 We have got a good old-fashioned pitchers duel on the menu for tonight in MLB DFS. It is the Pirates and Padres Mitch Keller taking on Blake Snow, and I think both sides of that game are delightful for DFS. We're gonna break down why I like that game so much, which side of it I prefer, and get you ready for tonight's slate in MLB DFS. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the Vanduul Podcast Network and Novemberfire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for Number Fire here to break down Wednesday's 13-game main slate with lockstep for 7.05 PM Eastern for tonight. The load weather note for rain on this slate is in Boston for the Red Sox and the Marlins. They look like they should be good to go, but we're checking back on that later to make sure the forecast has not gotten worse. Worse, the non-rain note for tonight is that there are two very warm games, both in Missouri. That's the Cardinals versus the Astros and the Guardians against the Royals. The Royals game has a first pitch temperature of 96 degrees, St. Louis 87, so upgrade both offenses. The offense is in both those games as a result of how warm it is there, temperatures, higher temperatures, good for batters. So upgrade bats for the Cardinals, Astros, Guardians and Royals. We'll talk about one of those stacks potentially being enticing in things to watch later on. We're gonna dive in, start things off by talking about that fun pitching matchup in just one second, but first, a reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast Feed wherever you get your podcasts. Our PGA DFS breakdown of the Rocket Mortgage Classic is now up over on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast Feed, breaking down my favorite plays, Brandon Cadullo's favorite plays for this week at Detroit Golf Club. Get that by subscribing to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy Podcast Feed. You can also find the solo shot over on the Fandall YouTube page and over on Fandall TV Plus for Amazon Fire, Apple TV and Roku. Baseball season is in full swing and there is no better place to get in on the action than Fandall, America's number one sports book because right now new customers get a no sweat first bet up to $1,000. That's a $1,000 back in bonus bets if your first bet doesn't win. So don't miss your chance to snag a no sweat first bet up to $1,000 when you join Fandall today. Fandall, official partner of Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission must be 21 plus and present in select states. First online real money wager only $10 deposit required. Refund issued is non-littrable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restricts and supplies see full terms at fandall.com slash sports book. Fandall is offering online sports wagering in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC. Gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit fandall.com slash RG in Arizona. 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXT-STEP to 533-42. In Connecticut, 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat India, 1-809 with it. In Wyoming and Kansas, 1-805-224-700 or in Kansas, ksgamblinghealth.com. Louisiana's 1-877-770 stop. Massachusetts gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support. In Maryland, mdgamblinghealth.org and in New York, 1-877-HOPENWIRE-TEXT-HOPENWIRE and in West Virginia, go to 1-800-GAMBLER.net. Pitching preview for this Wednesday main slate Blake Snell checks in with the highest salary on Fandall's salaries, $11,100 followed by Mitch Keller in that game at 10-8. Logan Webb facing the Blue Jays at 10-7 and Zach Efflin at 10-5. Kode Senga checks in at 10-3. Braxton Garrett coming off a massive game, $9,900. Lucas G. Alito is at 98 with Aaronola at 96. Now Christian Javier facing the Cardinals at 94 followed by Drew Smiley, Logan Allen, JP Sears and Kyle Gibson as the others at $8,000 or higher. Now as mentioned, I love both sides of this match up here between Blake Snell and Mitch Keller and I think Keller can be a good pivot. But to me, the top guy tonight has to be Blake Snell. And typically that would make me uncomfortable because a chalky Blake Snell is usually not a good Blake Snell. And if you want to avoid him at high popularity for tonight, I totally get it and that might be the right move. But my goodness is Blake Snell locked in right now. Obviously Snell had a bunch of weird starts earlier this spring, but the past month or so his velocity has been up and he's also throwing more change ups. And that change up is a disgusting pitch. It has a 46.8% whiff rate according to baseball savant. That's great for strikeouts, but it also gets ground balls and a lot of weak contact. And it's helped nullify the biggest issues Snell has had in his profile. Across his five-starred sample, Snell has just a 25% hard hit rate