 We are entering the stretch run of the regular season for daily fantasy baseball, which means we now have to consider a playoff implication. We've been kind of dancing around this for the past couple of months, specifically with the brewers, because they said explicitly, hey, we're going to limit dudes to save them for the playoffs. But now we've got more teams clinching, we've got more teams eliminated, which means the value of the players who still have something on the line is increasing. I do think that helps us settle on a top pitcher for tonight. It does help us for some stacks, but it's going to lead to some uncertainty for our non top pitchers on this slate. So a lot to handle, a lot to juggle. Let's dive on in and get you set for Friday's slate. 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 preview Friday's 13 game main slate with lock set for 7 0 5 p.m. Eastern for today. One quick note on this slate, as this may differ on other sites, maybe you're just looking at the games of tonight's slate. The second game of the Padres Braves double header is not in the slate. It was a question that I had because I was curious. They don't usually put the double headers on there, but because the first game was being a completing a suspended game, wasn't sure how they'd handle that, but that one is not on the slate for today. So don't worry about that game between the Braves and the Padres. You can just proceed and ignore that one. The lone weather note for today is that it's just 58 degrees in Minneapolis for the Twins and the Blue Jays. That is colder than most other spots on this slate. So I would downgrade hitters there for the Twins and the Jays. I'm not saying don't consider the Jays because they're the Blue Jays and they've got a lot on the line here, but I would downgrade them and the Twins compared to the rest of the slate. Well, take a look at the pitching preview here in just one second. But first, hey soccer fans, this season FanDuel and Captain Morgan are teaming up to give you a one of a kind soccer contest introducing Captain Morgan soccer pick them, a weekly fantasy contest that is entirely free to play. The contest is simple. All you have to do is make quick predictions for Saturday games. The soccer season, you'll earn points for each correct pick and compete for a chance to win up to $3,000 in prizes every single week. Head over to FanDuel and enter the Captain Morgan soccer pick them today. Let's be 21 plus to participate for more details at FanDuel.com or download the FanDuel fantasy app. Eligibility restrictions apply and don't forget to make your game day more delicious and sub in the Captain. Pitching preview for this Friday main slate, Garrett Cole is the highest salary pitcher on FanDuel in a really fun game against the Red Sox. Talk about playoff implications. That game's got a few. Cole is $11,000. We've got Shane Bieber coming off the IL at 10-7. I'm expecting the pitch count for Shane Bieber to be around 70 or so. I would probably be pretty wary of that. Nathan Diavaldi is 10,000 facing off with Cole. We got Jose Barrios facing the Twins. Revenge game, $9,700. Frankie Montas against the Astros at 93. Dylan Ceases, 9,000. White Sox, AL Central Champions. We have Sonny Gray, Kyle Gibson, Carlos Hernandez, Logan Gilbert, Eric Lauer and Zach Greenke, the others at $8,000 are higher. Now, when looking at this slate, it is pretty easy to decide, you know, if we're trying to go towards teams that have a lot on the line, we're going to want to fixating on that Red Sox Yankees game. And I do think that both these pitchers are very lively and they're very in play for today, despite the fact they both have tough matchups because it's so hard to find pitchers on the slate who have something to play for. And it may feel weird to prefer Diavaldi between the two. It's a daunting matchup. But he's pitching well enough for me to buy in. And I think that Diavaldi is my top pitcher for tonight's play. And this is all about Diavaldi. It's not about the matchup. I just it's all about Diavaldi here. We've talked about him for a while now because Diavaldi has upped his curveball usage over the summer and it's paying big dividends. He's gone 11 starts while doing this. And in those 11 starts, he has a 3.10 skill interactive ERA with a 30 percent strikeout rate. His walk rate is 4 percent. And those are elite level numbers that can allow him to hang with like the top end pitchers on each and every slate. The big concern with Diavaldi is the bad at ball data. His hard hit rate is league average at 39 percent. The fly ball rate higher than average at 42 percent. And that can get you in trouble against the Yankees. Two things help him out here, though. The first is that he is lights out at home. He's had great results at home in addition to the great peripherals. The second thing is that Diavaldi does well against righties. He can have some power in lefties, but Fenway is tough on power hitting lefties, especially relative to what you have Yankee Stadium. So it's much better that this game is at Fenway than being Yankee Stadium. It's good against righties. The park neutralizes lefties a bit. That could pay off well for Diavaldi. So it's risky for sure. It could go poorly to use a pitcher face in the Yankees in such a high profile game. The implied total for the Yankees is very high for today, which should, I would assume, keep people a little wary of Diavaldi. But I think there is a very clear path to a ceiling game here. And that's enough for me to use