 Usually, if we're gonna have a tough time finding something in Daily Fantasy Baseball, it'll be pitchers because I tend to be a lot pickier at pitchers because there are just fewer guys who I think are viable for DFS who can have that upside that we need. For today, pitching's actually okay. It's more so the stacks where we run into issues trying to identify players who we want to use in Daily Fantasy Baseball. What we're gonna do today is break down the pitchers first, but then dive in the stacks, make some consolations and go places we wouldn't normally go and try to figure out how to play this slate from a DFS perspective. Welcome on into the solo shot that's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network in Numberfire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for Numberfire.com here to break down Monday's seven game main MLE DFS slate with locks set for 705, four to night, and luckily for us, there is no weather for today because I could not handle having any of the good stacks we do have available to us taken away by weather. Thankfully, that is not a concern for today. We are good to just play things pretty much straight up. Again, it's also a bit cooler on the East Coast now than it was previously, which means it's less of a detriment to stack out West than it was before. That's a positive here. All positives, they're trying to give some consolations on a rough slate. I will thank them for that for sure. Before we dive into the pitching section for today, quick reminder, we are back on air on the FanDuel YouTube page later on today, 9am Eastern on the FanDuel YouTube page talking about our takeaways from week one of NFL DFS. That is myself and Brandon Gondula breaking down the big headlines, breaking down role changes, injuries, and what you need to know heading into week number two of NFL DFS. So make sure you're subscribed to the FanDuel YouTube page. Also check out the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast because we got the NFL podcast now twice a week on Monday and Thursdays. PGA is back this week with Brandon. We'll be doing that one solo. And then I have NASCAR coming up later this week. And I think UFC back this week as well. So a lot of good stuff. Make sure you go to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Hit subscribe. And while you're there, leave us a rating and review as well. Also, the 4pm show still on. I'll be doing a Monday football preview with Ryan Williams at 4pm. I'll stick around talk MLB DFS at 4.30. So if you are a regular listen to the MLB DFS Q&As, those are still live just at 4.30 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and four o'clock on Wednesday to account for this new NFL schedule. Hey, football fans, the NFL is finally back and FanDuel is giving you a free way to get in on the action. The FanDuel High Low is a free to play fantasy football contest. All you have to do is build your scorecard with the teams you think will score highest or lowest in four stack categories. The closer you are to being spot on, the more points you'll get. Players with the most points each week, split the prize pool and a perfect scorecard will win you the jackpot. Head over to FanDuel.com today and play the High Low for free, FanDuel High Low for free, eligible districts to apply. Go to FanDuel.com or download the FanDuel app for more details. Pitching preview for this Monday main slate, Clayton Kershaw is back. He is $10,900. He's not fully back. We'll talk about that and thanks to watch. Sandiel Contra is 10-9. We have Adam Wainwright at $9,800. Hugh Darvish is 92. Alec Minoa is 9,000. We have Eduardo Rodriguez, Jake Oderizzi, Zach Gallin as the other guys that being $8,000 are higher. And again, pitching easier for today than stacks. That does not mean it is a perfect slate for pitching, but I do think that there are some pretty logical options for this week beginning at the top with Sandiel Contra. And I am broadly a fan of Alcantra, but that's especially true recently. I like his mattress in I-2, so I think that he deserves to be number one despite a high salary at $10,600. Alcantra is facing the Nationals who have been playing pretty well offensively, but on paper, this shouldn't be a good offense. They have an 88 WRC plus against righties to the full year. Their active roster does. They have a 141 ISO. Alcantra can take advantage of those numbers. We assume that they haven't magically become the world's best offense. Alcantra really doesn't have a lot to play for right now, and that can be a negative. But with him specifically, you can't tell. There is no way you'd be able to tell this dude has nothing to play for right now because he went 114 pitches last time out. He went 111 a couple starts before that, and he's doing really