 When you pull up the pitching tab for tonight's Slate and MLB DFS, you're going to see how fun this slate projects to be because we have got dudes on dudes on dudes. Shohei Otani, Walker Bueller, Zack Wheeler, Robbie Ray, Brandon Woodruff, Lucas Gelito, Luis Castillo, Blake Snow, maybe, and also a couple of younger pitchers who are not quite there yet, but have the makeup of being potentially fun pitchers from a DFS perspective. So our job today is to sort through those aces, decide who is our best option for DFS, and let you know how to handle things for today's slate. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com here to break down today's 10-day game main slate, what locks up for 7-0-5 for two nights. Last night had that Cubs game get a little bit wild with the weather just didn't really look that way in the morning, got worse the day went along. So that's why I recommend following Kevin Roth and Roto Grinders on Twitter, because he was on top of that. I'm not going to know that as well, especially here in the morning. So follow Kevin Roth and Roto Grinders on Twitter for all weather information. But as of right now, it does look like we are good to go for today. As always though, check back for an updated forecast later on. Also an update to our schedule for today because we are jam-packed across the FanDuel Podcast Network for today. We have this going on right now. I'm recording covering the spread with Nick Costos and Dr. Ed Fang later on today. We have our PGA podcast with Brandon Gadoula and myself that's recording live on YouTube at 11 a.m. Brandon is back with you at 3.30 to go through his PGA DFS and betting Q&A. I'll follow up at 4 for the MLB DFS Q&A. 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Pitching preview for this Wednesday main slate. As mentioned, Shohei Otani, it's the top dog on FanDuel 4 today. Checking in at $11,600. We have Walker Bueller at $11,300. Zach Wheeler is $11,000. Robbie Ray facing the White Sox at $10,500. Brandon Woodruff is $10,300. Lucas Geolito comes in at $9,800. Luis Castillo is $9,700. Blake Snell is $9,000. And then Johnny Cueto and Nick Pavetta are the other guys at $8,000 or higher. And although we've got like 97,000 aces on this slate, most of them are in tough matches. Bueller is facing the Padres. I used Nola against the Padres on Saturday, but it's still a tough matchup for sure. It's a team we can go at, but you know, they're tough. Zach Wheeler facing the Reys, a lot of power there. Robbie Ray facing the White Sox. He's a lefty. Brandon Woodruff facing the Reys. We used, or I did at least, Corbin Burns against him last night. Didn't go all that great. So that's a consideration. Lucas Geolito facing the Blue Jays. I know Dylan Cease was good against him last night, but tough matchup there. Luis Castillo facing the Brewers. It's a lot of tough matchups. The one guy without a tough matchup is Shohei Otani. So I think that Otani does deserve to be at the top of our list, at least from a median projection perspective for today. And I've previously been a bit cautious with Otani because the strikeout rate was down. And given all he's been doing this year, I thought there was a chance maybe he was wearing down because that would be totally understandable. And then he took a blowtorch to the Tigers last week. So I think it forces us to put Otani atop our list for tonight. And it's another good matchup from here. He's facing the Orioles. I was very happy to stack them last night. And they did very well, but they're not a great team. They have a 25% strikeout rate versus righties and an 8% walk rate. And those plate discipline numbers are good for pitchers. It should allow Otani to be efficient with his pitches. And even deep in the year, we're in August, and he's still pitching well and they are letting him ride. He has gone 95 or more pitches, three times in his past five starts. The most relevant sample for Otani is the past nine starts with more sliders. And in that time, he has a 25% strikeout rate with a 5% walk rate. That strikeout rate's still a bit low relative to other Aces on the slate, but he's showing the ability to have spike gains. He had eight strikeouts against Tigers, eight against Oakland, nine against the Giants. And the A's and Giants are much tougher matchups than the one he gets tonight. It's also so impressive that Otani has gone at least six innings in all but one of those nine starts. Really nice floor. Matchup helps the floor too, so there is a lot to like here. So I was too low on Otani last week and I'm fine correcting course here and putting him at the top of my list. So Shohei Otani on a loaded slate is my number one guy for today. The second option is going to force us to go at someone in a tough matchup. We just have to decide who we want to