 Even though there are 15 games on tonight's slate for a daily fantasy baseball, there is one offense that stands out well above the rest of the pack. And that is the Los Angeles Dodgers in large part because they're a course field, but it's also the Dodgers and a plus matchup. So as a result, we want to get to them as often as we can. And that does force us to reconfigure a lot of things because the Dodgers tend to carry very high salaries. And if we want to jam them in, we probably can't unload all of our salary at picture. I do think that for today, there are a decent number of lower salary options. We can feel pretty good about a picture. So we're going to break down who those guys are for today, outline my ranking to them, and then talk about other ways to help get the Dodgers into your lineups for tonight in MLB DFS. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the FanDual Podcasts Network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sonness. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire here to break down Tuesday's 15 game, main slate. I think that's the first 15 game we've had pretty much all year. We got it for tonight though. Lock is set for 7.05 PM Eastern for today. Weather notes on the slate. The first one is there is a chance of raining Pittsburgh for the pirates and the Padres. They should be okay to play, but it is worth checking back on that later on. Isolated thunderstorms are forecasted in New York for the Mets and the Brewers. That would be riskier more for pitchers than for hitters in the event of delays. I think they'll be able to play that game just to ensure they'll have to delay at some point due to rain. At Rigby Field for the Cubs and the Phillies, winds are in from center at nine miles per hour. I would downgrade batters. They're obviously not as dramatic as if the wind were higher, but still would downgrade batters for the Cubs and the Phillies. We'll dive into the pitching options who I think allow us to get to the Dodgers without sacrificing totally upside a pitcher. In just one second, the first day reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, you name it. You can find us there if you like what you hear. Leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify also. You can find the solo shot every weekday on the Fiddle YouTube page and Fiddle TV Plus on Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku as well. If you wanna watch solo shot alongside covering the spread up in Adams and run it back as well. Baseball season is in full swing and there's no better place to get in on the action than FanDuel, America's number one sports book because right now new customers get a no sweat first bed up to $1,000. It's up to $1,000 back in bonus bets if your first bed doesn't win. 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In New York, 1-877-789-HOPENWIRE, text OPENWIRE. And in West Virginia, go to 1-800-GAMBLER.net. Pitching preview for this Tuesday mainstay, Frauber Valdez comes in with the highest salary on FanDuel his salary is $11,200 followed by Kevin Galsman, 11,000. Shohei Otani is a 10-8 with Clayton Kershaw at Coors Field at 10-6. Joe Ryan facing the Braves 10-3, Andrew Abbott at 10-2. We got Zach Gallin coming in at $10,000, followed by Taj Bradley at 99. Bryce Elder is 97 with Julio Tehran at 95. You Darvish 93. Tyler Wells facing off with Andrew Abbott is 92. Ranger Suarez at Wrigley is 9,000. Then we have Brian Wu, Michael Kopeck, Garrett Whitlock, Rich Hill, Sadie Alcantara, Gavin Williams and Martine Perez as the others at $8,000 or higher for today. Now again, the key driving force for tonight in BFS is trying to find salary to jam in the Dodgers at Coors Field and luckily for us, I don't think we need to get too crazy in doing that. We have some guys with lower salaries who could conceivably post a big score for tonight and they'll require some risk-taking but I think that's okay and good on this slate. My favorite pitcher of the night is actually a guy we did not list. His salary is $7,800, which gives you a ton of flexibility and that guy is Paul Blackburn. He will be my number one pitcher after considering salary for tonight in BFS. Blackburn is at home against the Yankees and until Aaron judges back, that is a plus matchup. The Yankees active roster has an 83 WRC plus against righties with a low walk rate, which means you're not wasting a lot of pitches when you're facing them. This game is an Oakland, which is a great park factor for pitching and it's the only game of the night where they temperature lower than 70 degrees. This one down at 62. So a big gap between this one in the field in terms of how conducive it is to hitting. Blackburn does also bring some appeal himself, though it's not just the circumstances that lead us here. Blackburn has cut way back on his sinker usage this year from where he was last year. Sowing a slider again to a pitch he had previously abandoned and fewer sinkers, more sliders, always a good swap for DFS and that's translated to Blackburn as well because that slider has a 38% whiff rate on it according to baseball