 I believe that Thursday's Slate in Daily Fantasy Baseball may be one of the tougher ones we have had this entire year because you look at the names on this slate and they're pretty good. You got to show here Tani there. You've got Nathanie Evaldi and a handful of other guys who we can typically turn to in DFS and feel pretty good about it. The problem is every single guy on that list has some sort of, I would say, pretty major red flag and it does impact what we view them and there's really nobody on this slate who comes without those red flags. So our job today is to decide who stands out if you're considering all those downsides, whether the downside is salary, matchup, current form, whatever it may be, there's a downside somewhere. So how do we handle that? Who stands out after that and where do we go for MLB DFS for tonight? Welcome on into the solo shop that's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Saunas. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire here to break down this seven game main slate with lock set for 7, 10 p.m. Eastern for today. Two big weather notes on this slate. The first one is in Atlanta for the Braves and the Rockies. Rain is in the forecast there. Looks like scattered thunderstorms. So they may be able to work it out and play around those storms, but there is a pretty legitimate question of whether they'll be able to play that game. So Braves and Rockies, a focal point here not just because of the weather, but also because if they do play, it's gonna be pretty sweet for some stacking, at least on one side. So it's risky, it's scary, and I will wanna keep an eye on that one later on. Other note is at Wrigley Field for the Pirates and the Cubs. Winds are in from center at 14 miles per hour. Temperature there is just 61 degrees. That is a big upgrade to pitchers there, big downgrade to batters. So honestly, if there were no weather, I would consider the Cubs, but with the weather being what it is, they're a cross off to me. That's how drastic the weather is at Wrigley for today. So downgrade Bats at Wrigley and make sure you check back on weather for the Braves and Rockies out in Atlanta. We'll dive in into the weird pitching slate for tonight in just one second, but first a reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed, wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us, of course, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us. We're also up over on the Fandall YouTube page. If you like what you hear, leave us a thumbs up on YouTube or a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or over on Spotify. 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Gambling problem called 1-800-Gambler or visit fandall.com slash RG in Arizona. 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXT-STEP to 533-42 in Connecticut, 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat. In Indiana, 1-800-NINE with it. In Wyoming and Kansas, 1-800-522-4700 or in KansasKSGamblerHealth.com. Louisiana is 1-877-770-STOP. In Massachusetts, gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support. In Maryland, mdgamblinghealth.org in New York, 1-877-8-HOPEN-Y or text OPEN-Y. And in West Virginia, go to 1-800-gambler.net. Pitching preview for this Thursday main slate. Nathan Eavaldi checks in with the highest salary on Fandall. He is $11,000, followed by Shohio Tani in that exact same game at 10-7. Marcus Strohman in that Wrigley weather is at 10-5 with Christian Javier at 10-3. Sunny Gray against Tigers at 10-1. Logan Allen, 91 with Mackenzie Gore, Dylan Seats and Johan Oviedo and AJ Smith-Schauber as the other guys at $8,000 or higher. Now, let's dig into why this slate is so muddy because Nathan Eavaldi's salary is pretty high. Don't mind it, but the salary is high. Shohio Tani in a bit of a slump right now hasn't looked like full Ohtani recently. Marcus Strohman, not a big strikeout guy so that that Wrigley field bump more so in terms of floor than upside. Sunny Gray and Christian Javier have good matchups and are at home, but both have dipped recently, especially in the strikeout department. So we're gonna have to make some sort of consolation here, we just have to decide which consolation that will be. I'm gonna make a consolation on Shohio Tani's recent few starts and rank him first at 10-7, but typically when we have Ohtani, he is first of the bullet. Here he's first, I guess, you know, that's kind of the way I'm doing it for tonight. So the ability to deviate is a lot higher here than usual. Ohtani is facing the Rangers and it plays a big role in why I'm wishy-washy on him because they have a 119 WRC plus against Reides with a 23% strikeout, which isn't low, but it's also not super high. And Ohtani has fallen off of it recently and you look at the data, he has been throwing fewer sliders his past six starts. And I think that the reason there is he threw that pitch a ton from July on last year and teens eventually caught on and he had to adjust. I think he'll get there eventually, but it hasn't fully clicked yet with the more diversified offering. In those six starts, Ohtani's ERA is 4.14, his swing strike rate is down