 The open of the 2021 NFL season may be tonight. It is. It's not maybe it is tonight. But that does not mean we are abandoning daily fantasy baseball here on the solo shot. We will still have shows every weekday at 9am on the Fandal YouTube page at 8 o'clock on Mondays. And we're still going to have it up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed as well. And we're starting things off this NFL season with a four game slate tonight with Lockett 705. Just four games are trying to avoid the overlap with the NFL. Totally get it. It does mean we're going to scramble a bit and use some pictures we might not usually use. But I do still think there are logical process based options we can use for today. So let's dive on in and get you set for this Thursday main slate. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the Fandal podcast network and Number Fire dot com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for a Number Fire dot com here to break down this four game main slate once again with lock set for 705. All four games start by 720. So it's kind of like an express slate if you're played those on Fandal. There are a lot of fun. There's a lot of action. All the points are scored in a hurry. I love them. So that is tonight. 705 is locked for today with four games there. Unfortunately two of them could be threatened by rain. There is a good chance of rain for the Blue Jays and Yankees in New York. Looks like it'll be light rain which is helpful but could potentially be wet there. Light rain is also possible in Philadelphia for the Phillies and the Rockies. Looks like that should be leaving before first pitch. Well to keep an eye on that one as well. So New York and Philadelphia are the two trouble spots for today for rain. We'll see if things pass out of there before we get to first pitch. Before we take a look at this main slate. A lot of good stuff here on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed in the Fandal podcast network in general. We have a new show called unsportsmanlike conduct. We have two awesome hosts over there with Gavin Breanna. They are doing a great job. They did their first show last week. Second show is this week every Tuesday. Find that by searching for unsportsmanlike conduct wherever you get your podcast. We also have Girls Who Bet with Erin Kate Dolan and Olivia Moody. That is every Wednesday night on the Fandal Believe YouTube page. So make sure you find that. Check out. They had to say I got to hang out with Erin and Liv in Denver. They were a riot. A lot of fun to hang out with and I'm excited to listen to that one later on today. So check those out on wherever you get your podcast and then the Girls Who Bet show up on the Fandal YouTube page. We have our NFL DFS podcast week one coming up later on this morning. 10 a.m. on the Fandal YouTube page up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed after that. So make sure you go to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcast and then hit subscribe. And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. Before breaking down pictures, I want to let you know about the Fandal Sunday Million. The prize pool is a whopping $3.5 million with first place taking home a million dollars. All you have to do is head over to Fandal today and click on the NFL Sunday Million contest. Draft your line of players, sit back and enjoy Sunday NFL football. Go to Fandal.com today to participate in the NFL Sunday Million. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to Fandal.com or download the Fandal app for more details. Pitching preview for this Thursday main slate. Jose Barrios is the highest-sellered pitcher on a Fandal, checking in at $9,100. Huascari Noah is $8,800. Ranger Suarez is $8,600. Antonio Zendertela facing Philly is $8,400. And John Means, round for the top group, he is $8,100. And looking at this slate, you're not going to find anyone who is like a no-brainer pick. There are no, you know, if we have a larger slate, I probably wouldn't be using any of these guys. But do you think that Huascari Noah deserves to be at the top of the list for today at $8,800? You know, it's facing the Nationals at home. That's a big part of why I like him because they are the worst offense on the slate. They rank dead last on this slate in WRC Plus, isolated slugging and fly ball rates. Their 23% strikeout rate is not high, but it's also not low. That means it's a plus spot for Noah. He came off the injured list four starts ago. He hasn't been as good as he was before the injury, but he's still been good. He has not been a bad pitcher. He's not quite as good as he was before. Strikeout right there, 23%. He has a 4.04 skill interactive ERA. He's had decent bat at ball numbers. So he's been good, but there is also