prioritize in that tough matchup. The contenders there are Zach Wheeler, Robbie Ray, and Walker Bueller. All three teams, all three guys are facing teams with at least a 103 WRC plus against our handedness. And that's why I went Otani first because the floor is better there. But in terms of ceiling, I really do like Wheeler's outlook. I'm going to rank him second, slightly ahead of Ray and Bueller for tonight. There are a couple reasons I'm here and the first one is that Zach Wheeler is really freaking good. He's up to 15 starts now with Wheeler's curveball usage being up, which is a big sample. In that big sample, he leads the slate and skill interact via RAID 3.12. He ranks fourth in strike and rated 29%. He is fifth in walk rate, third in hard hit rate, first in fly ball rate. So Wheeler is potentially, this might be hyperbolic, but potentially the most well rounded pitcher in all baseball, which means he can overcome some tough matchups. He definitely does get one tonight. He's facing the Rays who have a 116 WRC plus against Reides, but they aren't a nationally parked tonight. That means they might not have Nelson Cruz and if they do put Cruz in the outfield, then someone else who is decent will be out of line up as well. They also do strike out, got 25% strike out rate against Reides, which is the fourth highest mark on the slate. It may not be a situation where Wheeler has a good four because the matchup is tough, but he has a very clear path to a good ceiling via the Rays, strike out rate and via how good he is. I think if you were looking at just tournaments, looking at a single entry lineup, you can make a strong case for preferring Wheeler over Otani. I think that Wheeler has better odds of dropping a 60 burger on him. Otani is the definite top option for cash games, just a very safe overall profile. But I think for single entry, there's a chance I would lean towards Wheeler at pitchers. So both really good options, Otani for the safety, Wheeler for the upside at least for me. I think as far as the value plays go, usually on a slate like this where we've got like aces across the board, I'm not going to want to spend down. I think tonight we actually have leeway to do so because there are two pretty fun guys in good matchups, which we don't see with the aces. Both sides of the Marlins Nationals game, the Nationals are starting Josiah Gray. The Mons will throw Edward Cabrera in his debut. I'm going to talk about Cabrera here, but I think that Gray is worth your consideration as well. Cabrera making his debut started his year in triple A or in single A I should say. He made two starts there. He struck out eight of 11 batters in the second start. Stupid. Then he got promoted to double A. He made five starts there. He struck out seven batters in four of those five starts that earned him a trip up to triple A. In triple A, he struck out 12 batters in his third start. Then he did 11 strikeouts and 12 strikeouts the following two starts. He's been doing that because the Marlins are giving him a lot of leash. Since moving up to triple A, Cabrera has gone 98 plus pitches three separate times. He's at 61 in the third innings this year, which means they're probably okay letting him stretch things out a bit, try to extend his pitch count for next year or his inning count for next year. I think that that gives Cabrera an edge over Josiah Gray because Gray's next pitch count with the Nationals is 87. I prefer Cabrera. I'm willing to consider Gray, but I prefer Cabrera, which could go poorly because it's his big week debut. You're going to be nervous. That can lead to some mistakes for sure. But like Cabrera is a path to a ceiling, so why not? $7,300? I tend not to be super cavalier with stuff like this, but I think in this situation, kind of okay with it. Edward Cabrera on a slate filled of aces, still to me at least, worth consideration for DFS. You know that I try to be transparent about this stuff, not going to use a value play, et cetera, et cetera. I'm going to use him tonight. So despite the fact there are aces here, it is a guy making his debut. Zero innings to his credit, who I think is worth some consideration for today. Part of the reason why Cabrera is interesting is because I do like some higher salary stacks. One of them is a Red Sox. We talked about the allure of them yesterday because they're a facing guy who didn't get a ton of strikeouts, let up a lot of balls of play, and didn't have elite batted ball beta. They get a very similar profile tonight, and I think we should stack them once again. This time they're facing Bayley Ober. Ober is taking the typical twins approach and throwing more sliders recently. And it's led to a very good skill interactive ERA at 3.93. But as we discussed with Griffin Jacks yesterday, that's in part