I think they're a very good stack. So the Yankees to me, quality stacking option and firmly in that same tier as the Brewers and the Angels for tonight. We got pretty good hitting weather in Baltimore today between the Tigers and the Orioles. I think that opens the door to stacking Baltimore against Michael Lorenzen. Lorenzen pitched decently well last year for the Angels but he really struggled in his first start this year. He's not a huge strikeout guy, not overly restrictive with batted balls. So he's facing a pretty decent Orioles offense in a good spot for hitting tonight. I think the Orioles are at least worth digging into. So we'll check out the Orioles but they're behind the Yankees, behind the Brewers, behind the Angels and definitely behind the Thillies for tonight. Let's finish up with our Dinger calls for today. The boring one, it's Hunter Renfro against the Lefty eventually with Ryan Yarbrough. Feel like I got to go with that. I could go extra boring with Mike Trout but I feel like I used my extra boring ones with Aaron Judge either earlier this week or last week. I used Nohtani this week. So we'll go to like half a rung down and go Hunter Renfro as the boring homerun call. For the fun one, I will go to the Yankees game. Again, Judge is a little bit too boring but Glibert Torres, pretty good against Lefties too. So this is not like an outlandish homerun call but I'm gonna make it anyway. Again, my podcast, my rules. So homerun calls for today, Hunter Renfro, Glibert Torres and feel pretty good about both of those for tonight. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shot. Again, we are back with you once again next week, Monday through Friday, breaking down the top options across MLB DFS. Make sure you're subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed to get those right as they're posted. And also check us out over on the Fanduil YouTube page. If you have 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 Fanduil Podcast Network at Fanduil Podcast. Wanna thank you all for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your MLB DFS lives tonight. Have a fantastic weekend. We'll talk to you once again on Monday. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fanduil Podcast Network.