 With 13 games on Tuesday's main daily fantasy baseball site, you do expect a lot of good pictures because like, you know, it's 13 games. Some guys got to be good. But then you pull up the pitching tab on FanDuel and there are like six legitimate aces here, Walker Bueller, Brandon Woodruff, Lucas G. Alito, Charlie Morton, I think is an ace personally, Blake's now back on the rides recently. Lance McCullers is there. So a lot of good options for today and some of them are in really good spots. So our job for today is to go through those pictures, decide who we like best and where we want to go most for our daily fantasy baseball lineups. But then after that, we got to decide where you find value hitter to make it all work as well. 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 Tuesday nights 13 a game. The main slate would lock set for 705 a four to night. There is one weather note for today. It is the same place we had a weather note yesterday that is in Washington for the Nationals and the Phillies. There is a slight rain risk there for today. The weather is kind of around first pitch. So I would check out the timing of that rain later on. Check out the intensity of and decide what we got to do with that one because it could stand out there, not like a priority game for tonight, but it is one of the periphery in terms of some potential one-off hitters you could go to. So check back on the weather for the Nationals and the Phillies. Coming up today, a lot of stuff here on the numberfire daily fantasy podcast feed and also on the FanDuel YouTube page. We have our PGA DFS podcast with a tour championship. That comes up 10 o'clock on the FanDuel YouTube page and posted on the numberfire daily fantasy podcast feed after that. Myself and Brandi Godulla breaking down Eastlake Golf Club. Our favorite golfers this week in a unique format where the awesome guys starting under par and it is definitely a unique challenge for DFS. So we'll talk about that later on today on the FanDuel YouTube page and then up on the numberfire daily fantasy podcast feed after that. Then at 3 30 p.m. more golf talk, Brandi Godulla will be on to do his weekly PGA Q&A. That's a 3 30 talking both betting and DFS to take your questions. I will be talking MLB DFS at 4 p.m. That is on the FanDuel YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages. So make sure you are subscribed there to get notifications as we go live. Hey football fans, the 2021 NFL season is right around the corner and FanDuel is giving fans the opportunity to get in on the action by playing fantasy football. Right now, FanDuel has daily best ball fantasy drafts that you can compete and all you have to do is head over to FanDuel.com and draft your team, pick a league with your desired number of teams, draft your squad and compete for prizes. Head over to FanDuel today and start drafting. You can also, of course, create your own private leagues this year. We had one that went live during our Q&A yesterday. So I was trying to draft while also talking about the MLB slate. It was fun. Either way, make sure you check out that at FanDuel.com. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to FanDuel.com or download the FanDuel app for more details. Pitching preview for this loaded Tuesday main slate, Walker Bueller. Shocker is the highest salary pitcher on FanDuel. He checks in at 11-3. Brandon Woodrow facing the Giants is 10-6. We saw Corbin Burns do well against him last night though. Lucas Geolito facing the Pirates is 10-2. We've got Charlie Morton in 9-6. Buddy's facing the Dodgers. Blake Snell, $94. Lance McCullough is 92. Then Hunjin Ryu and Tarek Scoobal are both $9,000. We've got Jameson Tyone, Zach Gallin, Austin Gomber, Cole Irvin, Zach Plisac and potentially Mike Miner as the others $8,000 or higher. Miner has not been officially announced for today for the Royals but he is the assumed starter for them but not officially Miner starting for today. So based on that list, you know, we've got a lot of guys in contention for the top spot for tonight. I like a lot of them. We'll talk about a couple of them here today but despite the options we have, I still think it's pretty easy to say Lucas Geolito is the number one pitcher for tonight for daily fantasy baseball. Part of his Geolito himself. We'll talk about that in a second but a lot of it is his matchup. He says in the Pirates, they're just a really rough offense in general, they have been all year but it's especially true now post trade deadline. It's really rough. Their current active roster has an 81 WRC plus which is the third worst on this slate. They've got no power top to bottom in this lineup and the strikeout rate has been creeping up too. It's up to 23% now which is high enough. We can deem them as being no longer a low strikeout team or lower strikeout team which they were previously despite being pretty bad. Add that together. It means it is a prime spot for Geolito who's been getting things back on track recently after a bit of a strikeout dip over the summer that may be due to his slider. We've seen Geolito ramp up the usage on that slider over his past six starts. His strikeout rate of that time is 29%. He has a 4% walk rate. He has good, bad at ball data as well and he's had tough matchups in there. He faced the Jays, the Reyes, the Yankees and in those three games against those three really good teams he didn't let up more than two earned runs to any of them. He had eight strikeouts three times