well in those extended pitch counts too. He's been using more sliders over his past seven starts, and Alcantra was interesting because he had been featuring his change up more earlier on this year to try to neutralize. Lefties would have given him fits in the past. That was successful. He adds in the slider now, and that kills righties. And it makes sense. We've seen Alcantra really kick things up a notch in this time. He has a 30% strikeout rate over the seven starts with a 3.05 skill interactive ERA. He is still letting up just a 29% fly ball rate. So Alcantra, with this slider usage being up and having pitches that can obliterate all hitters, he's pitching like a legit stud. And I think that we should treat him like one in DFS. Yes, 10-6 is a high salary, but I'm down to pay it personally. I think he's worth that. And I think that on a slate where we're lacking certainty, I will take the one ounce of certainty we do get, and that is putting Sandy Alcantra at the top of my list. Number two for me is going to be a risky option. Alcantra, I think is pretty safe. I like him for cash games and stuff. But it's a risky option that has upside and has paid off for us in the past. That's Eduardo Rodriguez. His ERA is over five this year. And that's not great, obviously. But I still think he has a path to a big game because he's shown us he has a path to a big game. A big part of this is the matchup. Eduardo Rodriguez is facing the Mariners. They are a big strikeout team against lefties with a 26% strikeout rate. That's the highest mark on the slate. And they also don't walk too much. And that should help Rodriguez be efficient with his pitches and not get in. He gets in issues. He gets in a mess a lot of times. And it is a concern, for sure. But he can't get strikeouts. He has a 27% strikeout rate over his past eight stars with fewer sinkers. His hard hit rate is 32%. It hasn't always worked out because the ERA in this time, even in the stretch we're talking about here is 4.95. So very similar to his full season mark. But he's had pop games. He had 46 fan dual points against the Reys two starts ago. 46 against Baltimore. 51 against Detroit. And Seattle is a plus matchup for a lefty. I think that Rodriguez can do it again. So I will run it back here and see if we can have another upside night. It could go poorly. But that's why we're going to use Rodriguez in the formats in which we care more about upside than floor, which is all of them, frankly. We don't really care about floor anywhere. But I do think that for tournaments night, Rodriguez is one of those guys who has a path to a big game. And I will use him as a result of that. Number three for me is you, Darvish. Rodriguez is the value play here, but also just a guide rank second. Darvish is higher salary at $9,200. But again, it's about the upside here. He's facing the Giants, which is why Darvish is not safe. And that's why he's not higher. It's a super tough matchup. It does help that it's at a generally good park. And you is still getting strikeouts. He's been throwing more foreseamers over his past 10 starts, which is pretty strange for him. It's typically a low usage pitch. He's been throwing it more recently, though. And I don't think that fastball usage is why he's struggling because the peripherals are still good. He has a 27% strikeout rate with a 5% walk rate. His hard hit rate is 34%. So the struggles have been there. He's let us learn runs for sure. But it also could be bad luck. It could be just because of the fly balls. I'm not really sure. But the overall takeaway from looking at Darvish's peripherals, I don't think he's broken. And he showed that last time out because he held the Angels to one run over six innings. He had seven strikeouts. He also had 12 against Arizona earlier on this month. He hasn't faced the Giants in a long time. That means that they shouldn't be too familiar with his stuff and Darvish is now a different pitcher than he was back then due to the other pitch mix. So there's a path to a good game here. I don't feel great about it. It's not a safe stack or a safe pitching option by any means. But there aren't a lot of pitchers in the same at the ceiling. I think that it's a fine pitching slate. But not a lot of dudes can put up 50 to 60. Darvish is one of them. So I will take some swipes here exclusively in tournaments and see what he can do for tonight. But to me, it's Alcantra number one for sure. I have Rodriguez two slightly ahead of Darvish and then Darvish number three. So that's a pitching. The pitching is the better part. The the shining pinnacle of how things look from a pitching perspective for tonight. Stacking is tougher. Stacking is a lot tougher. And there aren't really any spots I truly, truly want to go at. So keep that in