allowed. His slide ball rate is 30%. And in the past, he's had dinger issues. It's been a massive issue, but because of those better batted ball numbers, he has allowed just one earned run across his past 31 innings. Disgusting. In those past three starts for Snell, 12, 12 and 11 strikeouts, he has a 44% strikeout right across the full five-starred sample with more Velo and more change ups. I don't know if this change will be permanent because hitters can adjust, they can make changes and maybe the change up won't be as effective when batters know what's coming, but it's working right now. And the pirates, not a huge threat against lefties. We saw again, Braxton Garrett mowed through them last week. So I'm gonna rank Snell highest. I don't blame you if you want to pivot, but I'll be there. I know it's the highest salary guy. He can't be volatile, but to me, he's worth it for the upside for tonight. So Blake Snell, my number one pitcher for tonight in MLB DFS. Number two though, will be Keller on the opposing side of this very same game. Let's talk through Keller's appeal right now. And I think he's the best pivot off of Blake Snell for tonight. Keller's definitely taken a step back from his crazy hot start to this year, but he's still pitching well. Keller's slider usage has gone back up across his past eight starts. And he has a 3.28 skill interactive ERA in that time with a 28% strikeout rate. Now those are not Snell's numbers with a 44% strikeout rate, but it's still really good. And the bad of all data for Keller is solid as well, which is the same as it was before. Now Keller just doesn't have the same results as Snell. ZRA 4.20, he's led a four plus earned runs in four of those eight starts. And one of those starts was at home against the Yates, but we've also seen Keller show upside. He's had four really good starts in the same span as well. So he has upside. And if we're looking at a pivot off of the chalk, we want upside to keep up with that guy should he wind up doing well. The Padres are a very dangerous offense, but their WRC plus does go down to 98 against Reides. They have a 23% strikeout rate on the active roster. They do draw a ton of walks and that's the key drawback here, but I have Keller projected for 7.3 strikeouts and that is behind Snell, but it's still a really big number. So I prefer Snell, but I will pivot to Keller if need be. If you're multi-entering, get both. I think both these guys are a lot of fun to me. So to me, the top two pitchers tonight after considering a salary, after considering a stacks, et cetera, et cetera are going to be facing off with each other. Blake Snell against Mitch Keller, that game is going to be an absolute delight to watch tonight. Beyond that game, looking for a value play, I did mention before that the weather in Kansas City is great for hitting, which means it's bad for pitching and that remains true, but there aren't a lot of good value options. So I think I'm going to wind up on Logan Allen. The other consideration was JPCers and JPCers is in much better weather, very cold temperatures, but the Yankees are a lot better against lefties right now than they are against Reides. So we're going to go to Logan Allen despite the fact the weather is not great for pitching in Kansas City for tonight. The Royals, not a good team against lefties. They especially struggle with plate discipline where they have a 25% strikeout rate where they 7% walk rate. That's always going to be good for an opposing pitcher to have a low walk rate, get deeper in games and stuff like that. Allen himself has been okay in the big leagues. He's up to an 11 start sample with a 3.68 ERA. The peripherals a bit lower than that. His strikeout rate is 23%, which is fine, but he does have room for some growth because he has a 12.2% swinging strike rate, which means that that strikeout rate couldn't maybe go up a bit. We have not seen Allen face the Royals yet, so this is their first time seeing him. I think that's a plus as well. So personally, I don't adore this play. It's kind of just a value for the sake of having a value out there, but there isn't enough there to make them top value. If you want to fully stack like Mookie Betts, Genie Martinez, all the fun Dodgers tonight, I think you could justify Logan Allen as opposed to going to Snell or Keller, where it is a bit tougher, but to me, I prefer to spend up a pitcher tonight because Snell and Keller have electric profiles and are definitely fun plays for tonight. So to me, Snell won Keller two, Logan Allen the top value. Let's talk about those Dodgers and go into stacks. They're facing Kyle Freeland for tonight, so we're going to want to be there, but I think the good thing with the Dodgers, this time around is we don't need to sell our souls to get there because Freeland is a lefty. We'll talk about that in a