him, despite the risk there is around Diavaldi for tonight. Now, for the second slot, I have to decide. Do I go Garrett Cole and what is a high impact game? Or do I take a consolation? Go with someone who may not have as much on the line, but is a good pitcher and can save me some salary. That final part there is key because the teams I want to stack today are at Coors Field, they are the Dodgers and they are the Reyes. And a lot of those teams have high salary players I want to use. That's going to make me go to Dylan Cease's second over Garrett Cole. Cole is technically out of my top two spots among the studs. We'll talk about him and things to watch and how I want to handle him. But I think Cease's upside is worthy of the second slot. He's pitching really well right now. He has lowered his change of pieces over his past 10 starts and that's helped him rack up a 36 percent strikeout rate, which is the highest mark on the slate. He has double digit strikeouts in four of those 10 starts, including his most recent one. He's been amazing. That's why he's on this list. I still don't think he's safe and I can't put him above Diavaldi. There are two reasons for that. The first one is Cease is still flawed as a pitcher. He walks too many guys, gives up too many fly balls. He let up seven earned runs to Boston just two starts ago because of those issues. That's number one. Number two is the White Sox clinched their division last night. That means they could pedal back on their starters to save those guys of the postseason. You've seen the Brewers do this already, plus they're pretty locked into that third divisional winner spot with the worst divisional record among a winner. So they don't really have a lot to play for. I'm guessing they will still let you or still let Cease go long enough because they don't want him to have to stretch out again for the playoffs. So I would bet that they may limit him, but they're not going to fully pull back the reins and have him go like 50 pitches and like that. I don't think that would happen. So that's why we'll talk about and talk about Garrett Cole and things to watch. I think there is a very strong case to be made for putting him second above Cease here. But for right now, I am leaning Cease in the second spot by a hair. Again, we'll talk about Garrett Cole later on. I've got massive concerns around Cease, but the strikeouts really hard for me to pass up. So tentatively, Cease, we can talk more about this in the 4 30 p.m. stream today against Nakedraft is at 4. I'll be on a 4 30 p.m. Eastern to talk about the MLB DFS Slate, the Fandal, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages. The value play for today is Sonny Gray, the Reds no longer in the playoff hunts. They were just eliminated, but there aren't any other lower salary guys with something on the line who I can talk myself into. It's like actual implications with actual incentive to go. So we'll set up for Gray and hope that they give him a full lease year. Grace had a very much up and down year. A lot of that is injuries. But even when he was fully healthy, he hasn't been fully effective. He's been tinkering because of that, trying to find something, trying to figure stuff out. And just recently, Gray started throwing a cutter a bit more. It's still just 17 percent usage over his past six starts, but that's enough to make a difference if it's a good pitch. And it does seem to have helped him a decent amount because the results in that stretch are great. Gray has a 2.25 ERA. His peripherals are solid. He has a 3.83 skill interactive ERA with a 26 percent hard hit rate allowed that 26 percent hard hit rate is really good. The strikeout rate for Gray, not all that impressive at 24 percent, but he's getting decent strikeout totals because he's not walking guys, which lets him get deeper in games and face more batters. He has gone at least six innings in four out of the six starts in the span. He went seven innings twice. Now he's at home face in the Nationals and Juan Soto is completely out of his mind right now. It's a big downside for targeting a guy against Nats. But the Nats WRC plus, including Soto against righties is 91. That's not insurmountable. So I think we can ride with Gray here and feel decent about it. We just worry about what they do with nothing on the line. So it's a tough pitching slate, despite the fact there are 13 games. I think it is still a pretty tough slate, given that we have to consider playoff implications. And the one guy I really like who has that is Yavaldi, Cole, a secondary option there as well. The problem with Cole is the stacks I want to use are really high sour. So let's talk about those right now. Starting off at Coorsfield with the Giants, they're going from the worst park factor to the best park factor. And I don't mind their matchup, so I will stack them here for sure. They're facing Peter Lambert. Lambert making his first start since 2019. He had Tommy John surgery last July. So good to see him back in the big leagues. And that doesn't mean he probably won't go super deep in the game. He hasn't gone longer than 48 pitches in any of his rehab outings down in the minors. Lambert for those rehabs started started down in high A. He struggled a bit there with a bunch of walks and not many strikeouts. He did pitch better in double A and triple A, but it was over a very small sample. He went to eight and a third innings combined between those two levels. Now he goes to the big leagues, not just that. He's facing a very dangerous