in the six start sample. Now he is at home. He is in a plus plus matchup. I find it really hard not to rank Geolito first. Even on a slate where we have a lot of good options I still think it's pretty definitive that Geolito is number one. I'm not going to overthink this. I'm going to take the good matchup and cash myself out. Geolito is the top arm of tonight. He checks in at $10,200. That's pretty low. We can make that work for an ace. We can make that work pretty easy. So Lucas Geolito to me easily the top guy for tonight. I will put Walker Bueller second. It is a tough choice because there are a lot of guys in contention here. The matchup for Bueller is tough. The braids are no joke by any means but I like the other factors in the situation outside of the matchup a lot. Mainly the other factors are the fact that he's Walker freaking Bueller. We've talked about his cutter a lot this year as a pitch. It's a very good pitch and he didn't use it initially, went back to it in his third start, let up a lot of hard contact, scale back on the usage, but he's gone back to it now. Once the sticky stuff discussion began, Bueller decided to lean fully into that cutter and we got 14 starts since that happened. And the strike area for Bueller is 29% in that time. The batting ball data much better now than it was the first time he leaned more on that cutter. He's allowed a 30% hard hit rates and a 32% fly ball rate. He's not quite on the Zach Wheeler level of well-roundedness yet but he's getting there and that's why the peripherals are amazing. You know, you need good peripherals to be Zach Wheeler but the results have somehow been even better for Bueller. His DRA is 1.57 and again, that's over a 14 start sample. So it's not a small sample. This is 14 starts and he's been unreal, just been really good and that's why I'm fine using him here. Even what I deemed to be a tough matchup. The Braves are still a tough matchup in my eyes despite their injuries. They have a 195 ISO. They have a 41% fly ball rate. They can't hurt you. They do strikeout though. They have a 24% strikeout rate against righties. So Bueller to me can't go above Geolito because of the matchup. Matchup favors Geolito very heavily. Geolito has big upside himself and he's not a low tier pitcher. He's a very good pitcher too. But I think that it's hard to put Bueller lower than second given how talented he is. So to me, it's Geolito 1, Bueller 2. I'm very okay with Woodruff against San Francisco. The concern for me would be if he gets piggybacked again. He had a couple of starts there where he went a little bit shorter. I could get there. I could get to Blake Snell against Arizona. I could get to Lance McCullers against Seattle. All those guys are in play. But to me, I feel pretty okay putting Geolito 1, Walker Bueller 2. Now, because all the names we talked about, you know, not just Geolito and Bueller, but also Snell, also McCullers, also Woodruff, my goal for tonight is to spend up as often as possible. So that's in my mindset here. The value options are pretty thin. The one value guy I truly don't mind is Zach Gallin. Gallin is facing the Padres. They are still a low strikeout team, which is a bummer for pitching. But they're also in a rut, which gives us a window to use them here. Gallin is still going deep in games. He went 103 pitches last time out. He went 109, five starts ago, which is good to see given that Arizona has no real reason to push. We've seen the Rockies scale back some of their guys. Diamondbacks have not done that with Gallin yet. He's pitching really well. He's been leading more and more on his fastball over his past seven starts. And he has a 28% strikeout rate in that time. His skill interactive ERA is 3.84. That's up there with the higher salary guys. That skill interactive ERA and that strikeout rate. Gallin has definitely had some good matchups in that time and the ERA is not good at 4.89. Part of that's because the Padres, this same teeny station tonight, hit three home runs off him two weeks ago. But Gallin has a path to upside, which is not common among the value guys for tonight. If you want to use a value pitcher, they have to have juice. They need to have the ability to have a massive, massive strikeout game. And Gallin to me is the one value guy who does have that. I think he does enough to be worth consideration here. Gallin is very much a rotational play versus a core staple for me because it isn't had to focus on the studs. Specifically G. Lido Bueller at the top, but also field train through. Like if you want to spend up a hitter, I think that you could go to McCullers and Snell. Both those guys could work there because Snell is 94. The color is 92. I'd probably rank them above Gallin, but Gallin, at least we're considering if you are insistent on spending down, Gallin would be the top guy I would turn to there. With that in mind, let's talk about stacks. And with the stacks, we're going to try to find teams that have value players. They may not be quote unquote value stacks, but they have value guys we can use in order to get to G. Lido and maybe get some of the studs on their team. And the team that fits that to perfection, the kind of template here to me is the Jays. I was on them last night. They didn't do a whole lot outside of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. But I think they do make a lot of sense here once again tonight. They're facing Keegan Akin, which means they're facing a lefty. I'd prefer the