 Typically, the thing that gets me excited about an MLB DFS slate is good pitching because I feel good about my ability to identify pitching. Typically it's my strength with regards to me as a DFS player. But today, I'm actually excited about the stacking options. It's a 12 game slate and I could legitimately talk up six different stacks and feel good about them and I think all of them have paths to really high upsides. So a bit of an inversion from the typical way I get jazzed about a slate and I think that should lead to a lot of fun. We're going to break down what those stacks are, how I'm ranking them, why they may be high upside or maybe risky, why it's worth that risk and much more to get you ready for Friday night. Welcome on into the solo shop. 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. You're going to break down Friday's 12 game main slate with lock set for 7 0 5 PM Eastern for today. The load of weather note on this slate, there is a high chance of rain tonight in St. Louis for the Dodgers and the Cardinals. They may be able to play through it, but I would check back on that later. There is an offense alike in that game. So we'll check back on the timing of the rain in St. Louis, the severity of it to see if they can get that game in. We'll talk about the stacking options and pitching in just one second. The first day reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the Numberfire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, we of course are an Apple podcast Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts. You name it. You can find us there. The solo shot also goes up over on the Fandual YouTube page. If you like what you hear, leave us a thumbs up over on YouTube or leave us a five star rating over on Apple podcasts. The second leg of horse racing is big three is here and Fandual is the best place to bet the Preakness stakes because right now all customers can get a no sweat Preakness bet up to $20. That means you'll get up to $20 back if your win bet doesn't win. Bet the Preakness with America's number one sports book. Just visit racing.Fandual.com for your chance to get a no sweat Preakness bet up to $20 this Saturday. That's racing.Fandual.com. Age and residency restrictions apply offer valid on first win wager refund issued in non-littrable racing site credit that expires on June 12th 2023 for restrictions applies to terms that are racing.Fandual.com gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER. Pitching preview for this Friday main slate Joe Ryan checks in with the highest salary on Fandual. His salary is $11,000 followed by Sandiel Contra at 10-4. We've got Bryce Elder and Bryce Miller squaring off elder salary 10-2, Miller salary 99. Marcus Strowman comes in at 95 with Tony Gonslin and potentially that rain game in St. Louis 93. Anthony DiSlaffani facing all Contra at 91. Then we have Blake Snell, Yusei Kikuchi, Ranger Suarez, Michael Kopeck, Martin Perez, James Paxton, Jake Irvin, Reed Deppmers and Kyle Gibson as the others at $8,000 are higher. Now of the guys in that list, the only guy pitching like a true ace so far this year is Joe Ryan and I think it makes a lot of sense to put Joe Ryan atop our list for tonight. Ryan is facing the Angels who have a 104 WRC plus against righties but they're not a low strikeout team, roughly averaged there at 23% and not a lot of walks either. The walk aspect doesn't really matter for Ryan much because he has just a 4% walk rate this year and it comes to the 30% strikeout rate. Ryan debuted a new splitter at the beginning of this year and clearly things going great with that new pitch. It does let up some hard contact but that has not killed Ryan as of yet. Both his actual ERA and his expected ERA are well under three. The twins also are starting to let Ryan go deeper in games. That's kind of been a trademark of Rocco Baldelli is taking pitchers out pretty early but with Ryan he's gone 100 plus pitches in three of his past five stars. He's gone at least six innings in every game so far this year. So I don't see a lot of reason to nitpick Joe Ryan. I think that he kind of just checks every box and makes a lot of sense. So to me, you just use Joe Ryan, feel good about that and proceed from there with your pitching options. Now I said Joe Ryan is the only one on this this late pitching like an ace. Sandiel Contra is an ace but he hasn't always looked like that so far this year. The bad at bulbate on him, not as good as it was last year when he was so dominant but he's still good and I think he could be a fun play tonight. He gets the Giants. They are a good offense against righties but they will strike out 24% strikeout rate against righties on the current active roster. That gives a boost to Alcantra and he can also get there in terms of DFS paying off his salary via volume across the path three starts here are Alcantra's pitch counts 103, 113 and 106. So as a result, I have Alcantra at the highest projected pitch count on the slate and that does matter a lot. Plus, Alcantra is still getting whiffs. He has a 13.7% swinging strike rate so far this year. It's just not always translating to strikeouts. That could change tonight against this high strikeout team. I have Alcantra projected for 6.7 strikeouts which ranks second behind just Joe Ryan. So if you want to buy low on Alcantra, I think this could be a good spot to do so. You're buying low on a guy with the second highest salary at 10.4 on the road against a decent offense. You're not buying low-low but I still think that this is a, from a rostering perspective, a spot to get Alcantra when he might not be at his peak popularity. On a lot of slates, I'm not super enthused by the value plays a picture because again values are typically values for a reason but this slate tonight is a bit different. Debtmer's salary is $8,100 and he's not perfect but I absolutely like him enough to use him for tonight. Debtmer's is facing the Twins who are a plus matchup for a lefty right now. They have an 88 WRC plus with a 28% strikeout rate which is the highest number on the slate. The