Giants team at Coorsfield. Lambert struggled in the big leagues back in 2019. He had a 7.25 ERA with a 5.51 skill interactive ERA. He will likely get some ground balls, but that's to me the only real downside here. So I think we need to be aggressive in stacking the Giants here. And the salaries aren't too bad. Like no one, I don't think anyone's above $4,000. So looking at Evaldi at 10,000, sure, you'll need some value place to make it work. But you can stack the Giants with Evaldi. And I don't think it'll be all that hard for today. One guy I want to talk about here for a second is Evan Longoria. They're facing a righties, but it's not a lock that Longoria plays. But I feel like we just kind of need to talk about him for a second because Longoria is up to 58 plate appearances since his most recent stint on the IL and his ISO in that time is 298. ISO tends to stabilize around 60 to 80 plate appearances. So we're getting close to there. 41 of those plate appearances for Longoria have come against righties. He has seven extra base hits in those 41 plate appearances. His salary is $3,500. He's likely going to hit seventh or eighth night, but I'm good at that, of course, field. So I really hope that Longoria plays and we can load him in. And again, there was the salaries here, not too restrictive. You might just settle for a three player stack if you're going to Evaldi. But I would say three is better than none when it comes to the Giants for tonight. Now, the Giants are trying to win the NOS, you know, they want to lock that thing up. So liking them could be great for their divisional odds. The one problem is I like the Dodgers a lot, too. They're facing Humberto Castellanos and Phoenix. And as of this morning, they've not announced whether the roof will be open at Chasefield. I bet that it is, though, because the temperature is, I think, 90, which is pretty cold actually for Phoenix this time of year. So pretty big boost to their offense, if it is. And I think it is the second ranked stack, regardless of the roof status at Chasefield for tonight. Castellanos has made five starts for the Diamondbacks and the results have been OK. He has a 4.63 ERA, which could mean that he's pitching well and has gotten unlucky because it is a small sample or the peripherals could back this up. And they're a tiny bit worse than his results. His skill interactive ERA is 5.17. He has a 14 percent strikeout rates with a 39 percent hard hit rates. He is keeping the hard contact kind of in check. He's a 36 percent there, a bit better than Lee Gavridge. But he's still running into some dinger problems recently. He's on a four home runs, the past three starts. He led up two in Seattle or two to Seattle, which is not as dangerous of a team as the Dodgers. And the bad at ball suppression has backslid the longer he's been in the rotation. He's let up six barrels, the past three starts. So obviously we want the roof to be open here. But even without that, I think that there is enough stuff working the Dodgers favor for us to like them here. So I do think the Dodgers are the number two stack, whether the roof is open or not. I talk about Will Smith a lot, but I think it's important to stress how good of an option he is for DFS tonight. He leads the Dodgers and ISO in the second half. He's at three twenty nine and Max Muncie is at two seventy five. Max Muncie is a tremendous hitter. Will Smith has shown more power than him in the second half. People don't tend to use catchers on Vanduul because they're not guaranteed to start yada, yada, yada. But I like using catchers when they hit home runs and Smith does that regularly. So I love him here at thirty five hundred dollars. I think that he is a critical part of a Dodger's stack. Hopefully he plays for tonight because I want to use him for sure. Dodgers, you know, obviously the salary is very high with them as well. But I think we may have to get creative a bit. I may have to try to identify some lower salary guys we want to use. But either way, I think the Dodgers do need to be a focal point for us once again for today. The third stack could be a place we get some value. I think there are a couple of guys here who do great out pretty well in that regard. And that's a Tampa Bay raise. They're facing Edward Cabrera. Cabrera absolutely mowed down triple A competition. He had a thirty seven percent strikeout right down there across six starts, which is unreal. And he's up to five starts in the big leagues. That's a long enough sample to look at numbers like strikeout rate and stuff. And thus far, the strikeouts have not followed Cabrera. He has a 17 percent strikeout rate across those five starts. His swing strike rate is 10.6 percent. That means that although a strikeout rate should increase, it's probably not going to be all that high once it does. That's not ideal for him because Cabrera outside of the strikeouts doesn't have the best profile. He walks a bunch of guys, lets a part contact. What's up, or at least in the mind, is a ton of fly balls. So if he can't get strikeouts, it's pretty likely that bad things will happen. And we've seen that happen so far in the majors. His ERA is 5.31. Given the strikeout dip, his skin interactive ERA is 5.74. He's getting barreled a lot. And he hasn't faced a lot of tough teams either. Because he's faced the Nationals, the Mets twice. The Braves are pretty good. And then the Pirates being the fifth start there. And the Braves are a better team than all of those offenses. They have a 113 WRC plus against Reides