 We are finally getting into the fun part of the calendar where we have good pitchers who we know are good in 2022 who are also stretched out, which means we can kind of feel really good about pitching and load up on guys who fit our process. We are at that point in the year finally and I think that this slate specifically has a couple of guys to check the main key boxes. We're gonna run through those pitchers, run through what their salaries are, what that means for hitting and get you set for what should be a fun night of MLB DFS. Welcome on into the solo shop. That's right here on the FanDuel podcast network and numberfire.com. My name is Jim Sodis. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com. Here to break down Friday's 11 game of main slate with lock set for 705 for tonight. The weather for today in Baltimore for the Yankees and Orioles winds are out to left field at 12 miles per hour. That is an upgrade for hitters, but again, keep in mind the pushback portion left out at Candon Yards, which is now in play for this year. In Cleveland for the Guardians and the Giants winds are in from left at 11 miles per hour. It is also 55 degrees. So downgrade hitters upgrade pitchers for the Guardians and the Giants. In Chicago for the White Sox and rays temperatures just 48 degrees downgrade batters there in Kansas City for the Royals and the Tigers winds are in from center at 11 miles per hour downgrade hitters a bit there as well. We'll dive on into the pitching preview for this Friday slate and just a bit but first a quick reminder to make sure you are subscribed to the numberfire daily fantasy podcast because you get this podcast right as it goes up each and every weekday, which means you have more time to listen to what I say, do your own research, decide whether or not I'm an idiot and then decide if you want to follow my advice or go elsewhere. 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See terms at sports or at fan duel.com Pitching preview for this Friday main slate Carlos Radon is the highest salary pitcher on fan duel checking in at $10,100. We've got Freddie Peralta at $9,900. Dylan Cease is 97 Brad Keller 94 and then Jordan Montgomery Emma Marquez and Kyle Wright are the others at $8,000 or higher. Now Carlos Rodan is on the road for tonight which could hurt his projection but Rodan is so good and he stretched out that even on a good slate for pitching Rodan is my top option. I feel pretty firm in that. Rodan's facing the Guardians. It's a little bit of a rematch here because he no hit them 366 days ago. Well yesterday was the anniversary of that no hitter and he dominated this team last year and I don't care about that because it's a very different team now than it was then but it's still a good spot. Cleveland's offense is below average in basically every key metric against lefties and Rodan is sick. He threw a slider on 40% of his pitches in his first start with the Giants. They are a super smart pitching organization. So when you see pitchers on the Giants make changes it's noteworthy and it makes sense because Rodan's slider was amazing for him last year. He had a 40.6% with rate on it according to baseball savon. There was just a 138 expected select percentage against it and that was good but he threw that pitch just 27% of the time. If he's gonna up that number to 40% this year Rodan could go nuts and he did go nuts in his first start. He had 12 strikeouts and five innings. His swinging strikeout was 23.6%. These are absurd numbers. Rodan has a 35% strikeout right over his past 10 starts with his change of usage being down. He didn't throw that pitch at all in the first game this year. We also saw Rodan go 89 pitches. So he's at full strength. We saw it last year that Rodan had a lot of length despite his injury history. I've gotten projected for 8.1 strikeouts for tonight, which is the most on the slate and it's enough where I will be aggressive with Rodan both for cash games and for tournaments because he is kind of just too good at this point in the year for me to pass up. I wanna see if that increased lot usage does carry over we can go nuts on Carlos Rodan the entire year. I think number two should be Rodan's former teammate Dylan Cease. That's why I want Rodan in cash games because Cease does have a riskier matchup but Cease does have the upside to hang with Rodan for tournaments. Cease is facing the Rays and they're a good offense. They've got a 111 WRC plus against Reides since the start of last year based on the current active roster. So they're a tough team, but they do strikeout. They got a 24% strikeout rate in that time too and that's what gives Cease upside but he's also like Rodan a very good pitcher. Similar to Rodan, we saw Cease lean more on his slider in the opener than he did last year and like Rodan, it was his best pitch last year as well. So we should expect an uptick this year if that usage carries over the rest of the way. And we saw a Cease start this transition last year. We have a 14 start sample on Cease with more sliders and fewer curveballs. And in that time, he has a 35% strikeout rate that's actually higher than Rodan if you look at each guy's most relevant sample. So to me, that's a positive for Cease. The other key difference here other than the matchup is the bad of ball data where Cease has led up a 43% hard hit rate in this time and a 48% flight ball rates. Whereas Rodan, although he lets it fly balls, lets up hard contact just 30% of the time. And that's another reason why Rodan is safer despite being on the road. But both these guys have the same ceiling for tonight and Cease is at home. So I love both. They're my top two guys for the night. If you like Cease more, I won't talk you out of it. I just think that keep in mind the matchup is tougher, bad of ball data not as good and that would push us towards or push me at least towards Rodan as a top pitcher for tonight. For the third guy looking into value guy, we're going to target a matchup that blew up in my face last night because I loved Charlie Borden against the Padres. It did not work out. He got rocked and they put up like 11 or 12 runs. Today they're facing Kyle Wright and Kyle Wright