room for some upward improvement, I think, based on some of the underlying numbers. Specifically, he got some whiffs against the Marlins and the Rockies, a 13.8% swing and strike rate against the Marlins, 14.3% against the Rockies, and he also had nine strikeouts against the Yankees. That's a really good baseline. And if we get that version of Noah tonight, I'll be very happy. But he could also get back to what he was doing before the injury, which was getting a lot of strikeouts. The 3.42 ERA for Noah in this time. He is good and it comes despite a start at Coors Field. That makes me feel pretty comfortable using Noah tonight at $800. He's my top pitcher of the day. Feel pretty good in saying that. Again, the baseline is good, but there is room for him to be even better than that going forward. So he lost our Noah number one for me. Number two is very much a bet on talent versus the matchup. That's Jose Barrios facing the Yankees. And it is a tough spot. They've got just a 98 WRC plus, so they're technically a below average offense. But we know the guys they've got in Atlanta, they're dangerous and it's not a spot I want to attack. It's just hard to pass up the talent in Barrios. Barrios is the top raw pitcher on this slate. His velocity has been down a bit over his past 10 starts, but he still leads the slate in both skill interactive ERA and strikeout rate. It does seem like he's adjusting a bit with the Jays too, you know, learning the ropes with that team. He had 11 strikeouts two starts ago. He had seven to start after that. So he's got the best ceiling on this slate. Like if you're talking about who could score the most fandal points like raw, raw ceiling, that is Barrios because of the talent. He just has lower odds of reaching at Benny Noah due to the matchup. Still, Barrios has six plus strikeouts eight times in this 10 start span. He has eight plus three times. So I like his outlook a lot. I just wish it weren't against the Yankees. It's still enough for me to put him second. But that's why he's second and not first above Noah, even though I feel better about the talent that Barrios does possess. Number three for me is going to be Ranger Suarez. Not a guy thought would have any strikeout upside until recently. And he still might not have strikeout upside Suarez, but he has at least gotten some strikeouts recently. And on a four game slate, I can take some. Those games came against the Reyes and the Marlins. Both those teams love to strikeouts. So not a shock that he got strikeouts there, but he gets the Rockies tonight. They're not a high strikeout team, but they're also not a big threat. Strikeouts are partially, you know, extrapolation and hope base for Suarez, but we know the bad at ball data will be good. We're extrapolating and hoping for the strikeouts. We don't have to hope for the fly ball rate and stuff like that. We know that's there. In his seven starts Suarez has a 21% fly ball rate allowed. His hard hit rate is 32%. Strikeout rate is 23%, which is not bad for this slate. The concern that I have for Suarez is length. He's got the pitch count. Pitch count's fine. He went 99 and 95 in his two of his past three starts. But he walks too many guys. That drives up his pitch count and gets him out of games earlier, which is an issue because length doesn't matter a lot for DFS. But it is a four game slate. It lacks quality pitchers. I am okay going to Suarez number three, despite those downsides. I do think that he is pretty solidly behind Innova and Barrios. And I would say like, I wouldn't be shocked if I wound up using just those two guys for tonight. It's risky, but I'm kind of okay with that for MLB. If you're not only play what you're okay losing and if they both bomb, whatever. I think that's probably okay for tonight. So to me, it is Innova one, Barrios two, Suarez three, but he might not wind up being in my player pool for today. Stacks are a bit better than pitching for today, which makes sense given that pitchers are bad. Probably in stacks are better. They are. And the first one is a braze. I was on the braze last night. Didn't go all that well, got a couple dingers or got a binger in there. But like, you know, I think that it was an ideal. I still want to go back there once again tonight. They're facing Eric Fetty. Fetty has some decent peripherals recently. But most of that is due to a low walk rate in the nine starts with more sliders. Fetty's walk rate is 5%. That helps him get a 3.94 skill interactive VRA, which is actually the second best number on this slate. But it's a flawed, it's a misleading number. His strikeout rate is low at 22%, which means when you combine that with his walk rate, he's letting up a lot of balls and play. And 43% of those balls and play are hard hits. Fetty does get