 I think it's Night's Slate for MLB DFS may be my favorite one of the entire year potentially because it is a 15 game slate. So you got a lot of ways to play things, but it is a 15 game slate where you have a lot of options. It's not like a situation where you must use this person, you must use this one, you got so many options. And I feel like at Lisa Pitcher, there are three guys in the top tier for me. And you could talk me into anyone being the top pitcher of the night. I feel good about those three being the top three, but I don't know how to rank them for sure. I have my rankings and I will go through those, but I think it's a good slate to play things the way you want to play them, go with what your gut says, and hopefully win some cash on a Friday night. So let's dive on in to get you said for tonight's MLB DFS slate. Welcome on into the solo shop. 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 Friday's 15 game main slate with locks out for 705 PM Eastern for today. The best thing of all, better than the pitching, better than the stacks is there's no rain somehow across 15 games. We didn't get a single one that looks too risky as far as rain goes. So you should be good to go to pick your favorite place and go based on that. We'll break down the pitching preview in just one second at first big day coming up here on the numberfire daily fantasy podcast. I believe they have a UFC pay-per-view coming up this weekend. So Austin Swain will break that down a UFC 257 or 275. One of the other either way, he knows it better than I do. Check out Austin's work here on the numberfire daily fantasy podcast. He also NASCAR in Sonoma a road course coming up this weekend. I'll be breaking that down later on today on the same feed. So search for the numberfire daily fantasy podcast scene wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. The MLB season is in full swing and you can play body armors free to play pick them contest with a $10,000 prize pool. Take a free swing at big cash prizes courtesy of body armor. Just answer questions predicting the rivalry match between the Dodgers and the Giants. The more you get right, the more points to earn and the more cash you could win. Get your picks in before first pitch on June 10th at 10, 15 p.m. Eastern or today at 10, 15 p.m. Eastern for your chance to win a share of $10,000. You can sign up for free the free contest at fan duo.com slash free slash contest slash body armor edge. Again, that's fan duo.com slash free slash contest slash body armor edge. Make sure to play this free pick them contest for your chance to win a share of $10,000 pitching preview for this Friday main slate Joe Musgrove is the highest salary pitcher on Fandall checking in at $10,900 fall by Pablo Lopez facing the Astros at 10 for Luis Severino is 10 to Tristan Mackenzie 98 against the A is Walker Bueller 97 Zach gallon 94 then we have a lot of guys in the $8,000 range. Those guys are Luis Garcia, Tyler McGill, Luis Castillo, Aaron Ashby, Jacob Junis, Kyle Gibson, Jose Verrios, Drew Rasmussen, Paul Blackburn and Marco Gonzalez, all those guys in the $8,000 range. A lot of dudes who are viable on this slate. But to me, I think there is a pretty clear top tier the top three guys to me. I feel good about. And in that top three, I feel best when putting Luis Severino as the top arm of the night. He is my SP one for cash games here needs air for tournaments to be given all a couple alternatives in that department. If you want to go there, let's start here with Severino. He's facing the Cubs at home and it's a pretty decent matchup. They're about league average against righties, not a low strikeout team, which means it's a pretty solid spot for Severino pitching really well this year with a 3.22 skill interactive ERA at a 28% strikeout right now. The Yankees are letting him go deeper in games. He won 103 pitches, two starts ago. He has pitched into the seventh in three straight games, and he allowed no earned runs in two of those three stars. We also did see Severino hit double digits for the first time all year in his most recent start double digits strikeouts. That was a home against Detroit. That is the best spot you could possibly ask for his picture. And it's definitely better than this one. But Severino also had eight strikeouts against both the rays and the blue jays. The results there were not as good, but he had the eight strikeouts. They were definitely there. I've got Severino projected for 6.5 strikeouts tonight. That is the most on the slate. And you get the extra safety of him being at home in a decent matchup. So for cash games, I would have Louis