has struggled for a pretty long time but I do think he has a path to a ceiling for tonight at $8,000. Wright in his debut changed basically everything from what he had done previously. Last year, in a small sample he threw his four-seam fastball 35% of the time and his curve ball 14%. Last week it was 16% he showed on the four-seamer and 41% on the curve up from 14%. He also leaned more in a sinker and basically ditched his slider. So he was a different pitcher than he was previously. The curve was also pretty different than it was before because average velocity on the curve last week was 83.6 miles per hour. It was 80.6 last year and 82.1 the year before. So up a mile and a half to the last time we had a large sample on Kyle Wright. It worked out pretty well. He had a 15.8% swing and strike rate in that game. He went six innings, six strikeouts, one walk. That did come against the Reds and they're not a great offense but I do find it intriguing that he made some pretty key changes. I've got Wright projected for 85 pitches today. That is a decent number for the Slates at least in the value range and I think he can take advantage. I'm not overly confident because again, it's not a great matchup. We just saw Morton get bounced last night and Morton is a lot better than Kyle Wright. So I will have more exposure to Rodin and his Cease and I'd also rank Freddie Peralta above Wright but Wright is at least worth a look as a value option. There are some high salary stacks I like too. So to me, the Slate revolves around Rodin. I think he's under salary to 10-1. Cease, you could make the same case at 9-7. Don't mind Peralta at 9-8 but if you do want to save some salary, load up at hitter, I think that Wright would be your best option down to $8,000. Speaking of stacks, let's talk about why the value discussion is pertinent. It's because I want to stack the Jays and that might be tough while using Rodin at pitcher but I want to try to make it work and Rodin again is not overly prohibitive at 10-1. The Jays are facing Dalton Jeffries today. Jeffries did throw a five shutout innings last week which is obviously pretty nice results. I just don't know if those results are fully legit. He had just two strikeouts and two walks. His swinging strike row is 6.3% which could indicate that he had really good bat at ball data in that start but actually Jeffries led up a 43% hard hit rates and a 46% fly ball rate and the low strikeout numbers are not a new thing. They date back to quite a while as well for Jeffries. He made 15 starts in triple A last year. His strikeout right there was 21%. Wasn't a big ground ball guy either. And now it's facing the Blue Jays. They have a 112 WRC plus against Righty since the start of last year with a 189 ISO. Obviously losing Teoscar Hernandez does hurt but there's still a good offense. There's not a lot of value on this team. I'll say that for stacking but I will try to make it work here for sure. So there are great offense in a great spot and I will be heavy on the Jays. Again, the one downside is we do lose Teoscar Hernandez here that negatively impacts everyone here because it's one less good bat in the order. It doesn't at least push some of the value plays higher in the order though. We got Lourdes Gouriel likely to bat cleanup. The primary guy I'm interested in is Matt Chapman. Chapman is still striking out way too much. It's pretty bad but Jeffries again doesn't get a lot of strikeouts. And Chapman hitting the ball hard when he does make contact. So I'll be high on him here at $3,100 despite his imperfections. Gouriel is kind of like the key value play at 29 but I think that Chapman also a good play. You build around those two guys, see which of the studs you can get to make that work from there. But the Jays to me are a priority for today. We'll talk about a value stack later that can make them a bit easier to afford. For the second stack, I know we've been stacking the Astros a lot recently and I know it has not worked out. Believe me, my bankroll is aware but I'm gonna do it again tonight. They're facing Marco Gonzalez and Gonzalez really, really struggled in his first start. He faced 15 batters and he led up three home runs, seven hard hit balls and four barrels across 15 batters phase. And the batted ball numbers are an area where Gonzalez used to excel. He hasn't since the start of last year though. His flat ball right last year increased to 48%. His hard hit rate was 37%. He did manage to work around it at that time but it seems like there's a chance that it gets worse this year. Those results get worse. And we did see a bit of that in the opener with the twins hitting really hard. Now he faces the Astros. They still got a 117 WRC plus against lefties since the start of last year, just an 18% strikeout rate. So I'm gonna stack them again because the process says I should. They're facing guy who's letting up a lot of hard contact right now, doesn't get a lot of strikeouts. They obliterate lefties, have a lot of righties in this lineup. I do think that the Astros, despite their frustrations at that time do make a lot of sense once again. One thing I would note here is the roof in Seattle. It is supposed to be cold in Seattle at just 50 degrees. There's a chance of rain. If they put the roof on here, that would increase the temperature at least a bit for the stadium. I know it's not in closed, so it's not gonna totally change things. But I'm assuming this roof will be open right now. So it'll be 50 degrees. That's a downgrade of the Astros. But if it does close, I'd bump them up a bit more. I'd still have them below the Blue Jays, I believe, but it would improve their outlook. And again, they got some value guys. We got Yuli Gouriel here. You can go both the Gouriel guys. We got Jeremy Pena still. Maybe Jose Ciri slides up there, Chas Mcormick. So we got some like value guys in the Astros too. If you want to use them as a value stack to make the Jays work. Now, the other value stack you could turn to here is actually in the same game as the Jays, it's the A's. And they're a bad team. I know that. I don't want to stack them, but I kind of think I should because they're facing Ross Stripling for