savants. It's helped Blackburn put up a 26% strikeout rate across his first five starts this year. And yeah, that is a small sample, but he's done it in tough spots. Blackburn had seven strikeouts against Cleveland, one of the lowest strikeout teams in the league against righties. And that game was on the road. He also had nine against the Reyes at home. So even in worse situations than this one tonight, we've seen Blackburn put up good points for DFS. It's not a lock that he does it against tonight because he is $7,800 for a reason, but we need to save salary. He does that for us without taking away the possibility of a decent score. So I think that's enough to make Blackburn my favorite pitcher on the board for tonight after considering a salary. So to me, Paul Blackburn is going to be my number one pitcher for tonight in daily fantasy over on Fandall. The number two guy for me is going to be Tyler Wells and he is also risky similar to Blackburn for Wells. It's because he's facing the Reds and we know how good that offense is right now. But I just like Wells a lot individually and his salary here is just $9,200. And I think that puts Wells in play. We're up to now an eight start sample on Tyler Wells since his fastball velocity stabilized, which is a pretty decent sample. And in that time, Wells' ZRA is 3.28. His strikeout rate is 31%. And that 31% strikeout rate ranks third on the slate among guys at any salary in their most relevant sample. And similar to Blackburn, Wells has done this in some pretty tough spots. He had seven strikeouts against the Guardians who again, don't strikeout. He had nine against the Giants. They do strikeout, but they're a very good offense. We also saw Wells get eight strikeouts against the Jays, six against the Rays as past two starts. In this eight start stretch, Wells has hit seven plus strikeouts in all but two games. So yeah, the Reds are a very good offense. They have a 105 WRC plus against Reds. And that should rise that 105 WRC plus as the sample on the young guys increases in this lineup. I've got Wells projected for 6.9 strikeouts, which is a very respectable number here. So it's not about the Reds. Don't like this matchup personally, but I think that Wells himself does enough at this salary of 92 to be a really fun play for daily fantasy. So to me, the pitching rankings, if you wanna say salary are going to be Paul Blackburn one, Tyler Wells two, because both these guys can get strikeouts or at home, they're doing enough to make you feel good about their upside for tonight's slate. The third one is going to be the riskiest of the bunch. That's Michael Kopeck. He's facing the Angels and they can torch a righty, but they also will strike out. And Kopeck seems to have figured something out recently. I like him enough for tournaments here at 87, not for cash games, but for tournaments, I'm okay with Kopeck. And the matchup here is pretty rough. The Angels have a 123 WRC plus against Reds, which ranks second best on the slate. Their 216 ISO is the highest on the slate. So we really don't wanna go here, but Dylan Cease did show last night that you can get strikeouts in this spot and Kopeck can too. We're up to seven starts on Kopeck since he basically ditched his curveball. And in that time, he has a 33% strikeout rate, the best number on this slate. His 3.26 skill interactive ERA, our second man from Verbal Des, so that's the highest salary on this slate. And Kopeck is also letting up just a 27% hard hit rate. That is a big deviation from what was happening for Kopeck last year, where he was letting up a lot of hard contact. He got by with that, but I think that this is a big shift to see that number actually come down a lot. And it does help him a lot in this tough matchup with the Angels who can really, really hurt a righty. Kopeck, I think is a guy who is ascending despite the fact he struggled with those past two starts, face the Mariners and the Rangers and those. And he did walk too many guys in both those games. And when you combine that with the matchup, that's why Kopeck is lower on this list, not in play for cash games for me. But if you told me right now, Michael Kopeck will be the highest scoring guy in this slate, I'm probably not going to bristle with that too much. That's pretty appealing here for 87. So I want to use Kopeck because I'm okay with that risk, but I also understand if you'd rather not. So to me, pitching rankings are Blackburn one, Wells two, Kopeck three, all kind of risky in their own regard. But I think to get into Dodgers, that is the way we want to play things for tonight. Let's talk about those Dodgers moving to stacks here. And again, I typically don't prioritize a specific stack because pitching or hitting is more volatile than pitching. You can typically find a place and sell elsewhere, but the Dodgers are worth it. Not only the course field is a big part of that, but matchup helps too. Bryson Connor Siebold, who has a nine start sample as a starter right now. And it's definitely a profile in that span we can stack against. He has a 5.33 skill interactive VRA with