Severino as my SP won for tonight. In tournaments, I think I could be into Aaron Ashby potentially as a top pitcher. He's at least in this top three with Severino and Joe Musgrove, who we'll talk about in a second. Ashby is in a low strikeout matchup. He's faced the Nationals who have just a 16% strikeout rate against lefties. And that's super annoying. But everything else about Ashby is sick. Obviously, some of his data will be tainted by when he was in the bullpen, which is shorter stints. And he has thrown fewer sliders and more curveballs. It is three starts since joining the rotation for good. So we do want to focus on just those three starts where he's been a full-on starter. His strikeout rate is still 35% that time. He has a 15.5% swing and strike rate. He is mowing people down, even as he gets stretched out. Plus, the bad at ball data is unreal. 17% flight ball rate, 28% hard hit rate. He did that in good matchups. The Nationals are a good matchup, just not the high strikeout matchup we would ideally like. Overall, across the six starts he has made this year, Ashby has a 29% strikeout rate. I think he could maintain that. I've got Ashby projected for 6.2 strikeouts tonight. That ranks fourth behind Severino, Pablo Lopez, and Joe Musgrove. Ashby's salary is just $8,600, which is a nice little discount from Severino and from Musgrove. I think that Ashby could easily outperform my projection here as well. So I've got him at 6.2. Wouldn't be shocked if he exceeds that. So I'm willing to pivot for sure off of Severino off of Musgrove, especially when it's a guy with the upside of Ashby. I think he has that. So to me, if you want to value play tonight, Aaron Ashby should be that guy at $8,600. Now, because Ashby is our value play, I can go anywhere I want for this third slot for pitching, which means I get to talk about Joe Musgrove, which is great because I view him as being in this exact same tier as well. Musgrove at home against the Rockies, which is a good matchup. They have an 87 WRC plus against Rioties. They're not a low strikeout team similar to the Cubs, but they've also done a lot of power, even when you include their numbers at Coorsfield. So it is a plus spot for sure for Musgrove. And Musgrove is on a heater. He has been using more cutters and curveballs in his past six starts. He has a 1.32 ERA in that sample. We see Musgrove go six plus innings, and he's gotten a quality start in all those. Actually on six plus, I believe every start so far this year. So Musgrove, great right now. The reason I have him a bit lower than Severino and Ashby is strikeouts. The strikeout rate in this time for Musgrove is 24%. He hasn't had more than eight in any of those starts, and he hasn't had more than eight the entire year yet. So that's the one downside of Musgrove. But it's not a huge one, because it's not like he's a low strikeout guy. It's like the other guys blow him away. I have Musgrove projected for 6.2 strikeouts, just a hair ahead of Ashby, barely behind Severino. His salary is higher than Ashby's, and it's also higher than Severino. It's not like Severino overall more. So to me, all these guys are pretty even. If you want to bang the table for Musgrove, no pushback here. I think that makes a lot of sense. This is just my order preference for me. It's Severino, followed by Ashby, followed by Musgrove. But again, you do have a lot of leeway to play this how you want. So if you have a lean difference elsewhere, go with it, because this is just my thoughts on this one. This is why the projections say, and I will believe it, ranking those three in that order. Let's move now to the stacks. I think the stacks are pretty solid for today as well. And I think that top stack needs to be the Jays. They're facing Elvin Rodriguez. He's made just three starts, but the batted ball data is really rough. In those starts, he has a 45% hard hit rate allowed with a 46% fly ball rate. You need amazing plate discipline data to overcome those numbers. And Rodriguez's plate discipline numbers are terrible, but they're also not great enough to overcome it. He has a 20% strikeout rate, and we've seen the ills of that. His ERA is 9.45 in his three starts. That's even with one of the starts being where he threw four shutout innings, but a four in one, but a 10 in another. And 10 is obviously an outlier thing, spiral, so he could discount it, but the peripherals back it all up. And we saw this in the miners too, because last year in AA, Rodriguez had a 50% fly ball rate. He had a 24% strikeout rate. The strikeout rate was 22% in AAA this year. A lot of walks there as well. So he either needs to jack