 We are now on day four post all-star break, and it's very similar to day four of the regular season where a lot of teams have pushed their best pitchers up to pitch the past couple of days, which means today we get a lot of lingoers, a lot of the fourth starters, a lot of the guys who maybe for whatever reason we're not pitching right out of the break. That means things are kind of complicated a picture for today. We do have you, Darvish, and Kevin Gosman, but for one reason or another, both those guys lack like a surefire type outlook for today. So we're going to break things down, let you know who we want for today in DFS, where we can go despite imperfections, and also some good stacks for this slate. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the FanDual Podcast Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Here to break down Monday's 11 game main slate with locks up for 7.05, four to night, only one weather note for today. There's a good chance of rain in Atlanta for the Braves and the Padres. It looks pretty constant. So I'd be worried about pitchers and hitters there that is the you Darvish game. He's not necessarily in play for me to begin with, but the rain certainly does help things make it a little bit easier from a decision making perspective. If that game is unable to go for tonight. Big week ahead here on the NumberFire Daily Fantasy Podcast feed. No break-a-doolah this week for PGA. So I'll be flying solo by myself. That is tomorrow talking about this week's PGA contest. We'll also have USC via Austin Swain. Later on this week, no NASCAR because of the NASCAR Olympics break. I mean, it's NBC's Olympics break, but NASCAR is off for two weeks. No NASCAR this week, but the solo shot back in full swing. 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Let's take a look at the pitching preview for today where we see you Darvish at the top of the pitching pool. He checks in at $11,200. Kevin Gosman is 10-6. Shohei Otani is $10,200. Kyle Gibson is $9,100. But then we have Zach Renke, Ross Stripling and Casey Meyes as the other pitchers at $8,000 are higher. And as mentioned, there is some shakiness at the top because Darvish is coming off the aisle, not a long stint, but still the aisle is the aisle. Gosman is on the road in a tough match for the Dodgers. Otani also is a tough opponent. And I think that what that does is open the door for Kyle Gibson to be the top guy on this slate. The matchup for Gibson is not a big issue. It's a decent offense right now in Detroit, but they will still strike out. And that's what we want for DFS. We want to strike out. The Tigers will give that. Now, as mentioned, they're not like a super easy team to use pitchers against right now because they are scoring some runs. And they did that against Gibson in his most recent start. They scored five runs and that's a decent amount. But that was 12 days ago because Gibson pitched in the All-Star Games. He's had some extra time off from a real-world perspective. And that's enough of a gap where it doesn't bother me too much. They did get to him that time now. Plus Gibson got strikeouts. He had seven strikeouts there in six and one-third innings. He went 98 pitches. He was at 110 the start before that. So Gibson can go very deep in games. He's now had three plus matchups in his past three starts. And it is a skill to take advantage of plus matches. We've seen Gibson do that. He's had 10, 7, and 7 strikeouts in those starts. The only one where he allowed multiple runs was that Detroit game. He started to work on a curveball more, throwing it a bit more often, above 10% now. And he gets a decent number of whiffs on that curveball and it does generate weak contact. So I think it is a plus for Gibson to have that curveball and to use it a bit more. And he's doing that right now. He's $9,100. That will let you get a pretty decent pick of the hitters you want. We've got some high-starred sacks we'll discuss. I think you can get there with Gibson for today. I don't feel like great about him. I would not use that word specifically, but I think his floor is good. I think his upside is really nice. And that's enough for me to rank Gibson first on a muddy slate for today. So not like absolutely no-brainer Kyle Gibson number one, but he is number one for me, all things considered. Second for me is Gosmin, despite the tough matchup. He's facing the Dodgers, which is definitely a downgrade because they're healthy now. And that's very scary. They've been hitting the ball well. And Gosmin does get a decrease in his strikeout rate when he's on the road versus when he is at home. But I'm not sure the downgrade is enough for me to jump ship on him here. Gosmin's up to seven starts now since the sticky stuff discussion began and hasn't seemed to impact him too much. He has a 3.55 skill interactive ERA in that time with a 