Jays against a lefty versus a righty. Given how righty heavy their lineup is, I will take that for sure. Akin is still struggling. The velocity has been up for him over his past nine starts, which is always a good thing for sure. But in those nine starts, the numbers are still lagging. He has a 18% strikeout rates, 5.10 skill interactive ERA. His fly ball rate is 40%. That is even with a couple of those outings coming out of the bullpen where your numbers shouldn't theory get better because you're going in a shorter burst. Didn't really happen for Akin. The results have been pretty bad too. 7.44 ERA. He led up six runs to Detroit, six to Kansas City, and the blue Jays are better than both of those teams right now. This is not a good spot for Akin to be in. I think it would be wise to stack the Jays against him here. And again, they give us the advantage of having a lot of value guys on this team. We got Alejandro Kirk. We can talk about him one more time. He hit fifth, two straight games against lefties. Now, both of those came with George Springer on the IL. Springer is now back, which I'd assume would move Kirk down to sixth if he plays, but he has an 11% barrel rate this year, a 40% fly ball rate, which means he has upside these $2,100. I would hope he bet sixth or so tonight. I think that he'd be a tremendous top tier value if he were to do so. I would also check out Kevin Smith. Smith is a guy I wound up on last night just because I needed the value. He didn't really pay off there, but I think, you know, minimum salary, hit the ball really well in AAA. I need salary savers tonight. Really good offense. Facing a lefty, I do think there is enough there where I can be get behind Kevin Smith and feel good about him. So Alejandro Kirk, Kevin Smith, Randall Gritchick, couple of value plays on this Blue Jays team, who I think we can use in order to gain more salary flexibility for both our pitcher and maybe get up some of the studs on this team. For the second stack, we do need to find some value plays for today in order to get to G. Lee to Bueller. And I think that we can get some of those outside of the Jays, G of the Twins. They're facing Zach Davies and Davies has been in a big funk recently, let a four home runs to the Royals two starts ago, let a three home runs to the White Sox two before that. And he's let up seven earned runs twice in his past five starts. Most of that, those issues for Davies have come because his old days of contact suppression are gone. Davies has had less movement on a sinker over his past 10 starts, which is a pretty big issue. That's kind of the point of a sinker is to get movement and that's flashed up in the data in those 10 starts. He's letting up a 47% hard hit rates which used to be a strength of his. So it was around like 30% at one point. And when your strike at rate is 22%, you're going to run into issues if you're letting up that much hard contact. We've seen that be the case here, the Twins already team that have lost a lot of pieces. There's no Nelson Cruz, Trevor Lorna, Alex Kiroloff, but Byron Buxton is back now. That's a big boost for everybody here because it gets more guys in base, extends the game, et cetera, et cetera. And I think we can stack them and feel pretty good about it here. My hope is that Brent Rooker plays today. I feel good about him from a power perspective. He might not play because Buxton is back and they're facing a righty probably going to get Nick Gordon in there. But Rooker, a 237 ISO against righties. He's $2,700. I would love to get there if he plays. Luisa Rise is not a guy I tend to use very often. He's a pretty low power guy, but he's $2,300. So hit leadoff, can steal some bases. I really rather not is the way that I'd phrase it. I'd really rather not go here with a rise, but I'm probably realistically going to do it just because I need to get those top pitchers. I think that they're in a good spot here today. Batting leadoff. If I can lop off a value play and feel good about it, I would lop off a rise because the upside is not that great. But Luisa Rise, $2,300 batting leadoff. I will go there. I'll try not to, but realistically knowing myself, I probably will get there tonight just to save some salary, to get to Buxton, to get to Donaldson, Polanco, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, Kepler. I'm probably going to have to do it even though I don't want to. Finally, it will require some efforts to find some value. Maybe you just load up on the value blue jays, but I think we should check out the Astros tonight. They're facing Yusei Kikuchi. I like Kikuchi. I've used him a couple of times I think so far this year, but he's really struggling right now and he's facing a team that has beaten him up recently. So I think that the Astros are a fine play for tonight, especially if you're using Galen. You should prioritize the Astros for stacking. For Kikuchi, his velocity's been down for nine starts now. In that time, the strikeout rate is still fine at 25%, but it comes with a 10% walk rate and a 52% hard hit rate. In other words, when he doesn't get strikeouts, bad things are happening. And that's an issue with the Astros because they strike out just 18% of the time versus lefties. It's an absurdly low number. So they don't strike out much. And when Kikuchi doesn't get strikeouts, bad things happen. Then it shouldn't come as a surprise that Kikuchi has struggled against them recently. He's facing twice since that velocity dip. In the first