with a 202 ISO. I think we should go hard at them here and feel pretty good about it. And the good thing is, again, the Rays do give us some value on this team. We got Jim on Choi. We've got Joey Wendell, to an extent, prefer Choi over Wendell. But also I really want Brett Phillips in there. I've talked about this a lot, but like Brett Phillips is amazing when he plays. He's played three of the past four games against Reides. So he could be in there. He's had really good power against Reides with a 279 ISO this year. He's had tremendous power numbers against overall in the second half. So really want Brett Phillips to play because that does open up quite a bit with regards to this team. But Choi is $2,500. Wendell is $2,500. Phillips is $2,200. If we can get those three guys, it does make it a lot easier to stack the Dodgers or stack the Giants, potentially even with Garrett Cole for today. Also does seem like Wander Franco could be back tonight, which would be pretty fun. Might not be able to get to him in those stacks because I would prioritize the higher salary guys on the Giants and Dodgers. But he's fun to watch. So at least we get that for sure. Speaking of watching, let's move now to things to watch for tonight and talk about Garrett Cole. I do think it's worth looking at Cole tonight. It just means you can't go as hard at Coors and the Dodgers, which to me is kind of a bummer. He's facing the Red Sox, so it's a tough matchup for sure. That's why he was not above the others. But he's so good right now in the nine starts for Cole with more sliders. He has a 35 percent strikeout rate. He has let up a 32 percent heart rate. We can often see that number increase, the heart hit rate number increase. We throw a lot of sliders with Cole. It hasn't the Yankees plenty left to play for, obviously, more than pretty much every other team except for the Red Sox. So I wouldn't be shocked if when we talk at 430 today, if I've got Cole above C, so that number two slot, I just kind of want to see what the value looks like. If we get Phillips, Wendell and Choi for the raise, maybe I go Cole number two and bumps east down to number three, given the playoff implications of that game. But just keep a close eye on the value. If we get enough value, I will bump Garrett Cole up. I said good things about the Rangers yesterday and they got shut out. So it didn't feel good. We're not stacking them here, but I don't mind them for some one-offs. They're facing Alexander Wells, Wells, let's up a ton of impactful contact. So if you need some value, I check out D.J. Peters, Andy Ibanez, Charlie Culberson, maybe Jonah Hind, if he plays as well. I think that the Rangers can at least give us some one-off value plays, even if I'm not going to go there for a full stack. And finally, if Brett Phillips does not play, you don't want to go with the Rangers. We might get another lower, salaryed outfielder who can hit for some power. That's Kevin Pilar. He's facing Eric Lauer. Lauer is getting good results, but still letting up a ton of hard contact despite that. Pilar can yoke against lefties. He's in a good part for hitting tonight. He's a little coming home narrative for Kevin Pilar, who played his summer collegiate baseball in Wisconsin up in Wausau. So he's $2,400. Don't mind some other mats for one-offs either, but we are value hunting here. And I think that Pilar had $2,400. Even his upside does make some sense. So check out the raise for value primarily, but then maybe the Rangers and then Kevin Pilar to see what works out there. Let's finish up with some Dinger calls for Friday night. The boring one. I physically cannot pick anyone other than Brandon Belt. Like I don't know if that's like allowed for me to not pick Brandon Belt here. I love Brandon Belt everywhere. If you give me Brandon Belt at Coors Field, I'm probably going to slopper. So Brandon Belt is the boring home run call for today. I consider Crawford, but like it's belt, baby. It's just all about Brandon Belt for today. The fun one is G-Monchoi. Obviously, I think that like if you told me Phillips will play, I just go with him. I cheated last time and said, Brett Phillips, he plays G-Monchoi. If he doesn't Phillips had a walk off home run in that games. Maybe I should go with Phillips just to go for the the good juju there. But G-Monchoi, I think a good selection as well. That's it for plenty of power recently. So home run calls for today, Brandon Belt and G-Monchoi. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shop. But as mentioned, we are back here once again, 4 p.m. for our Snake Draft. That's myself, Brandon Godula and JJ Zacharyson breaking down the Week 3 NFL DFS main slate and doing a Snake Draft live on air. I'll stick around at 4.30 to talk MLB DFS. Again, that's on the FanDuel, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages. Make sure you subscribe and swing by there. We also have our Week 3 NFL DFS preview podcast posted breaking down how we're stacking all the potential shootouts this week. Talking about our favorite guys, each position, breaking down some process based stuff to it as well. So check that out by searching for the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, leave us a rating and review and hit subscribe as well. If you've got questions for me before 4.30, 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 tonight. We'll talk to you once again on Monday for the final Monday of the regular season. We'll talk to you then. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.