 We have got ourselves a big kid slates night in daily fantasy baseball, not just because it's 11 games on it's Friday, but also because some of the names at picture here are absurd, really good options pretty much across the board. So you can feel pretty good about your choices. The problem is deciding which of those choices to go with, given we can only use one picture on Fanduil.com. So we'll break down my top pitching options for today. Among all the choices, we'll talk some stacks and get you ready to hopefully start your weekend on a high note. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the Fanduil Podcast Network and Numberfire.com. My name is Jim Saunas. I am a senior writer and analyst for Numberfire here to break down Friday's 11 game main slate with lock set for 7 0 5 p.m. Eastern for today. There is just one weather note on the slates, actually two. There's a chance of rain in Boston for the Red Sox and Mets. I would bet they'd be able to play through that, but check back on that later and also a slight chance of rain in New York for the Yankees and the Royals. Again, I think that one should be okay to go, but overall should be good to go for this slate. I would note in Texas the roof will likely be closed for the Rangers and Dodgers. So slight downgrade to offense there as a result, but I do still think one check out some offenses in that game. We'll talk about that more in just one second. But first, a reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the Numberfire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcast. If you like what you hear, leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify also. Do not forget that the solo shot goes up every weekday on the Fanduil YouTube app and on Fanduil TV Plus. The US women's soccer team is taking on the world and you can take home bonus bets every time they win with Fanduil. 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Gambling help line MA.org or call 1-800-327-5050 or 247-Support in New York. 1-877-8 Hope and Why or Text Hope and Why in Arizona. 1-800-Next Step protects Next Step to 533-42 in Connecticut. 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Indiana. 1-800-9 with it in Wyoming and Kansas. 1-800-522-4700 or visit ksgamblyhealth.com in Kansas. Louisiana's 1-877-770-STOP in Maryland. mdgamblinghealth.org and in West Virginia. Go to 1-800-gambler.net. Pitching preview for this Friday-Made Slate Fromber Valdez checks in with the highest salary on fanduil. His salary is $11,200. Followed by Kodesenka at 10-4. We've got Shohio Tani as a pitcher at 10-2. Followed by Joe Ryan at 10,000. Freddie Peralta at 94. Lanslin at 92. Bryce Miller is 91. With Ranger Suarez, JP Sears, Gavin Williams, Michael Soroka, Andrew Heaney, Tommy Henry, Johan Novieto, and Clark Schmidt as the others at $8,000 or higher. As you heard there, there are a lot of great names on this list. And there are a good number of guys you could put. Number one, and I feel like you could back up those arguments pretty well. But I feel good about putting Joe Ryan first on my list for tonight. He will be my top pitcher on fanduil. He's facing the White Sox at home. The White Sox still trying to find their footing offensively. They have an 89, a WRC plus against Reides with a 156 ISO. They're not a huge strikeout team. They're not going to boost you in that regard, but Ryan brings the strikeouts himself. Across 19 starts this year, Joe Ryan has a 29% strikeout rate with just a 5% walk rate. So the plate discipline numbers are very good. Bad at ball data is not elite, but the matchup does help there. Because again, the White Sox is not the most powerful team. Ryan has had double digit strikeouts four times this year. He had nine and three others. And his strikeout rate does go up at home, which is where he is at for tonight. My model has Ryan projected for 7.2 strikeouts here. That is a very good number. And I think when you combine that with the matchup, combine it with being at home, I think there's enough here to make Joe Ryan our number one pitcher at the night. So to me, Joe Ryan, number one, even on a loaded slate of pitcher on FanDuel for this Friday. Right above Ryan and salary is Shohei Otani. And he's dealing with a blister and it had this start in question for a bit. But they did announce pretty early Thursday, but Otani would be good to start. And because that announcement came decently early, it does up my confidence in Otani here. So I think that we should rank him number two behind Ryan. And Otani definitely has not been at his sharpest recently. He walked four guys in his final star before the All-Star break. He walked five, a couple of stars before that, and he walked three last time out. So the control for Otani is definitely not been there, but the strikeouts have. He had 12 strikeouts against the Dodgers, 10 against the White Sox. Both those games came in June and he had seven while dealing with the blister last week. So Otani is volatile and that's not fun for 10-2. High salary for a guy who could have a pretty rough night, but it's hard to argue many guys on this slate have more upside than Otani has. He's facing the Pirates at home. They have a 98 WRC plus against righties with a 23% strikeout rate and they do draw walks. So if you're looking for an ideal matchup for Otani, this is not going to be it. But with Ryan being the cash game guy, at least for me tonight, I feel okay taking a swing for upside in tournaments and that swing to me does lead me to Shohei Otani. So to me, it's Joe Ryan won for cash games and for tournaments and Shohei Otani number two explicitly for tournaments for tonight. I thought about one guy who could fly to the radar. It could be kind of interesting in things