30% strikeout rate. He's allowed a max of three earned runs. It is worth noting those three earned runs did come against the Dodgers in Los Angeles. So there isn't a great floor, but the upside is there. We've seen Gosmin get at least nine strikeouts and three of the past seven starts. He had 10 in one of those and he goes deep in games. He's got at least seven innings four out of the past seven starts. So he has a decent amount of overlap with Gibson where you get good length with the ability to hit double digits in the strikeout department. I just don't like Gosmin's matchup as much as I like Gibson's. It's pretty easy for me to put Gosmin above Darvish because Darvish might be held to around 85 or so pitches based on how long he went in his final start before the IL stuff like that. And the matchup is tough too, even with no Rambakuna junior. And again, there's the rain there as well. So the one question for me would be whether I'd put Gosmin above Gibson. But I think the Gibson is number one for me with Gosmin two. And I will not get to Darvish in this spot even if we do get the all clear on the weather for that game. The pitching is pretty lackluster as you've probably established. So if finding two studs was tough, it's probably not going to be super easy to find a no brainer value play either among the guys in this bracket. At $9,000 or lower though, I would say the one I'm most willing to use is Alec Mills, which is probably weird. He's not a guy we typically regard as being super high upside. He's more of a guy who just gets a bunch of ground balls is effective as a result of that. He has an 18% fly ball rate allowed since he joined the rotation for the Cubs. But Mills has been getting some more strikeouts recently. He had nine against the Reds two starts ago. He followed that up with five against the Phillies and also had six against the Mets. And on a lot of slates, that's not enough. I'm not saying five and six in a positive sense. I'm saying it like, does he have any upside? But on this slate, it's pretty thin. So that's not terrible, I wouldn't say. The other reason to be interested in Mills is that the Cardinals are a righty heavy lineup. Mills does go to his slider to get whiffs against righties. And it's a good pitch. Yes, it has a 41% whiff rate according to baseball savant. The other pitches of his are decent pitches, but the slider is the one that he leans on versus righties. And it's the one that's most effective for DFS. So he'd only see us looking at the numbers for like a split perspective with Mills. But to me, if I were saying, like, would you consider Mills against a lefty heavy lineup? I would say no. I think that we need him in a spot where he's more likely to use his slider. And I think that he is more likely to use it here against a righty heavy lineup like the Cardinals. So I would bet that the slider used to increase his first night from Mills. And to me, that's enough for me to consider him. He's $6,400. That's super low salaried. I don't know where I will go with the savings because it's, you know, it's tough for me to allocate that much. But I do think that there are a couple stacks we can talk about later on with a lot of high salaried guys we can turn to and maybe at least in sour in the table. But Mills to me is someone who is at least on the radar for tonight for sure. So to me, it is Gibson 1, Gosmin 2. And then among the value plays, I would go to Alex Mills first. If our ranking all pitchers, I would put Shohei Otani above Mills from an overall ranking perspective. But Otani obviously did not count for the value discussion for today. From a stacking perspective, I like both sides of the Reds' Nets game. I prefer the Reds. So we'll start with them and then run through the mess. This game is Cincinnati. So that does help for sure in talking up both sides. The Reds are facing Jared Ikoff. I am a big proponent of letting teams tell us what they think of their players. And the Mets designated Ikoff for assignment last month. He decided to become a free agent. He then resigned to become a minor league with the Mets once again. But clearly they're not super high on Emeralds. They would not have DFA'd him. And it seems like this pairing is out of obligation. I can see why by looking at the numbers too. Ikoff has struggled in AAA. He has a 5.09 ERA there with a 22% strikeout rate. And he's let up a lot of fly balls. His short time in the big leagues hasn't been much better. He's letting up a 44% hard hit rate with a 46% fly ball rate. His swing and strike rate is 7.3%. We saw him let up four home runs to the Nationals. And outside of College Harbor, that's not a lot of team that has a lot of pop, especially relative to the Reds. So clearly the Mets are in need of an arm here. I think we should feel pretty good about stacking the Reds in this matchup. It also does help that the