strikeout portion for Debtmer's has been there this year. He has a 26% strikeout rate. His swinging strike rate is validating that strikeout rate at 13%. So the strikeout aspect of Debtmer's is a very easy sell. The reason that Debtmer's is lower salary right now is because of hard contact. He has led up a 43% of hard hit rate this year with a 40% fly ball rate and that's gotten him into trouble at times. It also could get him into trouble here because the Twins have some dangerous batters who can punish you if you make mistakes. But if you get strikeouts it may not matter as much and I do think that Debtmer's will do that. I have Debtmer's projected for a 6.6 strikeout tonight that ranks third on the slate behind Just, Ryan and Alcantra and looking at the salary you save a lot by dipping down to Debtmer's versus those two guys. So I'm not going to put Debtmer's above them because the batter ball data does matter and they are better objectively. But after accounting for salary I do think Debtmer's is at least in their tier tonight. That's good enough for me to use Debtmer's on this slate. I am more than happy to put Debtmer's in my player pool, see what happens, take the savings because I think he does enough to justify that on this slate. So to me, top pitching options for tonight will go Joe Ryan won, Sandi Alcantra two, Reed Debtmer's three and all three of those guys very much in play and well worth their salaries on Friday night. Now let's talk about those fun stacks and dig into the ones that stand out. Carl Kaufman coming up to make his debut tonight for the Rockies and luckily for him it's his debut but it's not a course field so that's good. The problem is he's facing the Rangers so it'll be a very powerful offense and I think the Rangers make sense from a stacking perspective here. Kaufman has been in AAA thus far and you can't really judge a Rockies pitcher ERA in AAA because of the park but the plate discipline numbers are relevant down there and Kaufman did struggle there as well. He had a 15% strikeout rates with a 7% walk rates. He let up a lot of balls in play with those two numbers combined. Only 40% of those balls in play are on the ground with a ton of line drives. We saw the same thing last year as far as a plate discipline numbers. The ground ball rate was a bit higher for Kaufman then but we're going to see a lot of balls in play here. He's probably not going to be super overwhelming from a ground ball perspective so I think it makes a lot of sense to target Kaufman here. We'll be stacking against him at Coors Field for sure but on this slate when he's facing the Rangers and a powerful offense I do think even here it makes a lot of sense to go at the Rangers as our top stack even on a really quality slate for stacking. The Rangers just got Corey Seeger back. Didn't do a ton in his rehab stint in large part because it was a very short rehab stint. Seeger came back a couple of nights ago and actually did have a couple of hard hit balls so I think that was encouraging despite not getting a hit. Two hard hit balls there. His injury slash illness is not like a red flag kind of thing for me so I'm fine being in on Seeger pretty much right away now that he's back. His salary $3,000, great. I think that's going to mean he'll be pretty popular for tonight but still makes a lot of sense. So sometimes with injuries you want to hold off for buying back in. I'm not super inclined to do so with Seeger. I think it makes a lot of sense to be on him from the jump. Number two stack is the Astros and they're facing a lefty and that's a big part of why I feel okay stacking them tonight because they are a very different team against lefties than righties. Against righties they lack power which means they lack upside. Against lefties the RISOs 171 which is much more stackable. They're facing Ken Waldichuk and the A's bullpen tonight so I think we should be high on the Astros here. The bullpen to the A's credit has been getting better so that's not as big of a factor anymore. I called them the Coorsfield effect before. That's not as true anymore but it's still definitely stackable. But Waldichuk himself is struggling. Across eight starts he has a 5.37 skill interactive ERA. He's walking too many guys letting up a lot of fly balls. His hard hit rate allowed is not a huge red flag but it's also not low enough to counteract the other issues in his profile. When you put that all in a blender it's led to a 7.02 ERA for Waldichuk this year. His expected ERA is 6.08. So we'd be looking to stack against him with most teams. I'm pretty down on the Astros but I think that they are still good enough to fit into this discussion. So I'm gonna put the Astros second behind the Rangers for tonight. Now when I'm doing that and stacking the Astros the one guy I will not be including in those stacks is Jose Ebreu. The numbers for him are pretty bad this year. He has a 265 expected Woba with 043 ISO and literally zero home runs. Maybe this is the night. Maybe Jose Ebreu finally breaks out of this slump that's been lasting for I think like over a year now. Maybe he finally gets it done. He double dongs gets back on track. Possible, but I'm okay missing out. I am okay not being there when that happens. I will buy back in once I see some sort of signs of life. I'm not convinced right now that Ebreu can get me a 30 point game on Fandul. And that's kind of what I want even from a value play like at least a path of 30 I'm not sure if he can get there. So I'll miss the boat the first time that he goes off. That's okay. I'm very comfortable with that. I will be looking elsewhere within my Astros stacks for tonight. Now those are the two stacks that make a lot of sense from a traditional stacking perspective. The reason the slate is so fun is that you can talk yourself into a lot of other stacks where the upside is big. It might be risky, but that's an okay trade off given the upside they present. The two best examples of this are the Orioles and the Royals. I'm gonna talk about the Orioles here because they're a better offense, but the Royals will