to watch later on. Among the value plays, my favorite option is Yusei Kikuchi. Fandal technically has Kevin Gosman listed as the starter for the Jays right now, but it will be Kikuchi based on all reports. So Kikuchi's salary is $8600, scroll down, toggle off the only probable pictures if it's still showing Gosman there to find Kikuchi later on. And Kikuchi could have bad games for sure. He could blow up at any moment and he doesn't get a huge pitch count leash either, but I do think his upside is pretty good. It's a revenge game here. What else could you want? Is he's facing the Mariners? And they do bring a lot of upside to opposing pitchers. The Mariners have a 27% strikeout rate against lefties on the current active roster. So that's a boost for Kikuchi there. And he has been pretty good himself as well. Over his past nine stars, Kikuchi has been throwing fewer changeups. And he has a 3.66 ERA in that time. I said ERA first because with Kikuchi, I do care more about his results than most guys because he's had good peripherals a bunch of times in his career, but he never converted that into good results. But it looks like he's doing that at least for right now over a nine-star sample. And the peripherals for Kikuchi are still good. He has a 3.91 skill interactive ERA in that time with a 27% strikeout rate. Kikuchi has had seven plus strikeouts in four of those nine games. And two of those starts where he had seven plus strikeouts came in his four starts on the road. So Kikuchi could get rocked. The Mariners have a lot of good hitters, but I think it's the right play. Kikuchi has upside. That's kind of turned down for 86. So to me, if you want to value, I would go use a Kikuchi. I do prefer the studs in Ryan and Otani, but Kikuchi, well worth consideration if you want extra flexibility a hitter for a day. Part of the reason I don't care too much about saving at pitchers because the stacking options are not super high salaried in large part because we're on the Giants once again. Now I've been on the Giants a couple of times this week and it has flopped several times, but they're in another good matchup tonight and the weather in Washington is good for hitting. So I think we'll want to give them one more shot and stack them once again here. They're on the road facing the Nationals, which means they're facing Jake Irvin and Irvin to his credit does some stuff really well. And I want to give him credit for that, but it hasn't kept him from having a largely pretty rough year across 13 starts Irvin has a 5.46 skill interactive ERA. Now his results are better than that and I think that his results are sustainably better than his peripherals because Irvin has done a very good job of suppressing hard contact and that is a skill and it is a great skill to have and it's helped Irvin from imploding. But he's still gotten in trouble as evidenced by his 5.11 expected ERA. More recently, he's been leaning even more heavily on his sinker but he let up four runs to the Cardinals last time out. He can get bounced around. The Giants very tough matchup for a righty with a 111 WRC plus and a 174 ISO and again the park is great for tonight. So I think we should stack them here even with the mixed results they've had this week and I think the Giants are at least in the mix for the top stack of the night. Part of the reason potentially they struggled maybe this is just me excuse making but they've been kind of banged up. Lamont Wade Jr.'s missed two consecutive games. Same for JD Davis. Wade does it for power against righties. He can swipe a bag or two. So my hope with stacking is that Wade is back in there for tonight because I do want to get him in there. He's a key part of a stack. I'm more indifferent about Davis but it would be nice to get him back too to just add more options but Lamont Wade would like to get him back to give me a bit more confidence in the Giants given that they've had some issues offensively throughout this week. For the number two stack let's talk here about Tony Gonsolin because the past couple of years Gonsolin has gotten by similar to Irvin by suppressing hard contact and it made him much better in his peripherals and I think that Gonsolin actually was underappreciated because those peripherals were not awe-inspiring. But this year the bad of ball data is not as good and his results are starting to slip and I think it means we can stack the Rangers against him tonight despite the fact the roof will be closed in Arlington. Gonsolin for the full season has a 3.72 ERA which is still pretty good but it's definitely not the 2.14 mark he had last year. His ground ball rate is down. His hard hit rate is up to 37% and as a result his expected ERA is 4.88 and it's almost exactly in line with his 4.92 skill interactive ERA. Now to his credit Gonsolin seems to realize this he's had decent results but it does seem like he's tinkering to try to get back on the right track. He's been throwing fewer sliders and more curveballs across his past 8 stars. So he's tinkering but it's not working because Gonsolin's still letting up a 37% hard hit rate with a 38% fly ball rate in this time. He has a 4.91 skill interactive ERA and his ERA is up to 5.02. Gonsolin has let out 4 plus earned runs and 4 of those 8 games and that's while making 5 of the 8 stars at home. Now he goes on the road to face the Rangers who are a very dangerous offense with a 121 WRC plus against righties. That's the highest mark on the slate. So again the roof will be shut tonight and that does down great bats but I still think we should stack the Rangers in this matchup given the issues Gonsolin has had. And Gonsolin's issues the bad of all numbers pretty even between righties and lefties which gives us kind