due to a low walk rate. And for DFS, we don't mind that. In terms of stack, we don't mind a low walk rate. His strikeout rate is 23%. That is below after the slate. He's letting up a 42% hard hit rate and a 39% fly ball rate, which is above average. If you put that profile up against, I don't know, like let's say the Rangers. That can be fine. That's totally okay. The Red Sox are not the Rangers. They have a 112 WRC plus against Reides with a 213 ISO. That is the best mark on this slate. So I think the results will start to differ Ober soon once he's facing tougher teams like the Red Sox and I would not be shocked if that worked to start here tonight. And I do like the Red Sox in terms of stacking. Kyle Schwabber, I think is awesome here. He has not hit a home run yet with the Red Sox, but he's seen the ball well. He has more walks and strikeouts. He's had plenty of barrels, plenty of hard contact. I think the homers will come soon. And in fact, let's just say it right now. I think one comes tonight. We'll talk about Kyle Schwabber and the Digger calls. Love him at $3,500. Kyle Schwabber, his first Red Sox home run coming tonight. We'll see how that goes. For the number two stack, I think it's kind of risky, especially because there are some concerns about who will play tonight. But as of right now, as of this morning, I think that the Giants are interesting. They're facing Taiwan Walker, who's a good pitcher and he's gotten good results at times this year. The peripherals recently are less rosy and the Giants offense is pretty good. So I think I'm going to go back to stack them here and hope that others do not. They got a pretty low implied total. So I wouldn't expect the Giants to be super popular tonight, despite the fact they did blow up last night. Walker's been jacking up his splitter usage recently. We talked about this earlier in the year when he started lowering a splitter usage where it wasn't like a bad thing for him. It's not a pitch we need to fear all that much. So the fact that it's coming back up doesn't bother me. And the peripherals tell that same story because in the six darts with more splitters, Walker has a 4.98 skill interactive ERA. His strike rate is 18 percent. And he's letting up a 49 percent fly ball rate against a lot of teams. I would trust the results. The results say Walker is a good pitcher. I would trust those results and I'd move on, but the Giants are not a lot of teams. They have a 110 WRC plus against righties, a 202 ISO, 40 percent fly ball rate. And they're in New York tonight. It's not a great park for overall offense, but it's a much better spot for home runs than San Francisco. So I like their upside here a lot, even though it is risky to go with the Giants. I still think they are a tremendous stack here. They're not like a team you want to stack if you are super risk averse, but I'm not. So I think that they great out pretty well here. I'll give moral and hope that that they that people avoid them. The one thing that would cause me to deviate here and downgrade the Giants would be if both the Brandons are out. Crawford is day to day with a back issue. Belts grandmother passed away yesterday, played a great game in her honor last night. He said that it was he's dedicating that game to her in a season. But I'd assume there's a chance that belt will miss time soon as he should in that situation. So if both Belts and Crawford are out, downgrade the stack for now, though I am in, I think they've got a lot of depth here in this offense. So I would still be there, even if both the Brandons can't play, but it would downgrade them for sure. And the team that would go above them would be this number three stack. We talked about Edward Cabrera making his debut in the pitching section. We'll talk about another guy making his debut in stacks. That's Jake Lats for the Texas Rangers facing Cleveland. I think we can stack Cleveland against him for tonight. Lats started the year off in double A and he got a lot of strikeouts there. He had a 31 percent strikeout rate, but his ERA was still 4.69. I think a lot of that was due to his 10 percent walk rate, but he also didn't get that many ground balls. And, you know, we don't get hard contact data from minor league parks, but I would bet based on the results that he was letting up a lot of hard contact to eventually Lats did get promoted to triple A because the Rangers have a lack of pitching depth for sure. The first two starts in triple A for Lats did not go well. Let up a ton of fly balls. There's a big dip in strikeouts, but now he's forcing the big leagues because of some COVID issues in the starting rotation for the Rangers. Cleveland is really bad against lefties. So I don't want to stack them against the lefty. I tried really hard not to last night. They got an 