 What's going on and welcome to the solo shot. My name is Tom Vecchia with a loaded 15 game MLB slate tonight. It starts at 7 0 5. As always, this is one of the many shows on the Fainto podcast network. You can find that anywhere whether it's iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Play. Make sure to give it a like, follow or subscribe. That is greatly appreciated. And you can follow me on Twitter at DFS underscore Tom. Jim Sonnis is out this week. He's at the beginning of next week. So I am filling in for the solo shot every day at 9 a.m. here on the Fainto YouTube, Twitch, Facebook page. I will also be back at 4 p.m. for the Q and A every day in those same locations. Before we hop into things, listen up soccer fans. This season, Fainto and Captain Morgan are teaming up to give you a one of a kind soccer contest. Introducing Captain Morgan, Soccer Pickham, a weekly fantasy contest that's entirely free to play. The contest is simple. All you have to do is make quick predictions for Saturday's games this soccer season and you'll earn points for each correct pick and compete for your chance to win up to $3,000 every single week. Head over to Fainto and enter the Captain Morgan Soccer Pickham today. Must be 21 plus to participate for more details. Visit Fainto.com or download the Fainto fantasy app. Eligibility restrictions apply and don't forget to make your game day more delicious and sub in the captain. All right, so we have a 15 game slate. It starts at 7 0 5. We do have cores field on this slate and speaking of cores field, that is where we are potentially dealing with some weather issues. As always, I will recommend to follow Kevin Roth on Twitter, he's a meteorologist. He is one of, if not the best meteorologist for the DFS industry. We do have some weather issues for cores field. Should be seeing some rain throughout the entirety of the game. That's what I'm seeing as of now of course we'll wait for his update later in the day. Along with some wind blowing in for the game in Oakland, the Padres at the athletics, we have some wind blowing out. And then the Astros at the Dodgers, we have a little bit of a stronger wind blowing out. Other than that, I think we're okay. But of course, the game at cores field with weather can be pretty important. Starting off on this loaded 15 game slate, we should have had Garrett Cole on the slate, but he is now out due to COVID protocol. So we are dealing with still a loaded top tier of pitchers starting off with Walker Beeler at $11,100, Zach Wheeler at $10,700, and Sean Minaya at $10,000. Those are the three pitchers above $10,000. But I wanna start off with Zach Wheeler who is shaping up to be my number one pitcher on today's slate again, $10,700. Just a bit cheaper compared to Walker Beeler. I'll break all this down. Starting off, Wheeler has a very strong 29.8% strikeout rate this season with a 5.8% walk rate coming in with a phenomenal, phenomenal 3.12 Sierra and a 2.78% only allowing 0.58 home runs per nine. He is going up against a very, very depleted Washington Nationals team who with their current roster come in with a 24.1% strikeout rate this season versus right handed pitching. That is the 13th worst in the league. So they're around the league average and they're not a super heavy strikeout team. But more importantly, they come in with a 131 team, ISO versus righties this year. That is 28th in the league. And they come in with an 84 WRC plus versus righties. That is 25th in the league. And a Washington Nationals team that was already pretty average to begin with. And then you remove Schwerber, you remove Trey Turner from that lineup. You remove Yungo and some of their better hitters and they are looking at that much weaker. It's really just Juan Soto and Josh Bell as really their two best hitters. So really, they do not present a whole lot of danger at all. So we are looking to Wheeler for that strikeout upside for his ability to get deeper into games. He ends a very, very weak opponent. Now, I'm ranking him slightly ahead of Walker Bueller tonight. You know, the price, you know, their salaries on them is only $400 difference. So we're kind of splitting hairs there, but Walker Bueller is facing Houston. And we'll all agree that Houston is just actually a difficult, a more difficult lineup and a more difficult matchup for Walker Bueller than it is for Zach Wheeler going up against Washington, combined with the fact that we do see a little bit of wind blowing out in LA at Dodger Stadium. So, you know, we want to be factoring in everything we possibly can. And although Walker Bueller has been amazingly consistent, specifically in the second half of the season, going seven plus innings in a lot of these games, going seven, eight, nine strikeouts in a lot of these games, we have to factor in the matchup and Houston is no doubt a tougher matchup. I, of course, still like Walker Bueller tonight, I will still have some exposure to him, but he is going to be slightly behind Zach Wheeler when we factor in everything, salary, matchup, park factor, whether all these sorts of