 If you are looking for trustworthy pitchers tonight in Daily Fantasy Baseball, you have come to the wrong slate because there aren't any. And not only are there no trustworthy pitchers, there are a lot of guys who we just kind of can't use primarily due to pitch count. So we're going to break down which guys you actually can consider for today or which ones we want to cross off. And the one guy who stands out plus I think a good slate for stacking is the one consolation for tonight. Let's dig on in now and break all that down. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network and FanDuel Research. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a digital media managing editor for Fender Research here to break down Wednesday night's sixth game main slate with locks up for 6.40pm Eastern for today. Again, lock is at 6.40pm Eastern for tonight for this slate. So be sure to get those lineups in earlier than usual. For the weather for tonight, we have the slight chance of rain in Cleveland for the Guardians and the Dodgers. I think they'll be good to play, but worth checking back on that rain later on. And also with that game, it is 80 degrees humid and the wind is blowing out to center at 10 miles per hour. So I would upgrade batters for the Guardians and the Dodgers as a result of that weather. I think the over in the next game is pretty interesting and bats might not need the help there, at least on one side. So I think that will be a good game as far as the weather goes forward today. Also worth noting the second game of the Angels Reds double header is not on the main slate. So if you're worrying about that as far as timing a line is being released, stuff like that, don't sweat it. That game is not in the slate, so it is not a concern for us for tonight. We'll dive into the pitchers we can trust, the stacks I like, and much more all in just one second. First day reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, we recorded our PGA DFS preview for the tour championship. The final event of the FedExCup playoffs yesterday that is up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Via myself and Brandon Ghadoula broke down a unique format for that event, just a 30 golfer field and our favorite golfer's in each salary tier over on Fando. Also worth noting that is the free play for this week for Fando research is for the tour championship. If you want to get yourself entered in the free play, again, it's free. There are prizes to be had. What more could you want? Go to Fandall.com slash research and check out the post. It's on the main page on the top part so you can find a link to the free play in there. Fandall.com slash research for that. Get ready for the NFL season with incredible offers from Fandall. Fandall America's number one sports book right now. New customers can bet $5 and get 200 in bonus bets guaranteed. Plus all customers who bet $5 will get $100 off NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and YouTube TV. Now is the best time to join Fandall. The app is easy to use and you can bet on everything from spreads to player props and more. Fandall official partner of the NFL must be 21 plus and president select states. Fandall is offering online sports wager in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC. First online real money wager only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issued is non-controllable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply, see full terms at sportsbook.fandall.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-Gambler or visit Fandall.com slash RG in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee and Virginia. Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXT-STEP to 53342 in Arizona. 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. 1-800-9 with it in Indiana. 1-800-522-4700 visit kscamilyhealth.com in Kansas. 1-877-770-STOP in Louisiana. Visit mdgamblinghealth.org in Maryland. This is 1-800-gambler.net in West Virginia. Call 1-800-522-4700 in Wyoming. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 247 Support in Massachusetts. Or 1-877-880-Hope and Y or text Hope and Y in New York. NFL Sunday Ticket Offer ends 9-18-23. No refunds, terms and embargoes apply. $100 off NFL Sunday Ticket, not YouTube TV. YouTube TV Base Plan required to watch YouTube TV. Redemption requires a Google account and current payment, commercial use excluded. Let's dig in now to the pitching preview here for this Wednesday mainstay where we find Kevin Gauze at the top. His salary is $11,000, followed by Clayton Kershaw at $10,000, Charlie Morton coming off a big game. At home it's $10,000, Aaron Savalli with his new team, $97,000. We have Chris Sale at $93,000 with Mackenzie Gore, Jack Flaherty and Jose Quintana as the others. At $8,000 or higher. Now a lot of those names on that list are guys with bad pitch counts for tonight. We're going to go through those and thanks to watch and it's going to have a major ripple effect on this slate. As far as the guys we can trust tonight go, Kevin Gauze has a lot of flaws. He has a tough matchup with the Orioles. He is on the road. He still lets up a lot of hard contact. And despite that, I think that Gauze is, it has to be, the top pitcher on our list for tonight. Now the Orioles, again, tough matchup. 