88 WRC plus, not a ton of power, but I still think we want to be in on them here strictly because the matchup is so good. I don't like making strictly matchup based recommendations, but I think in the scenario, we kind of do got to try to get to Cleveland here. The primary guys are Jose Ramirez from the race and I'm at Rosario. None of those guys are values. We're trying to get to Wheeler, Otani, et cetera, et cetera. So we do have to dig for some value here. Yu Chong is a guy who hit for some power in triple A, put the ball in the air in the majors quite a bit. So I think Chong is someone you could consider. Oscar Mercado is someone I'm willing to consider. Wilson Ramos, if he gets to start work. So I would probably more mix and match with those guys. I wouldn't like overexpose yourself to anyone specifically. Race is the prime target here. It's $3,200, way too low for a guy with this power, but the others are at least consideration. So check out Ramos, Mercado, Chong and see which one you want to rank highest among those guys, but mix and match. I think that's the optimal way to play things for today. Let's finish up here. Things to watch and talk about another couple of situations to potentially get some one-offs similar to last night. We got some bad teams facing pitchers we want to stack against. So it's mostly one-offs here, but I think that the primary one is the Pirates against Tyler Gilbert. Gilbert had the no hitter, but his skill interactive DR8 is two big league starts is 5.54. He has a 14% strikeout rates. We can use guys facing that. And it does give us some value here. Rodolfo Castro should play. He's $23, he can hit some tanks. Michael Chavis is minimum salary if he gets in there once again. So not opposed to some one-offs from the Pirates. I can't full stack them because they're bad, but Chavis and Castro guys I'm willing to use. Sendings through for Arizona. They're likely facing Mitch Keller, though that has not been confirmed as of yet. Keller did look better as last time out, but I'm still okay using bats against him. But there is only set to make sure they're, you know, competent hitters. To me, that's basically Dalton Varshio at $3,000 if he plays. Also true for a couple others, but I wish the salaries here were lower to compensate for the fact that they are hashtag bad. Finally, the Angels are good for some one-offs tonight. It's hard to stack them because their best hitter is unavailable for stacking because he's pitching tonight. But facing a bullpen game for the Orioles, that is unlikely to go well. So Joe Adele, Brandon Marsh, if Upton can play, I would squeeze him in there. Max Dasty, if he plays, same thing. Jared Walsh looked a little bit better last night, but still not quite fully back. Either way, Angels work. They've got some value. So I think you're looking at like a three-player stack. I'd rate the Angels above both Arizona and the Pirates, but below Cleveland, the Giants, and the Red Sox for today. Let's finish up with the Dinger calls. And I did spoil it before, but Kyle Schwarber is my boring home run call for today. Again, no home runs yet with the Red Sox. I think that changes tonight. He goes yard. And I think that Schwarber probably going to go on a run here pretty soon. So Kyle Schwarber is a boring one. The fun one is boring if you've been paying attention, but it's fun in the sense that this is a guy who was left off of a team's 40-man roster. I'm pretty sure he was a rule five pick at one point. That's Lamont Wade, a Lamont Wade junior of the Giants, playing really good baseball, hitting the ball hard in a good matchup in an improved park for Dingers from his home park. So home run picks for today, Kyle Schwarber and Lamont Wade. We'll see how they can do for tonight. That is all that we have here for today on the Silo Shop. But as always, we are back here once again later on. Brandon Godula has the PGA Q&A at 330. I have the MLB DFS Q&A at 4 p.m. to go through reactions to lineups, see how things change based on who is in there and who is not. And that could be a key for today, given the situation with the Giants. Make sure you swing by 4 p.m. today, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter, and check out Brandon at 330 as well. Also make sure you check out the Numberfire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, PGA podcast coming up later on today. We got UFC, NASCAR, potentially more sports being added down the line, and also NFL podcasts just around the corner. Find that by searching for the Numberfire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. If you have 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 tonight. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow. This has been the Silo Shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.