to 12.2% and it's been especially low his past two starts. The velocity was also down last time out and I tend to be pretty sensitive to that with Ohtani given how much load he carries for this team. So that's the downside, you know, decreased Velo last time out, not as thrown as many sliders hasn't worked out yet. The upside is that he's showing Ohtani and it still had spike showings even in this stretch. He had a 10 to strikeout game, he had nine in another and he's failed to go six innings just once. So it's not as if everything has collapsed, it's kind of just not what he was before. Plus in using Ohtani, I'm betting on a generational talent and I can say that with confidence, generational talent is actually applied correctly here. I'm betting on that generational talent or verity to his true skill level. And I'm okay making that kind of bet. So Ohtani is not as locked in as usual, but it is still Ohtani. So he will be the top guy for me tonight. I think you have a lot more to deviate than usual, but he will still be number one, all things considered. I'm gonna put Javier second. I considered Nathan Ivaldi here, the salary kind of scared me off there. I considered Sonny Gray. I'm more concerned about Gray's recent form than I am about Javier's. So that's why we wind up on Javier in the two hole. He is again, not pitching great right now. He's not getting nearly as many strikeouts now as he was before. And he's facing a low strikeout team in the national sorts night, but I do feel good about Javier's ability to keep runs off the board. He's facing the nationals as mentioned, and they don't strike out a whole lot. They have a 19% strikeout rate against righties, but they have a lower walk rate. Their WRC plus is 84 with a 124 ISO. So you can have good productive long outings against them even if there aren't a ton of strikeouts there. Javier, in a bit of a funk, he's been throwing more force e-mers and fewer curves his past six darts. And it's actually not a terrible thing for him because his force in fastball does get whiffed. So that's not like a massive red flag, but it has led to just a 23% strikeout rate in this six darts sample. His skill interactive ERA there is 4.59. Now that number is too high because he is keeping hard contact and check. So his ERA is good at 2.65. I think that's probably closer to what he's done than his skill interactive ERA. But just for us, not enough strikeouts right now. I would not expect those strikeouts to return tonight. I'm just not sure that we'll need them too on this slate. So Javier, not inspiring to me. I think that he sits second regardless. I was very close to putting Evaldi second. So to me, it's kind of a 2A, 2B. I feel better about Otani at the top spot. So it's Otani one. I would say Javier is 2A and Evaldi is 2B. And then Sunny Gray is probably fourth. We'll talk about him and things to watch later on. As far as the value, I think it actually comes from the same game as Javier. That's McKenzie Gore facing an Astros team that never strikes out against lefties. So that really hurts his value, but Gore goes deep in games and can get a lot of strikeouts. So I think we should give him a spin here. The pitch count for Gore, very much in his favor. He has gone 100 plus pitches six total times this year, including three of his pass for. So as a result, I have only Otani with a higher pitch count projection than Gore for tonight. And Gore is getting lots of strikeouts while bringing his walks down. If you remember earlier on this year, he was walking like at a 14% clip. It's at a 10% now for the full season, including what he did earlier on this year while keeping a 28% strikeout rate. So Gore is still letting up too much hard contact and the Astros numbers against lefties are trending back up, but there just aren't a lot of guys on the slate who can get strikeouts and Gore is one of those guys. I've got him projected for 5.52 strikeouts. That ranks third behind Otani and Ivaldi. Gore's salary here is 86. I wouldn't consider this on a slate with much less rockiness a pitcher. Like if it were just kind of basic Thursday, I probably wouldn't be on Gore, but this one does wind up being a little bit dicey than usual. So I think Gore is in the consideration set just by default. So to me, he's the top valued 86, not feeling great about it, but I also don't feel great about anybody else. So maybe the pitch is, you don't feel great about anyone, spend the least salary possible. I'll still get some upside and that might be Gore for tonight. So top guys to me, Shohei Otani, Christian Javier with eighth and the Ivaldi right there. Top value McKenzie Gore will circle back to sunny gray and things to watch. First, so let's dig into the stacks. And as mentioned earlier, the weather in Atlanta, not perfect, pretty bad. We need to dodge some thunderstorms here, but because they're scattered thunderstorms, I think that does increase the chance they give it a try. And I like the Braves if they're able to do so. The Braves facing Kyle Freeland who has had good results recently. He's using more change ups his past eight starts and it's like to a 3.5 90 array. And that's