things. Now, Lance McCullers on the other side of Walker Bueller has been also very, very consistent this season, but he's not actually a pitcher. I'm going to be looking to have too much exposure to. We do see him going from an AL park to an NL park, which means he has to hit, which means he could be coming out of the game that much earlier. We do see him continuing to struggle with walks slightly this year. We do see him having some good but not great performances this season, or especially recently. So, I'm actually looking to drop down a little bit and go to a pitcher like Dylan Cease tonight for the Chicago White Sox, coming in with a very strong 29.3% strikeout ratio and 9.3% walk rate, which isn't great. We like to see that a little bit lower. He's only allowing 1.08 homeruns per nine. He has a strong 3.77 Sierra and a 3.96X flip, going up against a Kansas City Royals team. I don't think we need to be too afraid of. And more importantly, Cease has shown the ability to go toe-to-toe and head-to-head with a lot of the top tier pitchers, including Walker Bueller and Zach Wheeler when it comes to their strikeout potential. And yet Dylan Cease is only $8,300. So that's really where I'm looking to Dylan Cease, but he is clearly behind Zach Wheeler due to the fact that Dylan Cease doesn't seem to get that deep into games where he's always at 5.16 innings, where we do see Zach Wheeler going 7.2 innings and a lot of these starts. So there's a slightly shorter leash on Dylan Cease and that can limit his upside, but in reality, the matchup is very strong for him. So when it comes to the top tier pitching, really, really loving Zach Wheeler as just the clear number one tonight. He's better than, I'm not saying he's better than Walker Bueller, but he's better than Walker Bueller on this slate. All things considered, salary match of all those sorts of things. I'm then looking to Walker Bueller as a number two just because we have seen a higher level of consistency from him compared to someone like Dylan Cease. But then I actually want to take Dylan Cease at $8,300 because the savings is actually really, really good on a loaded 15 games late where we do have Coors Field. Yes, we still have weather in that Coors Field game, but we still should be looking there if it were to be playing. This is not to say I don't like going to a few shares of Shawma Knight tonight and he probably shouldn't be that popular, especially going up against the San Diego Padres. We know what kind of power they have in their lineup. This is not to say I don't like some of the other pitching options. I think Johnny Cueto is actually in a decent spot tonight, $8,100. He's been pretty consistent as of late going up against the Arizona Diamondbacks tonight. So the pitching on tonight's slate, I don't have another pitcher I'll touch on as we close things out, but the pitching on tonight's slate, I wouldn't say is very strong and the top tier is looking very, very clear. Now, moving on to the stacks on tonight's slate. Starting off, we want to be looking at the Chicago White Sox attacking Chris Bubech for the Kansas City Royals. Yes, I like Dylan Cease and the hitters from Chicago tonight. Bubech only has a 74.2 in his sample size this season. He has a very low 18.7% strikeout ratio. Strikeout rate, I should say 11.2% walk rate, which is terrible. He's coming in with a 4.96 Sierra, a 4.82 X fifth and he is allowing 1.69 home runs per nine, not allowing an overwhelming amount of fly balls nor an overwhelming amount of hard contact but he does have a 19.2% home run to fly ball ratio which is worse than the league average. He's also allowing a 9.4% barrel rate. So numbers we don't like to see as a pitcher but numbers we love to see when we look to be stacking against him. And for the White Sox, that's gonna be starting off with Jose Abreu who comes in with an awesome, awesome 316 ISO in this split. We then look to, I would say, 316 ISO versus lefties in this split. We then could look to Andrew Vaughn who has a 294 ISO versus lefties this season and then even Adam Engel at 286. I think that all these players are certainly on the table. Now, a player like Tim Anderson only has a 115 ISO this season. We generally don't look to Tim Anderson for that power home run upside but he is certainly a player that we know gets on base. He can steal a couple of bases and certainly a player you want in your stacks. For a slight injury update for the White Sox, Eloy Jimenez has recently come back from his injury that he has suffered at the beginning part of the season. He did not play on Sunday. Whether he makes the lineup today is yet to be seen but he could be a player. You look to add to some of your White Sox stacks. We know the power that he does bring, especially in a righty lefty matchup. So really overall the White Sox are shaping up to be one of, I would say one of my favorite stacks on tonight's slate, just that home run upside potential for them, the power upside that they have, really just attacking a pitcher in boobitch that gives up too many walks. He's allowing home runs. It doesn't