of a green light to use our preferred targets here and I love that for the Rangers given they have really fun righties and lefties we want to use. So I think we got a lot of reasons to be high on the Rangers for tonight. I took their money line as well because I think that they should be you know more highly viewed in this spot. So the Rangers to me a good stack for tonight. We'll talk about the other side of the game and things to watch. But first we got to talk about our third stack and I apologize in advance because it ain't great. The Yankees offense stinks against righties. We know this. We've been accounting for this for a while and we've been using pictures against them happily like Chase still set that $5,500 against them earlier on this week. But they're facing Alec Marsh at Yankee Stadium. Marsh has had some big bad of ball issues in the majors and I think that means we should stack the Yankees as gross as it may feel. Marsh so far has made three appearances which is not a big sample. His ERA is 5.40 so not leaping off the page but he has led up a 47% hard hit rate in that time with a 54% fly ball rate. You combine that and it leads to an expected ERA of 5.68. Now in Marsh's defense he's faced some really good teams who make a lot of hard contact and it's worth noting that and the Yankees are very much not that right now. But this is also a guy who is in his age 25 season began at age 25 season in double A didn't have great results there and now he's in the big leagues. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some struggles from Marsh. So yeah, I'd love to not stack the Yankees against the righty but I do think there is enough here to justify stacking them tonight. We'll just want to be careful with the guys we use because not a lot of depth in this lineup right now but the Yankees I think do have enough here to rank number three. The Yankees are a team 141 ISO against righties in the active roster so when we're picking the guys in our stack we do want to be selective guys who have power or who steal bases Labor Torres has some power he steals bases Jean-Carlo Stanton back to stroking it off of the all-star break his ISO back up to 209 against righties Oswell-Porazza has run in the majors and he hit for power in triple A and he's batting lead off so for $2,300 kind of hard to hate on that. So the Yankees pretty clear value stack again which is why it's easy to get to Ryan and Otani even if you want to get to the Rangers as a stack the cupboard here is not totally barren for the Yankees so we set to be selective when going to that cupboard because we want to make sure we're not using guys with minimal upside when stacking this team. Things to watch for tonight we talked about Jill Ryan before but I think the other side of that game is also kind of interesting that's Lance Lynn who has been on a strikeout binge with a 35% strikeout rate in six starts since he started throwing a curveball the twins more than happy to strikeout so it's risky because it is Lance Lynn on the road against a very good offense but if you're okay with that risk I think Lynn is a phenomenal tournament play so Lance Lynn worth a look for tonight in MLB DFS I think the Nationals could be interesting as a stack as well they're facing Alex Wood who hasn't had this typical bad at ball suppression this year he has a 5.21 ERA across nine outings with fewer sliders the Nats not a bad team against lefties with a 108 WRC plus they got a low strikeout rate so I think they're at least worth a look maybe they won't keep the 108 WRC plus against lefties overall but doing enough to make me at least intrigued by them for tonight finally the Dodgers get Andrew Heaney another revenge game on this slate Heaney has been a lot better recently and the bad at ball beta has improved but he is still letting up a 42% hard hit rate 8.11 starts with his sliders being back up the Dodgers have a 236 ISO against lefties so I think we'd be silly not to least consider them in this spot I think the Dodgers not as high as the Rangers from me because I do like the Rangers quite a bit but definitely in consideration given that Heaney can still let up a tank or two let's finish up with the Dinger calls for today the boring one is Jean-Carlo Stanton I believe three home runs since the all-star break he has been getting back slowly to Jean-Carlo Stanton the barrels have been there all year but finally converting those into home runs so at home against the five-ball pitcher letting up a lot of hard contact I got to go Jean-Carlo Stanton as the boring home run call for the fun one let's go Lane Thomas facing the lefty Thomas is not a value play he actually has a higher salary than Jean-Carlo Stanton but still a more fun Dinger call facing off against Alex Wood who again has not had the best bad at ball data this year so we'll go Jean-Carlo Stanton and Lane Thomas as our Dinger calls for tonight that's all we have here for today on the solo shot later on in covering the spread we'll be talking to Pitching Ninja Rob Freeman picking his brain on the pitching options for tonight talking some strikeout props who will lead the night in strikeouts and much more get that over on covering the spread and don't forget to subscribe to the number five our daily fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts if you like what you hear give us a five-star rating 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 you can also follow the FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast want to thank you all for tuning in for today good luck to you with your MLB DFS lineups have a fantastic weekend and we'll talk to you once again next week this has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network