discuss some things to watch along with two other teams that great at well from a stacking perspective. The Orioles are facing Yusei Kikuchi who seems to have turned things around in some senses. Across eight starts he has a 3.93 skill interactive ERA. He's not walking a lot of guys and his ERA is good as well at 3.89. That's why it's not a perfect stack. There was risk in this profile for sure. The problem is that the bad at ball data for Kikuchi is still very rough. He has led up a 48% hard hit rate with a 43% fly ball rate. That's why his expected ERA is 5.03 despite the good results and the good skill interactive ERA. When you're facing bad teams, you can get by with that. The Orioles I think are a good team. I think they're legitimately fun. They have a 126 WRC plus against lefties, a 191 ISO. They put the ball near a ton. I think they're kind of a bad match up for Kikuchi. Now, because he does have some good plate discipline numbers and has good results, it's possibly could mow through them or they could capitalize on the hard contact and make him pay and get us some upside for DFS. I want to stack the Orioles right now in case they do the latter there because I think that's very much within the range of outcomes. Orioles, a great tournament stack for tonight despite the risks they come with. Kind of seems like Anthony Santander is getting back into his groove if you are a longtime listener of the solo shot. You know, I've loved Santander for a long time and he's back in the month of May. Santander has a 306 ISO. He has a 52% hard hit rate with a 17% barrel rate. That's all while reducing his strikeout rates not as low as it was last year but better than it was earlier on this year. The salary for Santander, $3,000. I love him as a one-off. I love him within the stack. He's probably one of the first guys to turn to within the stack for tonight. So we know how good he can be. He's slashing it against Anthony Santander fully back on the menu, $3,000, way too low for a guy with his upside and skill set. Things to watch, we're gonna go through three more spots we could consider stacking for tonight because that's how good the stacking slate is. As mentioned, the other risky stack with some batted ball upside is the Royals. They're facing Michael Kopeck who is a talented pitcher but and that's why there's risk here and that's also risky because the Royals are struggling but his batted ball numbers both last year and this year are rough. 51% hard hit rate allowed this year, 49% fly ball rate. The Royals are just an 80 WRC plus against varieties which means we can't get overconfident here but I think there's enough here for it to be viable. So I think both the Orioles and the Royals make a ton of sense and if you want just like Dinger potential I think those are two prime spots to get it. Hey, Tint, we'll talk about that later on. It's a similar thought process with the A's with the Royals where the A's are facing Brandon Bilak who had fine numbers in AAA. His first few appearances and the majors have been fine too but from what I also don't mind the A's they've got some guys who are palatable for daily fantasy. You could do a lot worse there. So don't mind the A's filtering them in as well from a stacking perspective. Finally, if we get the all clear on the weather for tonight, the Dodgers are facing Stephen Matz. Matz lets up hard contact which broadly means we can target him. The Dodgers, you look at them this year against left E's, it kind of looks like they're struggling. Their WRC plus is just 94. I think that number is very misleading. Their ISO is 212 with a 46% fly ball rate and those numbers are very good and those numbers stabilize much more quickly than WRC plus does. So I think if we expand the sample and give the Dodgers a full year they're going to wind up being a good team against left E's in 2023. If you get the sense they'll fly into the radar whether it be because of weather or because they're on the road, maybe people are high in Matz, anything like that. I don't know why, you know, something like that. Like that could be anything leading to there being a bit overlooked, I think is attractive. They're implied to be not super, super high. So I would keep an eye on the Dodgers, see if maybe we can get them at a slight roster rate discount. If we can, I'd be very okay going there and making them a priority stack for tonight. Dinger calls for today, mentioned before that the Orioles and the Royals are in prime spots for hitting home runs. So we're going to focus on those two teams for the Dinger calls for today. The boring one, Anthony Santander. He went deep yesterday. I think he goes deep once again tonight. Facing Kikuchi, he's just back. Looking at the main numbers, the bad-of-ball data, it's all good again. Facing Kikuchi lets up a lot of hard contacts. Santander hits well from the right side of the plate. So Anthony Santander, the boring home run call. The fun prize pass Quintino doesn't have more home runs given that he does have pretty good, you know, like a pretty good ISO against righties. But pass Quintino only has eight home runs so far this year. I think that's a decently low number for the potentially has a number of fly balls he hits and stuff like that. So we're going to put him in the Dinger call section for today facing off with Kopeck. So Dinger calls for tonight, Anthony Santander and Vinny, pass Quintino. That is all that we have here for today and this week here on these solo shots. I want to thank you as always for tuning in across this week. We'll be back with you once again next week, Monday through Friday, breaking down the MLB DFS Main Slates, also talking PGA and USC for select events. To get those as they are posted, make sure you're subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. If you've got any questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. Hope you all have fantastic weekends. Good luck to your MLB DFS line of search tonight. We'll talk to you once again Monday for some more MLB DFS. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel podcast network.