with four of those eight starts coming in a course field. So that's really good for Freeland, but he's actually had some pretty bumpy starts on the road, especially when he's faced tougher teams in Atlanta, very much qualifies. And that's not a huge surprise because Freeland still has far from perfect peripherals. He has a 4.83 skill interactive array in this time with a 16% strike outright and a 42% hard hit rate. Typically when a guy outperforms his peripherals, he's limiting hard contact and Freeland is not doing that right now. And I think that means we can be more confident in betting on regression for Freeland. And it's a lot easier to do when the opposing team has a 148 WRC plus against lefties and a 267 ISO. Yes, 267, not 167. It's the ISO for the Braves against lefties. There are a lot of spots where you would not seconds Freeland, but I think when it's Atlanta, we should be here. So Atlanta is going to be a key focal point for tonight. Again, assuming the rain allows us to do so. One guy who is enticing in this lineup, if we're going to highlight anyone, let's highlight the number nine batter, Orlando Arcia. I think that's kind of what makes the Braves so fun is that they've got depth. Their potential number nine batter in Orlando Arcia smokes lefties. He already has four homers against lefties this year in 35 plate appearances. And he hasn't always hit lefties super well and it is a small sample. But if you look at Arcia's overall numbers this year, they're better than what they have been in the past as well. So you give him the platoon advantage, give him better overall form. I think he's a good player 29, even if he gets lower in the order, if you need him to make a Braves stack work while getting to Otani and stuff like that. So honestly, dipping down, totally okay. Kevin Pilar, is it lefties well this year? Travis Darv, no, if he's in there. Austin Riley saw his 3000. We talked a lot about Ozzie Albee's and how well he does against lefties. He's 32. You can stack the Braves pretty easily. Might be tough to get Otani and Acunia in there at the same time, but I'd give it a try at least. I think the Braves, very much the fun option. Let's do a little, keep the rain away dance in Atlanta. The second stack is gonna be the twins against Matthew Boyd and Boyd has had stretches where he has pitched really well this year. He was really limiting hard contact, but he's also had some rough starts, especially more recently, which has pushed his ERA up to 5.55. He's facing the twins tonight. I think that they are a quality stack here on this slate. Even with the contact suppression, Boyd is letting up a lot of fly balls and that's why he can have nice starts because fly balls are outs if they're not hard hit. And Boyd does a decent job of keeping the hard contact in check. But when they do make hard contact, they are tattooing it. And Boyd has let up five or more earned runs four separate times this year. He's done so three times in his past six starts. He's facing the twins. They're not the most threatening team right now with Byron Buxton on the IL, Jorge Polanco hits lefty as well. He's out as well, but not a super deep slate for stacking. And I think that means we can go with the twins here and feel pretty okay about them across the board. It also does help a lot that Carlos Correa is finally coming on. He had to walk off home or Tuesday. He had a triple off the wall, laser triple off the wall Wednesday. His ISO for the full season now to 205, which is up quite a bit from where it was before. He's hit the ball really well since he came back from missing time due to plantar fasciitis. So other parts of the stack may be a lot tougher. But when you have Correa here, finally living up to what he's done in the past with a salary of $2,900, I think that's pretty enticing. So Carlos Correa, a guy willing to buy into thanks to what he's been doing at the play recently. Hopefully we get enough guys we can actually use within this twin stack for tonight. Finally, this one probably gonna be a pretty tough sell potentially if you look at implied totals. Because implied totals tell you what the bookmakers are saying is the expected number one score for that team. Bookmakers are very good at what they do. Betters are very good at what they do. So we're betting against the market here by checking out the Chicago White Sox. They are facing Michael Grove on the road, which means they're pretty big underdogs in this game. And the results for Grove have been rough so far. The peripherals are better, but still not elite. I think we should give the White Sox a look tonight, especially once we add in that they're probably not gonna be super popular. Grove's DRA is 8.28, his expected DRA much better at 4.60, but that's still not a great number for this slate. And that number is there due to a lack of strikeouts. Grove's at 20% there this year. And I think that should probably stick around there because his swing and strike rate is 9.3%. Strikeout rate last year for Grove across seven outings was 18%. So basically we have not seen him get strikeouts in the big leagues yet. And he's a fly ball pitcher who is not