a 16% strikeout rates. And the baddable data is not overly restrictive. We saw Siebold really struggling in his most recent timeouts. He led up four homers and nine earned runs against the Braids. So they tried to get him fresher. They skipped his spot in the rotation and now he's back in there. Maybe that extra time off can help him. But it was also not the first time he's seen Siebold struggle. It's the third time he's led up four plus earned runs. And his loss in that game was fine. So it's not as if, you know, we should just throw that game out entirely. Now, Siebold has to face the Dodgers at Coorsfield. It's hard to expect the results to suddenly turn around when that's the case. So I think the Dodgers are the top priority on this slate. And I do feel good about them for today. So the Dodgers really worth selling your soul to get to you for tonight, at least in my opinion. Siebold has gotten touched up by both righties and lefties this year, which means we don't need to worry too much about platoon splits, which to me, I think makes it easier to go Will Smith, make him more attractive as a pivot off Freddie Freeman. We can always use both guys because that combination might not be super popular, given that they are the most, the same position. I always am fine with Smith in these situations, but it's easier when the opposing pitcher is not tough on righties. Also Max Muncie expected back for tonight. It's Saturday, 37. So I will worry about guys with injuries coming back if they have like a wrist injury and oblique injury, something like that. But for Muncie is a hand string. So probably just might not run as much, but that's fine for me. So I do think Max Muncie totally okay coming out the IL for tonight. Now beyond the Dodgers, we do need to kind of still be saving some salary, maybe not with Blackburn, but like in general, we do wanna be cost conscious, I would say. I talked yesterday about how I was lower on the Mariners for stacking because of how much they've struggled and that does still apply, but I really need salary savings tonight and they can get me that. So I think I need to be okay with the Mariners on this slate. They're facing Jake Irvin who has made some pretty big improvements recently. Specifically Irvin is keeping hard contact and check. He's led up just a 36% hard hit rate across the full season. But his plate discipline numbers are still lagging and I think that matters plenty as well. He has a 17% strikeout rate with a 12% walk rate. That walk rate is the highest number on the slate. So even with the good, bad, and ball numbers, Irvin has a 4.71 ERA and a 4.93 EXPECT ERA. He's done that while making seven of his nine starts at home and a good number of them in plus matchups. Now the matchup here is not bad, but it is across the country facing a neutral offense. So I do like the strides Irvin has made, but I'm not opposed to stacking against him, especially when I do so desperately need to save some salary, which I do for tonight. Now we talked about this last week, but I think we should seek out base dealers when we're stacking against the Nationals. They really do struggle to stop the running game. So obviously that's good for Julio Rodriguez, Jared Kelnick, but Tailscar Hernandez will run a bit too and Hernandez is hitting the ball a lot harder in June than he was before that. So to me, those three of the core players to build around here, they're also, I believe the three highest salary guys, so not a huge hot take there by any means, but Hernandez specifically might want to being in every verner stack that I have, just because while the stolen bases want the home run juice, I think that he brings both those in this matchup. For our third stack, when you go back to the Rangers, they're facing Matt Manning, who is coming back off the Isle tonight and he looked great in his rehab stints where he allowed no earned runs across three starts, but Manning hasn't really been a shut down guy yet in the big leagues and he's facing the Rangers who are really, really tough. So I do think they're in play for stacks here. The ERA for Manning and the rehab stand is a bit misleading. It was over eight and two thirds innings pitched, so very small sample. And in that time, he had a 21% walk rate. We did still see Manning let up a bit of hard contact when opponents put the ball in play and the strikeouts weren't really there. And that was true last year as well where Manning across 12 starts at an 18% strikeout rate. It was 15% in his two stars before he hit the IL this year. Manning last year did do a good job of keeping hard contact and check and it's possible he can do that again, but he's not a big strikeout guy and he doesn't get a ton of ground balls. That means he needs to excel in that department in order to not get totally roasted. So again, he may do that, but I think it's too soon to say officially that he will. And with this being Manning's first start off the IL against the tough opponent, I think we have some uncertainty here and that's a good thing for stacking. So I don't mind stacking the Rangers here even with