some ground balls, but he doesn't get enough to offset the bad in the rest of his profile. His ERA in this time is 5.20. That is with six under and run scoring. So not counting towards his ERA. He's facing the Braves tonight. They're easily the most powerful team on this slate. They lead it in both ISO and fly ball rates by a pretty decent margin. You put that in a good part for hitting and things are probably going to go well. The Braves scored five runs, four of which were earned against Fetty a month ago. And I think they could do well once again for tonight. So the Braves to me are my number one stack. When you look at the Braves number, the Braves batters, look at the guys here, how they do versus righties. The guy I would downgrade the most relative to lefties is Jorge Soler. And don't get me wrong, I still like Soler. But his ISO versus righties go down to 153, which is about half what it is against lefties. So if we're ranking out the players in this Braves stack, I would be more likely to go with Adam Duvall over Soler. I'm not saying don't use Soler. Soler is awesome. He's a powerful guy in a very good lineup that I want to stack. But it does slide him down a bit for me. So deep prioritize Soler a bit, still keeping near the top of your list because he's very good. But I think if you're weighing him relative to Albies, Freeman, Duvall, guys like that, Riley and Swanson as well, it's okay to push him down a bit due to his numbers versus righties. I'm going to put the Orioles second on this list. And I say that while acknowledging that there are some issues here, I just think that they are the second best option. They're facing Carlos Hernandez, and Hernandez has pitched well since joining the rotation for the Royals. In his first start, didn't throw his cutter or his slider much, his two wipeout pitches, and he's leaned more on them recently. So the most relevant example for Hernandez is the past eight outings with those pitches being more of a factor. And in those starts, Hernandez has a 2.80 ERA, and that's likely due to his good, bad at ball numbers. He has allowed a 34% hard hit rates and a 37% fly ball rate in that time. Both those are solid marks. So it's not a fluke that we've seen Hernandez get good results. I'm just not entirely sure it's a lock to continue. The primary counterpoint to Hernandez continuing to be good is his plate discipline data. In those eight outings, he has a 19% strikeout rate. His walk rate is 8%. And his strikeout rate and walk rate are both the second worst numbers on this slate. His skill interactive ERA ranks last by a good margin. He's facing a pretty solid, I would say, Orioles team. They have a 97 WRC plus against Reides with a 171 ISO. They can get the job done even if they're not a great team. And I think that we should take swipes at them here and hope this really fun series from a DFS perspective keeps on going. So back in on the Orioles for tonight. If you're looking to mitigate Hernandez's good bad at ball numbers, I would favor lefties by a bit here. They have a 38% fly ball rate against him since he moved in the rotation. For Reides, it's 36% goes down a bit. And the strikeout rate also goes down three ticks versus lefties, which means we don't have to abandon Reides. Like they're still fine against him, but I would be okay bumping up the lefties. Anthony Santander, Cedric Mullins, they are always good options, even a little bit better tonight. And then DJ Stewart, if he plays the Dong Jockey Stewart, if he plays, going to be a solid option. Someone recommended on the Q&A history, we call him B Stew. And I like that DJ Stewart B Stew, you know, Dong Jockey, whatever you prefer. I think that he works for today. So I think that I am on board with the Orioles broadly, but Stewart Mullins and Santander specifically. For the third stack, I'm going to go with the best offense on this late. Wild ID, I know, and that's the Jays. They are the only team with an above average WRC plus versus the opposing pitchers handedness. They're up at 111, so well clear of average. They're facing Nester Cortes, which is not the world's best matchup, but Cortes is flawed in some senses. There are some issues, some issues, minor ones. He's a good pitcher, but there's some issues here. If we're looking at a small slate, the big one is fly balls. Cortes has been throwing more cutters over his past five starts. In that time, he has allowed a 52% fly ball rate. That is the highest on the slate by about 7 percentage points. And it's led to six home runs allowed across five games. That's an issue that Cortes has had all year. He's let up a lot of fly balls all year long. It hasn't really mattered though, because he didn't let up a lot of hard contact. That number is rising a smidge. His strike area is