one, the Astros scored four runs. Three of those were earned across five innings. In the second one, which was just two starts ago, Kikuchi let him three home runs and seven total earned runs. That was before Alex Bregman came back. So again, I like Kikuchi. I think he's a good pitcher. I just don't like him here, but I do think that it is going to be tough to stack them given the situation with the value plays. Jasmine Cormack did start a rehab stint last night. Maybe we can get him back up a day earlier than expected at $2,600, but not counting on it. So I would use Myers, Jake Myers for sure, but we're probably going to be needing to scramble for value elsewhere if we want to stack the Astros with guys like Geolita and Bueller. But I want to at least give it a shot. And if you go Gallon again, the Astros really good option here. I will be bumping down the lefties quite a bit in this spot. Normally I'm good at the Astros lefties versus lefties, at least Kyle Tucker and Jordan Alvarez, but Kikuchi has a 55% ground ball rate and a 30% strikeout rate against lefties. Alvarez did homer off Kikuchi last time, but I'm still fine bumping them down with how good Kikuchi has been against lefties. So the Astros, good to me, but I would bump up the righties and try to have limited exposure to the lefties. As far as things to watch for tonight, there are two other spots I really do like for stacking. Those are the Yankees and the White Sox. The Yankees are facing Jaime Berea, was supposed to be Shohei Otani, but the hand injury from that hit by pitch didn't let him go. Berea has a 5.53 skill interactive ERA this year, with a 13% strikeout rates. And I think the Yankees can do work against that. So the Yankees, definitely a good team to turn to. The White Sox are facing Bryce Wilson. It doesn't seem like the change of scenery has done a lot to fix in here. Still not getting strikeouts, still not getting ground balls. That makes the White Sox a standout option here. The problem with the Yankees and the White Sox, and the reason they were not in the top three is that I don't like them quite as much as the Astros, and neither team brings value among the guys we actually want to use. So that's why the Blue Jays and Twins were higher. They've got value plays I actually do like. Astros are higher because I like them more. But if you do have some salary just to burn, I do think both the Yankees and White Sox are in good spots for tonight. There are a couple other situations here. We don't know who will start yet. One of those is the Red Sox. They're facing the Rays. The Red Sox have a bunch of COVID positives right now. So their bullpen is pretty thinned out. They've lost some good dudes back there. So keep an eye on the Red Sox starter. See what they announced. The Rays could be a good stack for today. The Giants could potentially go Johnny Quedo or go with a bullpen game. Quedo got scratched last night because he wasn't feeling well. He went on the COVID IL but has not tested positive. I think he did it as a precaution. If he's feeling well enough, it sounds like he could start tonight. If he doesn't go, it'd likely be a bullpen game. So I wouldn't be jumping to stack the Brewers there just because the park is so underwhelming. But keep an eye on the situation for both the Red Sox and the Giants in terms of who they may start for today. Let's finish up here at the homerun calls 4-9. The boring one is that guy, George Springer, who came off the IL last night. He had two hard hit balls in his first game back. Great matchup with Keegan Aiken. I know this is the boring selection, but I feel like Vladimir Guerrero Jr. might actually be too boring for the boring selection. So we'll go with George Springer there instead. I consider Teoskar Hernandez. He's in a big slump, but still I knew the ball really hard. So I would not write off Teoskar, but if I had to choose one, I would go George Springer here. The fun one, I didn't know if this counts as fun because he's been hitting the ball really hard since he came back, but it's Yasmini Grandal. Facing Bryce Wilson, Grandal has been awesome all year. I should say that. It's not just recently, but since he came back, just hitting the ball so hard. So the homerun calls for today, George Springer, Yasmini Grandal, and also Salvador Perez in a good spot, but he's, you know, he's kind of the lone wolf on that Royals team. So if you want to one off with some upside, Yasmini Grandal, but also the Jorge Salvador Perez for the Royals could grade up pretty well. The official homerun calls are Springer and Grandal, but I would also say Salvador Perez, a guy you want to keep your eyes on for tonight. That is all that we have here for today on the Silo Shop. But as mentioned, a couple of things could change throughout the day, specifically with the Red Sox starter. So make sure you swing back by 4 p.m. today on the Thandil YouTube Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter pages. Check out Brandon Gadoula's PGA DFS Q&A at 330 and also check out the Heat Check Fantasy podcast on the Thandil YouTube page at 10 a.m. and up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, leave us a rating and review as well. 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 Thandil Podcast Network at Thandil Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you tonight. We'll talk to you once again on Wednesday for the next main slate. This has been the solo shot right here on the Thandil Podcast Network.