salaries here are super low. They're basically a value stack for today. Nick Costellanos and Jesse Winker are the only guys above $3,000. And Costellanos is banged up and it is a wrist injury. And that's one of the ones that does count as being a quote-unquote injury red flag for me, where I'd be a little bit wary of guys coming off those injuries. So ideally Costellanos plays because if he plays, it means the wrist is probably okay. He was not available last night. So I guess my assumption right now is Costellanos does not play, which does downgrade them. But Jesse Winker, Eugenio Suarez seems like he's coming around recently. So that does help me still stack this team, even if Costellanos is not able to go for today. The Mets on the other side are facing Vladimir Gutierrez. And he got up to a really nice start when he first came up for the Reds. But he hasn't been able to carry it over. Gutierrez did see a dip in the movement on his forcing fastball once they started doing the checks for the sticky stuff. So actually like physically checking guys to make sure they didn't have stuff on their belt. And Gutierrez has made four starts since that started. And he's gone six innings in three of those four starts. But he led up three home runs in one of them. He led up two in another. And the strikeouts have not been there. He has just a 14% strikeout rate. And that's despite getting some low level competition in this time. The hard hit rate against Gutierrez up to 40%, that had been a strength earlier on. It was down the low 30s now it's up to 40%. And he's still letting it fly balls. The results have not been terrible yet against Gutierrez, but there is a recipe for danger. The building blocks for a rough showing are there against Gutierrez. And I think we should stack the Mets here, especially as they do get a big park factor upgrade in moving to Cincinnati versus being in New York. One guy worth checking out here is Michael Conforto. Conforto has 12 barrels for the full season, but three of them have come in the past four games. Is that predictive? No, probably not. We're not going to get a sample size high enough in that time at all. But power does stabilize more quickly than a lot of other stuff. So it's not predictive, but it's also not nothing that he's hitting for some power right now. He's $2,600. I can be on board with that for sure. I also like JD Justongs Davis, who had a double dong appropriate for the nickname back on Saturday. Just came off the IL, but we're actually at one of the games in Syracuse, hit the ball pretty well there. I am on board with JD Davis for today, in addition to Conforto, Pitilanzo, et cetera, et cetera. With those two teams, the Mets and the Reds, you will have salary left on the table. And I think you've got a couple of routes for using that salary as far as the high salary stacks go. One of them is the Astros. The other is the Cubs. And we'll talk about the Astros here and the Cubs in Things to Watch. The reason the Astros get the nod here is that they are just the better offense between the two. Pretty simple on that end. I also don't mind their matchup. They're facing JC Mejia. Mejia just saw the Astros back on July 1st. And they got to him pretty good. He led up six runs across four innings. It's not a huge surprise either, because he's a low strikeout guy. He doesn't limit hard contact, which is not a good combination against anyone, but it's especially not ideal against the Astros. Mejia struggled overall this year. He has 7.42 ERA, even when you include his time in the bullpen. His hard hit rate allowed is 42%. And his strikeout rate goes down to 18% if you look over his past five starts with fewer sliders. Mejia is just not really someone who seems super likely to shut down this Astros lineup right now. He went down to AAA for a start earlier this month or a bit of time this month and didn't seem to be too different. So I'm okay looking at the numbers from his first int and banking on those. And those numbers tell us we can stack against Mejia for today with the Astros. When we're second against Mejia, we do want to give a bump up to the lefties. The strike area for him versus lefties is 17%, versus 28% versus righties. And he also gives up a lot of hard contact. So to me, that's going to make Jordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker be the top two guys in this stack for me. Bump up those lefties. Michael Brantley, not the highest upside guy, but I will give him a boost in this spot. He's capable of going deep and he's hitting more flyballs recently. So Brantley would rank third on that list and potentially behind Jose Altuve, likely behind Jose Altuve, but he'll be probably number four between him and Carlos Correa there. And then Abraham Toro would be the guy who benefits if you're looking for a value play among the lefties on this team. So the Astros