105, WRC plus against Wright, he's on the current active roster. And their strikeout rate is lower than he'd want it to be. It does help that they've seen Gauze in just twice this year, despite being a divisional team. One of those was August 3rd, so somewhat recent. And then the other one was back in May. They did get to him the more recent one. He went just four into third innings and allowed three earned runs. And that was not a great showing for Gauze, but it's a bit more of a blip because Gauze has been throwing more sliders as past 12 starts. And he does a 3.76 ERA. And that's not perfect, but his skill interactive ERA is 3.35. He has a 30% strikeout rate. He's had 12 plus strikeouts twice and has had nine into others. I don't think there's anybody on the slide who can match Gauze's upside. And I think that honestly, the median expectation for Gauze is also much higher. Even with Gauze being, again, a very flawed pitcher, I haven't projected for 7.1 strikeouts tonight. Nobody else for me tops six. So Gauzeman is a top guy. Even if it is a bit uneasy to go with someone in a tough matchup on the road who does let apart contact, I something Kevin Gauzeman deserves to be number one on our list for tonight. After him, there is a pretty big fall off where I don't really want to go at anybody. I'm going to put Charlie Morton seconds really more out of obligation than anything. His salary is 10,000, which is more than I want to pay for him given his inconsistencies. But he does have upside and he'll have a full leash. And again, that matters a lot for tonight. Morton's facing the Mets. They're a low strikeout offense. And they're probably still a good team against righties. They're the 116 WRC plus. Entering last week, Morton was in a pretty big rut. His walks were way up. He was not getting many strikeouts. But in that game, he had 10 strikeouts across six shutout innings. He came against a Yankee, so much better matchup than this one. But he had eight strikeouts, a couple of stars before that as well. So Morton can't have pop gains and they're more likely to come at home, which is where he's at today. The strike area for Morton is 5 percentage points higher at home than it is on the road. I do still worry about the walks. I worry about the matchup here. And those concerns are enough for honestly, I might not get to Morton tonight, despite the fact he is my number two stud for today. So Morton is number two. He is right there. That does not mean I will get to him. I might just go all Gosmin, honestly. But Morton does at least have upsides, which is more than a lot of the studs for tonight, can't say. For a value play, I'm going to go Jack Flaherty. He's at home against the Blue Jays, meaning he is facing Kevin Gosmin. And the Jays offense is still pretty good. But I like the length for Flaherty. Flaherty has made three starts with the Orioles. He has gone 92, 98 and 84 pitches. The 84 pitch outing was because he struggled, got bounced early. But broadly, Flaherty's been okay. He's been using more sliders. His past 11 starts and his skill interactive era is 4.56, which is not ideal, but he's getting some ground balls, getting some strikeouts. And again, the pitch count is there. Flaherty has also made seven of those 11 starts on the road and he's at home for tonight. He did have an eight strikeout game against the Astros in his first home start at Canton Yards. So pitched really well there. I've got Flaherty projected for 5.3 strikeouts tonight. That's not a big number at all. But on this slate, given a pitch count concerns, it is at least somewhat competitive. So I'm probably more likely to use Flaherty in the Morton just because Flaherty saves me $1,400. So I don't know. I think hopefully you can tell from the vibe that I am not into pitching tonight outside of Kevin Gosmin. So I think I'm just going to build around golf and then figure it out from there. Luckily, I can build around Gosmin because the primary stacks, although they're like high profile teams, all have key value plays we can turn to. We're trying to highlight those in the stacking section in order to allow ourselves to get to these fun teams while still using Gosmin as a pitcher. That begins with the Dodgers. They are facing Xavian Curry tonight and as mentioned, the weather very good for hitting. Curry has appeared in eight games since he made his first start and it's a decently large sample. His ERA in that time is 3.58, but it comes with a 5.51 skill interactive ERA. A lot of times as we discussed when you see a gap between ERA and skill interactive ERA, it's because a player is not letting up hard contact. That is not the case here. Curry is actually letting up a 45% hard hit rate with a 53% fly ball rate. So it's going to be hard to keep that ERA low with numbers like that. Strikeout rate also low for Curry at 18%. He's benefited from a good number of plus matchups, but when he was facing the Rays, tougher matchup, he let up five runs in five innings. That's the one quality team where we've seen Curry get a full start. The Dodgers, obviously a very good offense. 110, WRC plus against Reides with a 183 ISO. That is the second toughest offense he has faced thus far. I think the Dodgers will be able to get to Curry here. So to me, they are easily the top stack. They're not as far ahead of the pack as the, as Gosmin is a pitcher, but I think the Dodgers pretty much in a tier of their own as far as stacking for tonight. I think James Altman is starting to trend back up. He could be one of those guys along with Jason Hayward, maybe David Peralta, it can be a value play on this team. Altman obviously got off to that crazy hot start, but then he honestly became unusable in DFS for a long stretch. Wasn't starting part of the reason, but like was not playing well either. But since the all-star break, Altman has an 11% barrel rate. His strikeout rate is back down to 26%. He's drawing a ton of walks. So he's seeing the ball well and he can run a bit too. Unfortunately, he's not facing Noah Cindergar, which makes running a lot easier, but still, you know, we'll take it. Salary for Altman is $2,900. I am very okay with him for tonight. I think that using him alongside Hayward should make it pretty easy to get to Max Muncie, who's a rookie best as well while using Kevin Gosman as your pitcher for tonight. Number two stack is a braze and they're facing Jose Quintana. Quintana is doing a great job of suppressing our contact, and I think he can keep that up. So I would not stack most teams against Quintana in this current state, but most teams don't have a 131 WRC plus and a 237 ISO against lefties this year, which is what the braze has. So that does change the equation quite a bit. Number six starts this year, and he's doing a lot of the stuff that made him successful last year as well. His ERA is 3.03 as a result, and that's all great. He is living very dangerously, though, because Quintana is letting up a ton of balls in play. He has a 17% strikeout rate with an 8.8% swinging strike rate. He needs that hard