today. And that should make it obvious why we're here. Stripling is getting a spot start here for the Jays. I'm not expecting to go deep in the game, but I think the A should be able to hit him while he's in there. It is two relief outings. Stripling has thrown a lot of sliders this year, a 38% usage. And we saw that start to change last year for Stripling when he's in the bullpen, right before he got demoted to the bullpen. He started to use more sliders and that used to just carried over to this year. Not really working. It's a 10 outing sample for Stripling with more sliders. His skill interactive ERA is 5.28. Strikeout rate is 13%. Fly ball rate is 42%. And that's while pitching in shorter bursts. I'd expect this to be pretty similar for today, but again, he's stretching out. So maybe it would potentially get a little bit worse and it's not likely to get better for him. Now the A's are not going to be a good offense this year. Their WRC plus against righties is 92 based on their current active roster since the start of last year. That is the second worst number on the slate. But they do put the ball in the air a ton and they get a park factor boost with the roof likely closed tonight in Toronto. So it's not often that I want to stack the A's but I will do it here given that I do need value outside of just the Astros. I think that this is enough to make the A's viable despite the fact I do not have a very high opinion of them for the full 2022 season. The focal point when stacking this team needs to be Seth Brown. He has a 284 ISO against righties since the start of last year with a 50% fly ball rate. He's got power, he's $2,900. He's very good. So Seth Brown to me a focal point whether it be as a one-off or within your A's stacks for today. Sean Murphy's got some power too. Not totally opposed to Tony Kemp. Find with Billy McKinney if he bats six or tonight. So it's not the best team in the world for stacking or one-offs, but I also don't think they're the worst especially Brown and Murphy. Two guys I feel good about for one-offs or as parts of stacks for today when you're looking towards the A's. Let's move down to things to watch. Couldn't talk about the Dodgers there necessarily in stacks because again, I need to find some value. So the Dodgers got shove from there just because of that. If you are spending down a pitcher and have a lot of room to splurge and the Dodgers great out really well. They're facing Vladimir Gutierrez. He has been working in a change-up more because when he first came up really struggled with lefties and change-ups can help you against opposite-handed batters but he's still struggling with lefties. In the 12 starts that Gutierrez has made with more change-ups he is still letting up a 536 slugging percentage to lefties with a lot of things. So we haven't seen Freddie Freeman blow up with the Dodgers yet, but he could do that here. Not opposed to Cody Belinger either at $3,100. His advanced numbers are not like sparkling but they're also not the worst and he's a low salary. So I can talk myself into Belinger too. So Dodgers high on that list if you had the salary to get there and honestly you might. So maybe I should just bump the Dodgers up but definitely a team, especially the lefties I feel good about for today. One team that could be a fun contrarian stack as a Giants they're based in Zach Plisac and Plisac tends to get good results. So I would guess the Giants won't get too much attention here but Plisac does let up a lot of hard contact and fly balls. And this is a very good offense even when they're playing in San Francisco they're in Cleveland tonight. And again, it's a little bit colder wind is in so it's not a great park for hitting but I think if you want a high upside offense a very good offense at a lower roster rate I think the Giants are the team for you for today. I put them behind the Dodgers for sure outside of the Astros and the Jays but if you want to get a little bit different I think the Giants should check that box. Finally, I am excited to see McKenzie Gore's debut for today and he is in the fangal player pool. He's $6,400. I would temper expectations from a pitch count perspective though because he went 63 pitches in his one AAA store before he got promoted. I've got him projected for 75 pitches for today and I'd like that number higher before I buy in. So he should be fun it should be exciting to watch him out there might not use them in DFS yet though it is a very low salary so it's more justifiable because the salary is so low but keep in mind the pitch count likely to be low as well for today. Let's finish up here with some Digger calls going into the weekend hopefully on a high note for the boring one I think it's almost too boring to go Vladimir Guerrero Jr. So I'm not gonna do that. I think that if I were just picking at random it would be him. But let's go with this teammate George Springer. Springer hitting the ball hard to start this year not as many fly balls as I'd like but we know over a long run Springer came off the ball. So George Springer to me the boring home run call for today. The fun one is in that exact same game Seth Brown I'm gonna go with him because I like the pop he provides versus righties. And this has been not a small sample for Seth Brown being very good against righties aren't a couple homers so far this year he's hitting the ball pretty well. So to me, Seth Brown pretty good option for today in DFS and also a good home run pick to close out the week. So the Homer picks George Springer and Seth Brown that is all that we have here for today and this week on the solo shop. But we'll back once again next week on Monday to get you set for another week of main slates over on FanDuel to get those right as they are posted make sure you are subscribed to the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there leave a rating and review if you like what you hear. 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. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your MLB DFS lineup for today and have a fantastic weekend. We'll talk to you once again on Monday. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel podcast network.