mind and we'll see how things play out. But to me, I do think that the Cardinals are interesting. The face of Rich Hill, who has gotten good results recently, he's led up two runs or less than three straight stars. But he's benefited from some plus matchups. The tougher spot for Rich Hill is going to be tonight against the Cardinals. And I want to stack them and see what happens when he does face that tougher offense. The primary motivator for stacking against Hill is that the peripherals for him are not great. Hill has been getting less vertical break on his curveball over his past nine starts. And the strikeout rate has gone way down in that time. He has a 20% strikeout rate. He's letting him fly balls 43% of the time. And he's also got a low walk rate, which is good for him. But it also means we get more balls and play, which is what we want for DFS. One thing that Hill is doing really well right now is keeping the hard contact low. That's part of why a ZRA is good. But it's hard to tell how much of that is from the matchups facing teams that don't make a lot of hard contact. Hill has done pretty well in that department against better teams as well. So that's why it's not a perfect spot. And again, that's why the stacking landscape tonight is pretty tough. But I still think the Cardinals are pretty solid here. I am fine putting them first, given the wonkiness at stacks for this slate. It does help too that the Cardinals very easy to stack with Alcantara. Nobody here has a salary higher than $3,600. Tommy Edmond is $2,900. Yadir Molina is $2,500. Both those guys have good power numbers against lefties. Edmond doesn't really against righties, but against lefties, he's at 240. Molina is at 246 from an isolated power perspective. So those are guys we can turn to in our Alcantara lineups. And you can use them with Nolan Aronato and Paul Goldschmidt. Again, nobody here above $3,600. So they're an easy team to stack when you are going with Alcantara pitcher. And I think that that is the way I want to start off my lineups here tonight. Alcantara pitcher Cardinals as the first stack. The second stack is going against a pitcher I like. I like Logan Gilbert a lot. I think he's a very good pitcher and I will use him in DFS next year. I can almost guarantee that. I just think we might want to stack against him in this specific matchup tonight. So it's the Red Sox. It's a very tough spot. They have a 111 WRC plus against righties with a 207 ISO, which is the highest number on the slate. And they also don't strike out too much. That's the key thing. The low strikeout rate that worries me with Gilbert, because Gilbert is doing that well. He's getting strikeouts right now. He's had his current pitch mix for his past 11 starts. And in that time, his strikeout rate is 26%, which is solid. And I would take it if I were him happily for sure. 26% will work. But things go poorly for Gilbert when he doesn't get strikeouts. And if he's facing a low strikeout team, that's a concern. He's letting up a 45% hard hit rate and a 45% fly ball rate. That's why ZRA is 4.87 in this time, even though he is getting those strikeouts. If the Red Sox make contact, they should be able to do some damage. And I would expect them to make contact here. So the Red Sox are a good stacking option. Again, the reason this is not like a, oh yeah, I love this one is because I like Gilbert, don't want to stack against him. But I think in this spot, it does make a lot of sense. As far as the individual Red Sox go, I have typically targeted Bobby Dahlbeck just against lefties because the strikeout rate was way too high against righties. But he's been otherworldly recently. We've seen Dahlbeck just against righties, has 63 play-out appearances since the start of August. He has home runs in nine of those 63 play-out appearances. And more importantly, at least for me, not for everyone else, but for me, his strikeout rate is 22%. Again, specifically against righties since the start of August. His ISO is 589. It's unreal. He's still $2,900. And sure, I'll probably hit lower in the order, but Austin Swain called him Big Fly Bobby on Twitter. I kind of like it. I'm gonna go Bobby Big Fly because it flies off. I kind of like the flow of it. Bobby Big Fly as via Austin Swain, that nickname there. Bobby Big Fly, gonna be in my lineups for tonight. That may be more common. I just heard it from Austin first, but either way, Bobby Big Fly, a staple for DFS for tonight. The final stack isn't as solid as I'd like. But again, it's a good offense facing what will effectively be a bullpen game. That's the Astros. And I don't mind stacking them here. They're facing Spencer Howard to start. And Howard probably not going to stick in this game super long. He has gone 52 or fewer pitches in