up the strikeouts or bring down the hard contact in the fly balls. I haven't seen a lot of reason to think that either of those things will happen just yet, which means that Jays belong at the top of our list for tonight. And I think they are a really solid stack on a 15 game slate. Now it is a bummer to stack the Jays that are a bespectacle beast. Danny Jansen stinks that he's out. That's a bummer, but means that Collins may play. He got called back up. He's been playing a decent amount against righties. And if he does play again, I'm open to him, because entering yesterday, Zach Collins had a 63% fly ball rate against righties with a 286 ISO. And then he went deep again last night. Collins didn't do great when he was down in AAA, but he did have some power. He strikes out way too much, which is weird given his collegiate profile where he was like this master eyes guy at the plate. But I still think he is a worthy value play if he does start. So I tend to love catchers a lot for some reason. Collins definitely one of them. And if he's in there, definitely a part of my blue J stacks for today. Now we talked about the Orioles yesterday. And I think that they're in play once again today. They're facing Jonathan Heasley this time. Heasley was fine in AAA. He had a 4.44 ERA there. Now we're up to five starts on him in the majors. And it's basically about the same. ERA is 4.62. But the peripherals are actually a bit worse. Skill interactive ERA is 6.29, which is because he has more walks and strikeouts so far. He's also letting up a 42% fly ball rate and a 44% hard hit rate. That's why his expected ERA at Baseball-Savant is 7.01. He did improve last time out. We saw him hold the Astros to just three runs across six innings. He had five strikeouts, which ties his season high. And he let up just two walks. And it's interesting there because he did make a tweak in that game. He threw his curveball 31% of the time. And that number that usage rate had been in the teens before this. So it's possible this leads to some sort of improvement. And it is his best pitch by the numbers at Baseball-Savant. That means the Orioles aren't the world's safest stack by any means. I still think they're the second best one we've got behind the Jades though. And I'll be high on them even if they are not a perfect option for today. I think this is a great spot to buy in Uncedric Mullins and go all out on him. Just have him in every single stack. I think that it's similar to the Jazz Chisholm spot where he had a couple weeks ago. We're like, okay, we're stacking the Mullins. I want Jazz in every lineup. I think Mullins is very similar in that regard. His salary is too low at $3,100. He struggled this year, but still a 179 ISO against righties this year with a 48% flyball rate. He's had a lot of steals. His hard hit rate is on the ascent the past two weeks. So I think that Mullins is about to go bananas. And I will get ahead of that by loading up on him here as the focal point of my Orioles stacks. I think that you should probably have Mullins in almost every Orioles stack because you have multiple routes to paying off. He's under salaried, has stupid upside. It's a great night to buy in Uncedric Mullins. And I'll be doing so for sure, potentially multiple ways, which we'll talk about in a segment later on. The third stack is also a non-thrilling offense. Some of the Orioles, it's the Rangers. I just like their matchup enough to give them a sniff here. They're facing Davis Martin, who got thrust into the rotation with Vince Alaska's getting hurt. And Martin probably wasn't quite ready for it just yet. He wasn't lighting things up in AAA. He had a 4.71 ERA there, but a 4.83 XVIP. He's letting up a lot of balls in play, about 75% of the time. And he's been around that same mark in two big league starts, but it came with a big fly ball rate. It was 44% in AAA. Last year in AAA, it was 36%, 45% in AA. So it most likely seems that we'll get Martin somewhere around 40% in terms of his fly ball rates. And if he's doing that with a ton of balls in play, he'll probably struggle. And that's what I expect personally. We see Martin face the Royals and the Rays so far. Did well against the Royals, but against the Rays, three walks to one strikeout and five into third innings. He allowed three in runs. And that was with minimal time to prep for him. Like he was announced to the starter, I think a couple hours before first pitch. The Rays didn't know he'd be the guy. Didn't get to prep against him and still did really well. So I think the Rangers can do enough here to be viable, even if they're not the world's best offense. Within