second. Let's talk about the matchup here first. Freeland has had a rough year. He's made plenty of adjustments within this season to try to find his groove. And the most recent one hasn't quite worked than throwing fewer sliders as past six starts. And in that time, 5.90 skill interactive ERA with the 10% strikeout rate. I think we'll see Freeland pull the plug on this experiment pretty soon. So we want to look at the full season. In that time, he has a 4.54 ERA with a 5.1 to expect the ERA. He's letting up a lot of fly balls more than last year actually, and his hard hit rate is 41%. So Freeland, even if he does go back to his previous approach, wasn't really there to begin with. So to me, I feel like we can still feel good stacking against him. The Dodgers, 117 WRC plus against lefties with a 223 ISO, it's a really rough spot. So we're back here once again for tonight. But again, with Freeland being a leftie, we get a lot of key value options here. Miguel Vargas' salary is $2,600. He has a 243 ISO against lefties this year. So Vargas did not play last night with Max Muncie being back. I'd expect him to play for today. And if he does, really good value at 26. If Johnny DeLuca plays, his salary is I think 26 or 28. DeLuca and the miners have both speed and power. He's 26 as well. So both him and Vargas are at $2,600. That's a positive for sure. So it'll be tough to stack the Dodgers because you're probably not gonna get Smith, Betts, all the righties, Martinez in there. But it's not gonna be as much of a nightmare to jam them in as it was last night where we wanted to primarily get to the guys with salaries of $3,000 or higher. Tonight we have some actual value plays who are okay for today. So the Dodgers to me, still worth digging into even if we go with Snell and Keller as our top two pitchers of the night. The other high salary stack we'll have to consider as a raise and they're actually not as high salary as you may think they are given how good they've been this year but you actually got some value plays in there. So let's talk about them. You're facing Zach Davies. I think Davies is a decent pitcher but he's not pitching well right now. Which is a key distinction. Davies has led up four plus earned runs in three consecutive games. Those games came against the Phillies, the Guardians and the Giants. None of those teams are terrible against righties but none of them are as good as the raise either. Davies just letting up way too much hard contact in that time and that's not typically an issue for Davies. So it is a bit surprising to see but it's hard hit rate for the season is up to 41%. When you get as few strikeouts as Davies does that's a big issue to have a high hard hit rate allowed. The roof in Arizona will be closed. So that is a downgrade for the raise but still high elevation that's a positive for batting. They have a 129 WRC plus against righties and their ISO is 195 while playing their home games in a worse park than Arizona with the roof closed. So I think we should stack them here with a good amount of confidence and behind the raise behind the Dodgers for tonight. As far as Davies with platoon splits, he's had reverse platoon splits previously where righties hit him harder than lefties. This year has been more traditional. So I think that means we can just go at our favorite guys here, look at the overall numbers against righties, maybe don't penalize the righties as much as you typically would because Davies may longterm go back to having reverse platoon splits, but I think overall the raise of fine play for today are my number two stack behind the Dodgers. I think the third stack kind of has to be the Rangers. They're facing Joey Wentz who is letting up a lot of hard contact right now and the Rangers crush lefties. So I think it makes a lot of sense to stack against Wentz here. Wentz has been throwing more curve balls as past eight outings and it's helped him get more strikeouts because he had nine strikeouts in one game but the trade-off has been a 51% hard hit rate and that's led to a 7.36 ERA in this time despite the increase in strikeouts. Wentz has let out five plus earn runs, three separate times. He's had three games with multiple homers allowed as well and the Rangers are definitely a team that can add to that total. They have a 136 WRC plus against lefties. They've got a lot of power and a lot of their secondary batterers hit lefties better than they hit righties. So I prefer to stack the Rangers against the lefty even though it does mean we downgrade Corey Seeger a little bit. Still implied, we downgrade him a little bit. I think the net is a positive to get the other guys look to an advantage here. So Josh Young, Mitch Garver got the night off last night. I'd expect it's because they knew they'd play today. So young salary, $3300, Garver 3000. Our guy Ezekiel