have a high strikeout rate which means he can't really pitch himself out of trouble which is what we like to see when we're attacking a pitcher. So really a bravon at a mingle could be an option mixing in some shares of Jimenez if he does play and then Tim Anderson, really liking what Chicago offers today. They should be a very, very popular stack outside of a course field. Now just mentioning stacks and course field, whenever we have a game in Colorado at course, I don't mention the stacks at course. I think it's pretty much a given. It's kind of just an easy answer, stack the hitters at course field. Everyone should know that. Generally don't like to touch on them just because it's so clear. Everyone knows that we don't wanna be wasting time. We wanna be looking at other options that we could potentially be pairing with course field or fading some of the chalk that could be at course field. Next up, wanna be looking at the Los Angeles Angels tonight. Now I know they've been struggling in a few games recently when it comes to their run production but they are in a good spot tonight going up against Jordan Lyall as a pitcher from the Texas Rangers. He comes in with an 18.3% strikeout rate this season, 7.3% walk rate. He's allowing 1.97 home runs per nine which is absolutely terrible. He comes in with a 4.86 Sierra, a 5.02 X-Vip. He's allowing a 43% fly ball ratio and a 38% hard contact rate this year. Absolutely terrible. He has an 8.8% barrel rate. Lyall's is a right handed pitcher yet he is allowing only 1.35 home runs per nine to lefties and he's allowing a 47.9% fly ball rate to lefties and an only 10.0% home run fly ball ratio of snow. What this means is that he's allowing all of these fly balls yet a very low percentage of them are actually going for home runs. So Lyall's as I've written about a number of times on numberfire.com over the past month or so. We have seen Lyall's home run a fly ball ratio. It was at 6.7%. It was then at 7.9%. It's now at 10%. He is seeing some real negative regression because he is not gonna maintain a six or 7% home run fly ball ratio when he's giving up a 47.9% fly ball rate. So I've been buying into attacking Jordan Lyall specifically with lefties because he's been, for lack of a better term, he's been getting lucky. He can't be giving up a nearly 48% fly ball ratio, fly ball rate and so few of them be going for home runs combined with the fact he's giving up a 37.7% heart contact rate. So I am certainly looking to the angels tonight. Yes, their lineup is not as powerful as it could be with no Jared Walsh with no Mike Trout. Of course, their lineup could be that much better but going to Shohei Otani, of course, multi home run upside a fantastic, not even fantastic, a phenomenal otherworldly 383 ISO versus left-handed pitchers this year is absolutely unbelievable, a 174 WRC plus versus righties that is absolutely unbelievable. We can be looking to Max Stasi as well with a 259 ISO and a 178 WRC plus versus righties. All of these are great numbers. You can be looking to, I would say a few shares of Justin Upton as well if he does make the lineup. David Fletcher is a player that brings next to no power but he certainly gets on base. We're not gonna be getting home run upside from him but you can be looking to add him to your stacks as well. Jose Iglesias as well for the angels and more importantly for the angels. They are very, very affordable tonight. Otani of course is expensive at $4,500 but immediately after him, Max Stasi is the next most expensive player at only $3,300 and then after him, it would be Taylor Ward if he does make the lineup. He's dealing with a slight rib injury right now but if it's not him, it's Fletcher at $2,800. Two players above $3,000, everyone else is below $2,800. So we are getting some real, real value here going up against Jordan Lyles who's allowing this 47.9% fly ball ratio to lefties and a 40.5% fly ball rate to righties. So the home run potential for the angels despite a lack of offense in some of these recent games if we look back to there, some of their games at the end of last week against the athletics, they were shut out in one game only it scored one Ronnie in one of those games but regardless of that, we're looking at a pitcher who's allowing 1.97 home runs per nine overall. So yes, attacking Jordan Lyles is absolutely something I have a ton of interest in tonight and frankly from a point per dollar standpoint the angels really should be or will end up as one of my favorite stacks on tonight's like like there's no other way to put it. Another stack I wanna be looking at tonight we're gonna be going right back to one of the stacks from last night and that is the San Francisco Giants they put up a number of runs last night. I know that the Yankees, they were super chalky last night I expect them to be super chalky tonight as well. I think that they are a good option tonight. There's no denying it, they're back at home they're still at home I should say they're growing up against Alexander Wells from Baltimore, you can look to attack him. The Yankees were in a