my Rangers stacks, I think for multi-entry tournaments, I think I'd want to get some exposure to Ezekiel Durand as part of those stacks. He got promoted to AA, or from AA. So obviously you want to account for that in his minor league numbers, but he did have some power. There are 257 ISO, seven homers, seven steals. He hasn't looked lost at the plate so far in a small sample. Got some power, got some speed. And he was a big fly ball guy both last year and this year. So I don't think he's a must include similar to Mullins. Mullins, I think you can put in every lineup. Durand, I would say, get him at times because if people do decide to stack the Rangers, I don't expect them to be super popular, but when they do, probably not get into Durand all that much, probably bad in eighth or so, but I will happily have some when I'm there because he does have multiple paths to a good game. I like that a lot for a guy who's not likely to be in a ton of lineups. So Ezekiel Durand, a solid option within your Ranger stacks for tonight. Let's go now to things to watch. I didn't talk about Jose Barrios, but I think I could see considering him here, he's facing the Tigers. That's kind of the big selling point. They struggle against righties, but they're also a very righty heavy team or for the most part, they're righty heavy, at least among their better batters, you know, as Austin Meadows aside, most of their good batters are righties. Barrios is still really struggling against lefties, but he's been showing some life recently, 13 strikeouts last time out. It was a revenge game, so keep that in mind, but had a decent start against the Cardinals. He's been showing some life, so I much prefer Ashby among the value plays, but Barrios is at least in play, not thinking I'll get there most likely, but did want to at least mention him due to the matchup. I'm not opposed to some right-handed Reyes today. They're based in Devon Smeltzer. He's had awesome results in his five starts, but he's led up a 42% hard hit rates with a 41% fly ball rate and a ton of balls in play. That could work against him eventually, and the Reyes do get a park factor boost today as well because the temperature in Minneapolis is 78 degrees, so totally okay with the Reyes as an option for tonight against Devon Smeltzer. Finally, on good with the Mets as well. They're facing most likely Jonathan Diaz, not been announced officially yet, but it seems like he will be the guy for the Angels. Does get some ground balls. He's had good results this year at AAA in the majors, but not a big strikeout guy, had some hard contact issues in there. A lot of walks, so the Mets would be an option too. I'd rank them below the right-handed Reyes and below the three stacks we discussed, but at least we're taking a look at for tonight. Let's finish up with the Dinger calls for today. The one I teased earlier on will be the fun one, Cedric Mullins. He has six home runs so far this year. He is plus 570, two go deep at Fandall Sportsbook. Kind of into it. I know statistically that doesn't sound super enticing, but Cedric Mullins, very good player, still putting the ball in the air, still hitting for enough hard contact. Maybe he gets an inside the park home run, who can say? I like Cedric Mullins a lot as a fun one. The boring one, we've got Vladimir Guerrero Jr. It had to be a Blue J facing off against Heasley. I just think that the, sorry against Rodriguez, the batted ball profile he allows, super conducive to home runs. I didn't want to go Collins as a Dinger pick just because I'm not sure if he'll play, given he's a catcher, but I think that we've got two solid options here today with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Cedric Mullins as our Dinger calls for Friday night. That's all we got here for today. Like I said, a pretty fun slate where you can kind of play things how you want to, some good stacking options. I think three rock solid pitchers all in the same tier. Should be a good slate for some MLB DFS. Do not forget to subscribe to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcast because again, we have UFC and NASCAR two fun slates coming up for this weekend, all on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Hit subscribe, check out those podcasts. And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. 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 FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your MLB DFS lineups. Have a fantastic weekend. We'll talk to you once again on Monday for another week of MLB DFS. This has been the solo shot right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.