how well Manning pitched in his rehab stint. I do think it still makes a lot of sense to be on them for tonight and stack against them. The big problem is that the Rangers don't give us value plays and we do need that again with the Dodgers, of course. So unless we're not using the Dodgers or maybe go all the way down to Blackburn, let's live with a lot of the mid-range guys here. But I'm actually okay with that. They've got guys like Nathaniel Lowe who is lofty in the ball a bit more recently. Jonah Himes on a Homer binge, Mitch Garver can hit Dongs. Ezekiel Duran is the guy we talked about yesterday. He can hit righties as well. Just something we had to accept going in. Like mentally go into stacking the Rangers knowing you're gonna have to pepper the mid-range with their stacks unless you're spending way down a pitcher or you are not stacking the Dodgers in that lineup. So be okay with that going in and be aware of that before you start to build your stacks. Let's finish now with things to watch. I did wanna talk about the stud pitcher just very briefly here. You could fade the Dodgers and go with a stud pitcher instead because that combo will be very tough to get to. And it would give you very different roster construction. Of those options, my favorite is Shohei Otani. I finally thought that he felt like he looked good again last week. Fromber Valdez in a low strikeout match up on the road. So Otani is my pick and I don't think it's a terrible plan of attack for today. Just not my preferred. I prefer to go to the Dodgers for stacking spend down in Blackburn but the route of Otani plus something else for stacking is also okay, just not my favorite for tonight. The Brewers could also be a source of some value for today. They're based in David Peterson who's coming back up from AAA for the Mets. And it starts, Peterson had a 5.17 expected ERA. They let up a lot of hard contact there. Peterson and AAA didn't really, you know light it up down there either. The Brewers has some lower salaried varieties. So I'm fine looking at them here if you wanna say some salaried with one offs or as maybe a mini stack with two guys, something like that. Finally, the Guardians are an okay consideration here based in Brady Singer who is starting to get back to what he was last year very slowly but he's still letting up too much hard contact. He's especially struggling with lefties and the Guardians have a lot of those guys. So Audres Jimenez especially seems to be getting back to what he was doing last year and he's $2,800. So Jimenez, if you wanna one off to help fill a position that can be pretty tough to fill or to need another guy to fill out a lineup and then Jimenez would be a guy to consider for $2,800. Let's finish up here with our Dinger calls for today. The boring one, I could go Mookie best because we all love Mookie and that's always fun. But I'm gonna go JD Martinez because the numbers from Martinez against righties this year have been honestly to me kind of shocking. I had written him off as being over the hill kind of done but been really fantastic is in a bit of a Homer drought right now but I think he'll snap out of that for tonight. So JD Martinez, the boring home run call for today. The fun one is only kind of fun. It might be cheating a little bit but Jonah Hyme, again, I mentioned that he's on a Homer binge but numbers overall against righties are very good, puts the ball in the air, facing Mitch Manning who or Matt Manning who can let up some fly balls and hard contact. So I like Hyme, I considered Nathaniel Low here. He has again, like I said, been lost in the ball a bit more but still not quite like the power stroke that you want for a Dinger call. So JD Martinez and Jonah Hyme, the two home run calls for today. If you want to have a more fun one, I think that Nathaniel Low would be the guy I would turn to there instead. That is all that we have here for today. I forgot it's Dinger Tuesday. So those are for Dinger Tuesday actually. Yeah, so let's go with Martinez and Jonah Hyme. It is a Tuesday in fact. So for Dinger Tuesday, the Dinger calls JD Martinez and Jonah Hyme. Do not forget to subscribe to the number fire daily fantasy podcast because coming up later on today, we're going to break down this week's PGA Tour event by talking to Brandon Godulla. We'll get his thoughts on the salaries over at FanDuel. The cores are playing this week and much more to get you ready for that. Five map buys subscribing to the number fire daily fantasy podcast. If you like what you hear, we must say five star rating map podcast or on Spotify and of course find the solo shot on the FanDuel YouTube page or FanDuel TV plus. If you've got any questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis. J-I-M-S-A-N-M-E-S. You can also follow the FanDuel podcast network at FanDuel podcast. I want to thank you all for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your MLB DFS live for tonight. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow to break down Wednesday's slate. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel podcast network.