good spot last night, it's baseball I guess they just didn't get it done. I will say on the other side, kind of nailed exactly what I said about Andrew Keeney where those home runs against him could be coming through and that's what the Orioles certainly did. But what I'm trying to say is I do like the Yankees tonight, I think they're fine don't necessarily wanna talk about them too much I wanna be going back to San Francisco because they're going up against Madison Bumgarner a pitcher that is arguably having the worst year of his career. He's coming in with a 22.3% strikeout rate a 6.1% walk rate, those are both very, very average he's allowing 1.27 home runs per nine. You could say he allowed more home runs per nine last year, he did 2.81 but of course that was dealing with the smaller sample size but more importantly, he's allowing a 47.7% fly ball ratio this season which is the worst of his career a 42.3% hard contact rate which is the third worst of his career he's allowing a 7.9% barrel rate. Really rough numbers from Madison Bumgarner who for so, so many years was one of the most consistent pitchers in the league. So yes, we wanna be going back to the Giants tonight they put up a whole lot of runs last night hopefully they're gonna be doing the same tonight. I think we still can be looking to some of the same hitters tonight but we also should be looking to potentially differentiate you know I was big on Brandon Crawford last night to hit home run, he didn't get it done obviously a nice long fly out to I think it was close to the warning track in like the third or the fourth inning last night a little bit of a tease there when he was my home run call but outside of that the Giants still have plenty of options you can of course be looking to the newly acquired Chris Bryant for them you can be looking to Darren Ruff, Buster Posey anyone who cracks the lineup for the Giants I think that they are going to be a team that is not popular tonight given the context of the slate last night he was very clear just to stack the Giants as one of the most popular teams on the slate alongside the Yankees just because we were dealing with a seven game slate and the match if they had against Taylor Waddinger last night was absolutely phenomenal but on tonight's slate you know we have so so many teams right now I'm seeing seven teams or so with implied run totals over five the Rockies, the Yankees, the White Sox the Red Sox, the Cubs and then the Giants and the Brewers so yes the Coors Field game should be very popular I was on big on the White Sox you know I think the Yankees should be chalked yet the Red Sox are in a great spot going up against Willie Peralter from Detroit not necessarily going to touch on them but I do think that they are a fantastic stack today and I do want to have exposure to them but you know the Giants are a team that could get lost in the mix a little bit considering you know we have a loaded 15 game slate so that's why I'm kind of interested in going back to the Giants again today it's not like we're just going back to them for the sake of going back to them they are in a great spot going up against Madison Bumgarger really a picture that we should be attacking so those are the main stacks that I'm looking at the you know Coors Field of course is going to be in play looking to the Chicago White Sox very heavily tonight I want to be going back to the Giants tonight and then I want to be going back to the Angels again looking to attack Jordan Lyles he should be giving up more home runs than he currently is especially versus left-handed hitters so looking to the Angels tonight now another final where the final three things I want to be looking at today is one going to be starting off with a stack that I want to be looking at and then that's going to transition into the one of the home run calls and then we'll close things out with a picture to look at the Detroit Tigers tonight I actually have a bit of interest in going to the Detroit Tigers tonight going up against Garrett Richards from the Red Sox I actually think that this is a game for a potential game stack because we know that the Red Sox of course bring plenty of power and they are in a good spot their offense is of course fantastic but really Garrett Richards is not that strong of a pitcher and he's allowing too many home runs 1.42 home runs per nine to be exact this season with a very very modest 17.3% strikeout rate this season 9.7% walk rate those two things are numbers that I love to see in combination of a pitcher kind of like Chris Bubic for the Kansas City Royals a player that does not have a high strikeout rate and is allowing too many walks so he generally can't pitch himself out of trouble and then when we see him allowing nearly 1.5 home runs per nine this is a player that can get in trouble and can get in trouble early and that leads to plenty of runs we look to some of the other numbers for Garrett Richards he has a 5.02 Sierra a 4.87 X FIP this season and he's allowing a 15.5% home run the fly ball ratio his fly ball rate isn't that high overall it's