is the top high salary stack for me today. I also do like the Cubs though, so let's talk with them as we transition to things to watch. The Cubs are the other high salary stack here. Facing Jake Woodford, he started the year in the bullpen with the Cardinals and that didn't go that well, so they decided to send him down to AAA, get him stretched out to be a starter. The starts in AAA weren't necessarily dazzling either and you don't expect guys to improve as they transition from the bullpen to a starting duty. The only reason I was not higher on the Cubs is that I do expect Woodford to get some ground balls and generally we contact, so that does downgrade them from a stacking perspective, but that's the low negative here. They're also not as good of an offense as the Astros, actually they're two negatives, but they're both very good options. So among the high salary teams, Astros and then Cubs, but I would put the Mets and the Reds above the Cubs even if we're considering, even if we just don't consider salary at all. So if we're not considering salary, Astros, Reds, Mets, and then the Cubs would be fourth on that list. Two offenses to consider, I would say more so for one offs than full stacks are the Marlins and the Diamondbacks. Both those teams are really rough for stacks because they don't have a lot of great pieces, and that does matter, but their matchups here are awesome. So I'm okay with going at them. I just want to be limited in making sure I'm picking and choosing the guys who actually have upside. The Marlins are facing John Lester. He's a lefty, so he won't haste his ocular, Adam Duvall, Garrett Cooper. They would all stand out here if they were to play. And also Jazz Chisholm works, despite being a lefty, if he's able to play, he's got a shoulder injury, so I kind of like constantly honest where I'm not assuming he'll play, he's obviously awesome despite it being a lefty. The Diamondbacks facing Jayce DeYoung, DeYoung I should say, and DeYoung has really bad, bad at ball numbers, which means that Josh Rojas and Eduardo Escobar work at they play. Cole Calhoun also is back now. He hasn't made the hardest contact since he returned, but I would consider him at $2400 if you need a value play for today. So one offs, primarily the Marlins and Diamondbacks work, but I would check out them for sure just because the matchups there are pretty good and they have some individual batters who can generate upside via the long ball. Finally, I was pretty close to considering Tony Gonsolin as a pitcher at $7,500. There were two things that pushed me off of him. The first one is a matchup. The Giants are a very good offense against righties and they hit for a lot of power. So that's one thing. The second thing is length. Gonsolin has not gone longer than 83 pitches so far this year. It's hard to have a lot of upside for DFS on that kind of allotment. So Gonsolin's interesting and he's pitched pretty well. I just can't get there for DFS as a result of the lack of a pitch count and the lack of a good matchup for today. All right, let's finish up here with some Dinger calls for Monday night. One boring one and one fun one. The boring one probably would not have been boring earlier on this year because he didn't know how much power this guy would have. But that's Jesse Winker. He's been tremendous for the Reds so far. Good hitting park, good match, it gets I-Coff. So to me, Jesse Winker is our boring home run call for today. And the fun one, we will talk about this Marlon's talk about Adam Duvall. I think that it's a good park for hitting once again. Lester, letting him more fly balls than he used to in Duvall, as we know, has the ability to go deep, not once, not twice, but three times a night. So I would say for me, the home run calls for today, Jesse Winker and Adam Duvall. We'll see how those play out. As always, get your Dinger predictions in for the Q&A show for today. That's at 4 p.m. East on the Fandle YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter pages. Always fun to see who everyone thinks is going deep for today. That is at 4 p.m. today, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter. Tune in there and get your questions in about Night Slate for MLB DFS. Also, make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts and NFL season just around the corner. A lot of good stuff until then as well. And if you like what you hear, make sure you leave us a rating and review. If you have questions for me before 4 p.m., I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the Fandle Podcast Network at Fandle Podcast. Thank you once again to Tom Becchio for filling in for me last week. Thank you everyone for tuning in for today. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow for Tuesday's full MLB DFS slate. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandle Podcast Network.