restrictive with hard contact, which means we get a lot of balls that are dangerous in the air. Grove may turn things around eventually, but he's not quite there yet. The White Sox just a 90 WRC plus against righties, but I like a lot of the individuals here to be on them. So the White Sox, despite the fact, bookmakers pretty low on them justifiably, I get it. They're facing the Dodgers, not a super high total game. I think the White Sox are an interesting team for tonight. With you on one call that being banged up, it's allowed Jake Berger to play more consistently. And Berger, even if the sample has gotten larger, still has a 306 iso against righties. He is striking out a lot, which is not ideal, but it's great that he's getting a real shot. So assuming he's in there once again, I would say Berger is one of the key focal points here behind Luis Robert and the way it looked. And that is Berger's salary on this slate $3,100. And I'd expect him to be in there for tonight. If you look at the expected batting order over on Fandley, he's not in it, but I think with Moncada being banged up, potentially going on the IL, I think there's enough wiggle room to get to Berger there, assuming he does wind up playing. Let's dig into things to watch the Dodgers in that same game have a much higher implied total. And it's because they're the much better offense. Just be frank about this. And I just seen some slight gains from Dylan Cease recently, which may be because he faced the Marlins and the Tigers, but the fact that he proved against them could mean that when he faces a team like the Dodgers, he could have her back to his early season form here. But we know there is a very good pitcher in there somewhere in Cease. So maybe it's a mistake to not be higher on the Dodgers, but I do believe in Cease broadly. And that's why I might be a little bit lower on the Dodgers. I'd only to go at Jose Ramirez as a one offer tonight. He's facing Ryan Weathers. The Padres given to you Darvish next to day of rest. Ramirez is kind of the one guy you feel great about on that roster against lefties. So I'm fine going there as a one-off. I'm just not sure I can get there as a full stack. I feel better getting to four batters on the twins of the White Sox than I do about the Guardians given the current state of the roster. So Jose Ramirez is a good one-off, just not sure I'll stack that roster. Finally, I did want to talk about Sonny Gray here facing Detroit at home, which is an elite matchup. And Gray did pitch well earlier on this year, but he's been throwing a lot more sinkers recently and his pitch count has been a lot lower as well. So I'm not sure if there's something up there given that pitch count has been really muted and kind of weird. So that's why I'm a bit lower. Maybe he can spike back up, but I think Gray due to the matchup will be a bit more popular than he should tonight. So that's why I couldn't quite get to Sonny Gray. If you want to go there, you've seen something more in him recently than he wanted to buy back in. I get it, totally okay, but not for me personally. I just can't quite talk myself into it. Dinger calls for the Thursday slate. Mentioned him before Jose Ramirez facing off against Ryan Weathers. Not the best park for home runs by any means in San Diego, but Ramirez fantastic batter, facing guy who lets up some fly balls and has struggled so far. So make Jose Ramirez the boring home run call for today. The fun one, let's go to Orlando Arcia. As mentioned, hitting left, he's really well so far, batting lower in the order, which means it can't be a boring one. This is pretty fun. Getting a match against Freeland. I think that's enough to make him enticing. If that game gets kind of dicey, I didn't really have a backup called, backup Dinger call in place. So let's try to find one here quickly on the fly to give you just in case things get hairy there. Not seeing a whole lot. I guess we go Royce Lewis hasn't done a lot since he came up for the twins. He had that hot start and it's been kind of up and down since then. So I guess we'll go Royce Lewis as the backup, but I feel a lot better about Arcia. So official home run calls, Jose Ramirez or Orlando Arcia. And if we get really bad weather in Atlanta, I guess we'll go Royce Lewis just because why not? As the Dinger calls for today. That's all we got for this solo shot for this Thursday. We'll be back with you once again tomorrow, breaking down a Friday site that hopefully has a lot more key answers and easy answers at pitcher when we have for tonight. Do you not forget to subscribe to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast wherever you get your podcasts or check us out over on the Fandal YouTube page. Make sure you subscribe to the Fandal YouTube page also for covering the spread and lots of other good shows here on the feed 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. Want to thank you all for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your MLB DFS lineups. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow to break down Friday's slates. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandal podcast network.