every start with the Rangers. And then he gives way to the bullpen. Howard is not a shutdown guy, though he's not bad. Oh, he's bad. Just not a shutdown guy. He's more middling, which is tough against an offense like Houston's. It's a similar thing for the bullpen where they're not terrible. Their ERA is 4.02 based on their current active roster. The problem comes when he stretched that bullpen out and make them last a full game. That means you're getting middle relievers going longer than they're used to, and that can lead to a lot of issues. For the most part, they've been okay. And Howard starts to have one pretty big blow up in there. But I think that the repeat blow up potential is within the range of outcomes. So I will stack the Astros today and see how things play out. One thing I'd try to do is use guys who can be good against both lefties and righties because Han Jung-young is one of the more likely relievers to pitch tonight for the Rangers. He's a lefty. Howard's a righty. And so is Dane Dunning. So I will skew towards guys who can hit both righties and lefties. That means I'd love to get Chas McCormack in there. He's $2,200. He is kind of in and out of the lineup, switching around Jake Myers. So he might not play, but if he's in there, I will be McCormack for sure. He's known for hitting lefties, but I think he hit righties too. Kyle Tucker can hit both righties and lefties. He's $3,400. I think that's under salary. And so McCormack, Tucker, two guys, I think great out pretty well based on the way I expect things to go for tonight for this Houston or this Rangers pitching staff. Let's finish up here. Thanks to watch and talk about Clayton Kershaw. Pretty big pitch count concern for tonight because he's coming out the IL. He's been out since July. He didn't have any rehab starts. It sounds like they expect Kershaw to go around 60 or so pitches tonight. And even against Arizona, that's not enough. So I'm not going to have any Kershaw tonight. I likely won't be there for his next start either, or he'll probably be closer to like 75 or so. So wait and see on Kershaw and wait until the pitch count gets up before we dive back in. Not opposed to one-offs on the Rangers. They're facing Jake Oderizzi and he's still having big issues with fly balls. He does a 21% strikeout rate, which is pretty low as well. And it's the worst skill interactive he ran this slate. Problem is they're just not a good team. So DJ Peters works, Nate Lowe works, Adelisa Garcia works. Those are guys are all options, but they're more so like one-offs or mini stacks than I want to build around this offense stacks. Finally, I can see either using Paolo Espino as a pitcher or using bats against him because his 24% strikeout rate is not bad. And he's facing the Marlins who really struggle offensively. That's why you consider him as a pitcher because, you know, it's a good matchup, stuff like that. But he also lets up a 43% hard hit rate and a 42% fly ball rate. The Marlins get a big park factor upgrade here. I am more inclined to stack against Espino and use the value plays and Jazz Chisholm, Hayza Sanchez, Luen Diaz, stuff like that. But I can't see both sides here. He could do well, but I think that I'm more inclined to get the value via those young power hitters than use Espino as a pitcher. Let's finish up here with the home run calls for today, the boring one going against Logan Gilbert again. It's a bummer. I know, but hey, this is a good hitter. It's Rafael Devers. Devers gets out of Fenway. I know it's not a great park overall, but Fenway pretty tough on lefties. So I think going to Seattle, probably a good thing for Devers. I like him here. Obviously, I'm an unshwarber, despite the fact that it's not been the best run for him. But Rafael Devers, the boring home run call for today, the fun one is in that Espino matchup. That is Hayza Sanchez. I like the powers in from so far this year. Obviously, some prospect type there as well. And it's a park factor upgrade for him. So home run calls for this Monday slate, Rafael Devers and Hayza Sanchez. That is all that we have here for today on these solo shot. But again, don't go anywhere coming up at 9am today. We're going to be breaking down our week one NFL DFS takeaways on the Fandil YouTube page posted up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. After that, search for the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed, check out that podcast, hit subscribe, rate and review it. We appreciate those of you who have done so already. If you've got questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the Fandil Podcast Network at Fandil Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you tonight. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandil Podcast Network.