Duran goes deep last night. Again, he's $2,800. Jonah Hyme has had pretty good power numbers against lefties in the past. Not as much this year, but a small sample. So still feel good about him having power here. So that's a nice relief because if we're gonna go snow and Keller, we gotta dive into the mid-range on. The Dodgers that in the mid-range on the Rangers, the Rays, I think all three of those teams have good mid-range plays and some value plays too. So we can stack those teams and still have our kick needed to at pitcher as well. Let's dive now into things to watch. I can understand being into Braxton Garrett for tonight. My strikeout projections do like him. His salary is $9900, so a savings down from Keller and Snell. And he's coming off the best start of his career, the best start of a lot of guy's career. Two things kept me away from Garrett here. The first one is pitch count because he's probably gonna go 85 or so tonight. The Marlins don't like to let him go super deep right now. And he showed he can still go nuts in that sample, but it is tougher to do so, less margin for error. Second, the Red Sox have a 21% strikeout rate against Luffy's pretty low number. So it's not the best spot in that regard either. So Garrett's not totally out of play. I do still have his strikeout projection pretty high, but that's why I'd rather fork over the salary for Snell and Keller tonight than save the salary and go down to Garrett is the low pitch count and the low strikeout rate. A lot of teams on this slide go into full bullpen games. The Dodgers are doing that at Coors Field. The Blue Jays doing that against the Giants and the Red Sox doing that against the Marlins. The Royals kind of doing it with Austin Cox. I'd expect him to go 65, 60 somewhere in there. So kind of a full bullpen game. I do think we can stack the Rockies in moderation because it's the Rockies, but facing the Dodgers bullpen, the Dodgers bullpen has not been a strength of theirs this year. I would say the bullpen games, that's the one that interests me most for stacking. Did see CJ Krohn come back last night. So that's a boost for the Rockies offense, makes them less terrible and Krohn salary $3,200. So I think the Rockies are interesting for sure. And could get down there as far as a potential stack against this Dodgers bullpen, but just in general beware of the bullpen games for tonight. Finally, a potential contrarian stack could be the Cardinals. They're facing Christian Javier, who seems off right now. I like Javier a lot in general, but doesn't seem to be fully on his game right now. His strikeout rate is way down recently. He walked five batters his last time out and the weather is very hot in St. Louis. So I wouldn't go crazy here because it's a contrarian stack for a reason, but I do think the Cardinals will fly onto the radar. They do have upside given Javier's struggle. So if you want to go a bit off the radar, I think the Cardinals are the first team I don't want to turn to there because of weather and Javier's struggles. Let's finish up here with the Dinger calls for today. The boring one, I mentioned before the Austin Cox is starting for the Royals. And he's a guy who does let up some fly balls and he's facing off with the Guardians. Guardians on the team I love stacking, but I do love Jose Ramirez. Results against Lefty is not great, but he has it for power this year. We know long-term Ramirez can't hit Lefty's very well. So great weather for hitting tonight in Kansas City. So we'll go Jose Ramirez as the boring homerun call for today. For the fun one, I'm going to Esau Peretes. I think I'm going to keep on doing him against righties until we give him more respect for the power he has against righties. His ISO around 240 against righties. I know he's regarded as being like this Lefty basher, but Esau Peretes, I think he gets the job done. Facing off against Davies again, who in the past has had some reverse platoon splits. So let's go with Jose Ramirez and Esau Peretes as our two homerun calls for today. That's all we got for tonight in MLB DFS. As a reminder, if you want some PGA DFS thoughts, we talked about that with Brandon Gondula yesterday over on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast. If you get that wherever you get your podcast, hit subscribe, if you like what you hear, leave us a five star rating and also check out the solo shot and covering the spread on the Fandal YouTube page and on Fandal TV Plus. If you've got any questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the Fandal Podcast Network at Fandal Podcast. Want to thank you all for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your MLB DFS lineups. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow to preview Thursday's slate. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandal Podcast Network.