contact number to be kind of like an outlier in terms of how low it is in order to get by. Now it could stay there, but this will be a major test. It is risky to stack the braze, riskier than usual at least just because of the matchup, but I do still think they're worth it here. So the braze to me, the number two stack behind the Dodgers. Now the less time the braze faced a lefty, they had Kevin Pilar bat seventh. Because of Pilar's defense, now good it is, he does play the entire game when he starts. Pilar has a 213 ISO against lefties so far this year. He has a 36% fly ball rate, so he's not perfect, but he's $2,100. I am very willing to use him if it allows me to jam in, you know, again, the studs. Same thing with Von Grissom, $2,200. Does have some speed, obviously. Power is not perfect, but facing the lefty should help him too. So Pilar and Grissom, both guys, I'm okay using within my braze stacks for tonight. Third stack is the raise. They're facing Austin Gomber, and we discussed this last week, but I like the strides Gomber has made throughout this year. I still think he's much better now than what he was earlier on this year. But I don't mind stacking a team as good as the race against him despite that. The big shift for Gomber seemed to happen when he upped his slider usage, and he's been doing that now for his past 14 starts. And is he already in the time this 4.4 rate? Considering half those starts to come in the course field, that's a pretty impressive number. Just not sure how sticky it is, because Gomber is still letting up, he's still getting just a 15% strikeout rate. His hard hit rate allowed is 44%, with a 38% fly ball rate. That combination of numbers doesn't typically result in a lower ERA super often. The thing about Gomber is he's not making mistakes. His barrel rate allowed is 8%, and he has not let up multiple barrels in a game since June 25th. So that's how he's kept things from being worse, and that's a credit to him, because avoiding mistakes is a skill. But we can still get good games from teams that are facing him. The Rays diminished team from what they were before. Their active roster is WRC+, against lefties down to 113, but that's still good enough to use them for stacking. So the Rays to me belong third on this list, behind the Dodgers and the Braes, and I would put the Braes above the Rays, in large part because of Park, but also respect to Gomber as well. In this roster, I'm happy to be high on Jose Ciri. He had 5th against a lefty last night, though he was 8th in the game before that. Ciri is striking out a ton, which is annoying, because it means your ball's in play, but Gomber doesn't get a lot of strikeouts. That's less of a factor here. Iso for Ciri is still very high, so as long as he makes contact, he can do damage, and he's more likely to do contact here. So as far as mid-range plays go, I think Ciri makes a lot of sense here. $3,100 is his salary. Obviously not like a value play at that number, but he's also in the mid-range at $3,100 as well. You can get out of Curtis Mead at $2,200, save some salary. Across the Dodgers, Braes, and Rays, you can find guys with upside, with lower salaries, and that does give me more confidence I can get to Gauzman tonight without totally handcuffing myself at stacking. Let's go to things to watch and run through the biggest pitch count concerns. You kind of know the red flags on this slate. The two big ones are Clayton Kershaw and Chris Sayle. Kershaw has gone 67 and 72 pitches, and his first two starts back, so I can't see him going longer than 80 tonight. And that's 80 pitches against a guardian's offense that never strikes out. So that pushes Kershaw to play for me. Sayle has gone 58 and 65 pitches and his first two starts back. His velocity was awful last time out, like down about three miles per hour from what it typically is. So I'm not going to touch him, and I would consider stacking against him with the Astros at times and tournaments of how concerning the Velo was in that game. Final guy here is Jose Urquiti. He has looked good since the return, but I have no idea on his pitch count. His max so far is 80, so all three to me of Kershaw, Sayle, and Urquiti are out due to pitch count concerns, and for Sayle, I'd at least consider stacking against him because of the low Velo his last time out. Finally, Luis Severino is on the mound tonight. He's still pretty shaky, but he's facing the Nationals. The Nationals have an 87 WRC plus against Urquiti, so I think the Nationals are fine for one-offs. If you find some guys with upside, they do have guys who can't do that there. CJA Abrams' salary is still $3,000, Lane Thomas 34, so you can potentially get some one-offs on this team, but harder to get to a full stack just because there are not a lot of guys I want to use in that lineup. Let's finish up here some Dinger calls for today. Boring one, Max Munsee. He's a lefty in Cleveland, basing off against a guy leading up a lot of hard contact and a lot of fly balls, and Max Munsee knows a thing or two about Dinger. So Max Munsee, the Boring and Run call for tonight. The fun one, let's go Jose Ciri. I mentioned before that when he makes contact, good things tend to happen, and he's more likely to make contact tonight against Gomber than he is against most guys. So Ciri, hoping he gets back on track. I think he's a good option for tonight. So, home run calls for today, Max Munsee at Jose Ciri. That is all that we have here for today for the solo shot. As mentioned though, our PGA DFS preview is posted in the Number 5 Daily Fantasy podcast feed. So go find that wherever you get your podcast to check out the stuff for the tour championship. And again, don't forget the free roll over on Fandall Research, Fandall.com and slash research to find the link for the free roll for this week's tour championship. 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 Fandall Research at Fandall Research. I want to thank you all for tuning in. Good luck to you and your lineups for tonight. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow to preview Thursday's slate. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fandall podcast network.