coming down a bit. So I think Cortes is a good pitcher, but he's facing the Jays as a lefty on a small slate. If we look at, you know, difference making totals for a small slate, you just want dingers. I mean, that's true for every slate, but like, especially on a small slate, I want dingers. And I think the Jays have a high probability of getting dingers for tonight. So this is less about Cortes than it is about the offense we are stacking here. I just think that the offense, good enough against his hand in this to feel good about them, despite the fact that I do respect what Cortes can do. I am good with all that in ranking the Jays third for tonight behind the Braves and the Orioles. Obviously, the Jays' salaries are hard to get to even on this slate where we have our pitchers in the low 9000, high 8000 range. That's what we'll make Randall Gritchick so key at $2,600, no matter where he hits in the order he could at eighth. I won't care. I'm going to use him. It also makes Alejandro Kirk and Danny Jansen options that both those guys have hit for some power in a small sample against lefties. Kirk is $2,600. Jansen is $2,500. I am down to use either guy to make this stack work. So I do think that Gritchick is the priority over them, but I do like Kirk and Jansen to save us some salary for today. We have not talked about two different pitchers in the slates. Let's just close up them on things to watch. The two guys we have not discussed are John Means and Antonio Sanzatella. Between the two, I'm more inclined to stack against Means mostly because he lets up a lot of fly balls. He has increased his curveball usage over his past seven starts, and he's let up a 46% fly ball rate in that time. That is the second highest number on the slate behind Cortez. He does a 23% strikeout rate, which is good relative to other pitchers in the slate. The Royals, not a great overall team, but they have some individual batters who can bang lefties. Specifically Salvador Perez, who always had some runs, Alibar at the Montessy. All these guys are good against lefties. Eduardo Lovarez, you want to save some salary. So I think the Royals are number four stack for tonight. Number five, it's the Phillies facing Sanzatella. He just doesn't let up as many fly balls. A 27% fly ball rate in 10 starts with increased velocity. He also doesn't get strikeouts, though, which is why I am okay stacking the Phillies tonight. I would just rank them fifth in terms of the order because of the lack of fly balls that Sanzatella allows. Let's finish up here today with the Dinger calls for tonight. We're going to go with Freddie Freeman for the boring one. I think I had Freddie Freeman sometime this week as well, but like, you know, let's go back to it. I will say Fetty does have a better ground ball rates versus lefties than righties, but Freddie Freeman is a good baseball player. So we'll go to Freddie Freeman as a home run call for the boring one. As far as the fun one, I'm going to do something we did earlier on this year. There was a game where I wasn't sure who would catch for the twins. So I said twins catcher and we wound up getting a couple homers. I think that Mitch Garver had one and then Williams Ostadio may have had one as well. So for today, we're going to say the Blue Jays catcher because I don't know if it'll be Kirk or Jansen, but I think that whoever it is is going to go deep. I like the power profile. I like the matchup here against the fly ball pitcher like the park for home runs. So home run calls for today are Freddie Freeman and whoever catches for the Toronto Blue Jays tonight. That is all that we have here for today on the solo shot. We do have a Q&A coming up later on today. Just a slightly different time than usual. We have we're going to have a preview of the Bucks and the Cowboys at 4 p.m. I'll be talking single game DFS props, overall betting stuff. That is for Bucks Cowboys 4 p.m. On the Thaddle YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages after that at 4 30. I'll talk MLB DFS. Let it be our schedule for Friday as well. So new schedule for MLB on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday is 4 30 to 5 talking MLB DFS with our Q&A. So make sure you subscribe there. Also make sure you subscribe to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcast, NFL podcast later on today. If you're watching on YouTube right now. Hello. Stick around back at 10 a.m. to talk some NFL DFS. Should be a whole lot of fun. 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. Good luck to you tonight. Enjoy the games before the NFL game starts. Enjoy the NFL game once that's going. Win some money. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow to close out the week. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.