only 31% and we look to his splits specifically it's at 23% versus lefties and 35.9% versus righties he's also allowing right around 37% hard contact rate versus both lefties and righties and we should see some of his fly balls increase as the season goes on ultimately he's really not that good of a pitcher and looking to attack him via a Detroit Tigers stack is something that I have a ton of interest in and really they have a number of players you can be going to whether it be Akhil, Badou, Eric Haas, Robbie Grossman all of these players are looking strong with their ISOs in the high 170s or up at 272 like Badou at who is leading the team right now combined with the fact that a lot of them have strong fly ball ratios Robbie Grossman at 49.5 Eric Haas at 45.9% and he's a player who would do at 42.3 and even Miguel Cabrera in his later years of his career a 39% fly ball ratio and a 38.4% hard contact rate so this will lead into one of my home run calls for today Jim gives two home run calls so I'm told so I'll be giving one now and then I'll give a second one on the 4pm Q&A stream so starting off the first home run call for today will be Eric Haas of the Detroit Tigers absolutely fantastic numbers like I said in this split going up against right handed pitching coming in with a 246 ISO versus righties coming off winning the AL rookie of the month for July add that to a 45.9% fly ball ratio as I said and a 40% hard contact raise absolutely fantastic yes we should be looking to attack Garrett Richards a pitcher that we have seen struggle specifically in the second portion of the season so we have a couple main stacks to work with between the angels the white socks and the giants of course we can add in course field as somewhat of a main stack but then the Tigers are really really interesting to me and then overall like I said this game is really interesting to me to do it as a game stack I think that this is firmly firmly in play Eric Haas is my first home run call for tonight we'll circle back to a second one on the 4pm Q&A of course you can find that here on the Fandle YouTube page the Twitch page the Facebook page all of those sorts of things but then next the final pitcher I have a bit of interest in today and that is going to be Tyler Molle for the Cincinnati Reds he's only $7,900 going up against the Minnesota Twins now if we look to the strikeout rate for pitchers specifically on today's slate technically Nestor Cortez for the Yankees leads away he of course has a smaller sample size but Zach Wheeler is number one at a 29.8% strikeout rate Cease is number two at 29.3 and then Tyler Molle is the number third the number three pitcher on this slate at 28.2% strikeout rate he is a phenomenal strikeout pitcher and he's even higher than Walker Beaver who's only at 26.6% this season so Tyler Molle going up against the Minnesota Twins is a matchup I have a bit of interest in again combined with the fact that Molle only has a is only sitting at $7,900 tonight and you can use that salary to pay up for a number of stacks that we could possibly want the Giants aren't particularly cheap the White Sox can be certainly expensive if you're paying up for Coors Field those hitters can also be very, very expensive and getting a Coors Field stack combined with Zach Wheeler is very, very tough to do but Molle is $7,900 and as I just showed his strikeout rate can compete with Zach Wheeler or Dylan Cease so this is actually a matchup that I'm very, very interested in for Tyler Molle going up against the Minnesota Twins now the Twins overall don't strike out a whole lot versus right handed pitching this season they're only at 22.6% with their current roster that's actually 20 second in the league so they're better than the league average but we have seen them regress a little bit with the 101 WRC plus versus righties in their current lineup which is literally right at the league average 101 removing Nelson Cruz from their lineup makes them just a little bit weaker overall and I think we have seen Minnesota post some of these just dud games when they should be in a good spot but they're against the high strikeout pitcher now so I do like Molle for his potential upside it's a loaded 15 game slate again looking at Zach Wheeler as my number one option at four pitching Walker Beeler number two and then Dylan Cease $8,300 another pitcher that you can be using for that strikeout upside in combination with some stacks on Coors Field looking to the Angels tonight looking to the White Sox tonight looking to the Giants tonight as my three main stacks combined with Coors Field adding in a few shares of Detroit hoping to get them a bit under the radar and then Eric Haas will be my first home run call for today the second one will be coming on the 4pm Q&A show right here on the Fandall Twitch and YouTube page All right so that does it for today's podcast has always been found on iTunes, SoundCloud stitch your Google play make sure to give it a like follow or subscribe you can follow me on Twitter at DFS underscore Tom and until next time, good luck in your contests.