 We get Garrett Cole tonight in daily fantasy baseball, but it's not like the regular full Cole because as you probably know, he left his last start due to a hamstring injury after about 70 pitches. So it sounds like he is in line to start for today. The question is, will he be at full health? Because if he's not, he's 11-4 and that's kind of tough to swallow on a slate where I do want to use a lot of high salary batters. There's always a chance of re-injury, stuff like that. So there's some definite risk here on this slate. The problem is we're not gonna know the answers before lock at 7-0-5 for tonight. So we have to decide how much risk are we willing to swallow? Should we still go Cole? Should we go elsewhere? And how do we decide to tackle this slate overall? So let's dive on in and get you set for Tuesday night. Welcome on into the solo shop. That's right here on the FanDual Podcast Network in numberfire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com here to break down Tuesday's 12-game main slate with lockstep for 7-0-5 for two night. There are just one weather note for this slate. There is a chance of rainy Kansas City for the A's and the Royals. Looks like it'll roll in sometime after first pitch and could stick around all night. So that one might be kind of dicey. We'll check back on the timeline of that later on today and let you know how that thing looks. But as of right now, a little bit cautious, a little bit wary of that Royals A's game out in Kansas City. We'll talk about pitchers in just one second. But first, a football fans, the NFL is finally back and FanDual is giving you a free way to get in on the action. The FanDual NFL 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 the jackpot. Head over to FanDual.com today and play the FanDual High Low for free. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to FanDual.com or download the FanDual app for more details. Speaking of football, we get a stream coming up later on today. JJ Zacharias and I breaking down the top waiver ads heading into week number two. That'll be on the FanDual YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages. We've had that show going for past couple of years now. It's been a lot of fun. Coming back today, 4 p.m., YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter, the FanDual channels. They are out that will ever MLB DFS Q&A at 4.30. The MLB Q&A is at 4.30, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. It's at four on Wednesday because there's no NFL show for that day. So make sure you subscribe to the FanDual YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages to get those as we go live and get your questions in. Also a quick reminder, our week one, NFL DFS recap podcast is already posted breaking down the big takeaways from week number one, usages, injuries, how we're viewing guys going forward and stuff like that via myself and Brandon Gadoula. Lot of big takeaways, a lot of second tier running backs on the ascent and plenty to discuss there. So find that by searching for the Number Fired Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there, leave us a rating and review as well. Pitching preview for this Tuesday main slate, Garrett Kolchakson is the highest salary pitcher on FanDual 11.4. And again, we'll talk about him in a second. Nathan Eavaldi is 10,000 highest among the non-coal pitchers. Lucas Geolito also coming off an injury is $9,800. Jose Barrios is $9,400. Frankie Montas in that potential rain game is 93. We have Marcus Strowman and Zach Rankie at 9,000. And then Kyle Gibson and Tuki Toussaint are the others at $8,000 or higher. On this slate, I think that the question is how highly do you view the non-coal options? Because if you think you've got good alternatives, you can afford to not put coal first and give yourself some flexibility in case that hamstring does wind up limiting whether it be from an effectiveness perspective or a pitch count perspective. And I do think there is a good enough alternative on this slate to not put coal number one. That guy is Nathan Eavaldi. He is my top pitcher for tonight's slate. We talked about a couple of times recently, but Eavaldi is, he's dealing right now. He has increased his curveball usage and it's working out tremendously for him. Eavaldi has been throwing that pitch a lot over his past nine starts and in those starts, he has a 3.27 skill interactive ERA that is the second best mark on the slate behind Garakol. His 29% strikeout rate ranks third behind Garakol and Frankie Montas. He has a low walk rate. Eavaldi is still not the best in terms of the batted ball data because he is letting up too many fly balls, but it hasn't hurt him too much though. He's averaging about a homer allowed per game. And you know, we can live with that for sure. He faced the Rays last time out and Eavaldi held them scoreless for seven innings. He had eight strikeouts and allowed just three hits. He also had a 10 at strikeout game earlier in this stretch. And that's despite the fact that Eavaldi hasn't had many soft matchups. And I wouldn't classify tonight's matchup with the Mariners as being soft. They're, you know, they have won some games this year for sure. They're not a soft matchup, but they will strikeout. They have a 25% strikeout rate versus righties with a 90 WRC plus and a 157 ISO. We can work with the pitcher in that, in that matchup. And the park might help keep the batted balls in the yard though it's not the most pitcher friendly park. And again, things are pretty even this time of year given the lower temperatures out east. So we're not getting as big of a park factor advantage by using pitchers out west as we do as we get earlier on in the year. Just it's better than Boston though. So I think that's a good thing for Eavaldi. So he's not perfect, but Eavaldi is healthy. He gives us salary savings at $10,000. That's enough for me to put him above Garakol for tonight. So for me, I am going to make Nathan Eavaldi my highest exposed pitcher for today, put him number one and then go from there. I will put Garakol number two. I think that after considering the risk, considering the alternatives, he does deserve to be second on our list. And there are some guys who can save a Sour in stacks in terms of getting up to Cole Sour at 11-4. So we can make this work without totally glossing over the good hitters who are on tonight's slate. Just know that there are paths to failure here. If you are extremely risk averse, I wouldn't use Cole. The pitch count is one of the bigger concerns. Sorry, I should say is not the big concern for Cole because he went 70 in the starting left due to injury that was seven days ago. So it's not like he's no longer stretched out. Just kind of the health. The reason I'm willing to gamble on that health now is how good he has been recently. Cole's been using more sliders over his past seven starts. And in that time, he has a 36% strikeout rate with a 6% walk rate. His hard hit rate allowed is 33%. So if we're looking at just the best overall pitcher on this slate, I would say that's Garakol by a good margin. And his match up here is solid. The Orioles have good hitters, but they will strike out similar to the Mariners and they also don't walk it on. That can help Cole get over the top and be the highest scoring pitcher of the night without being 129 pitch Garakol. It is just a risk given we don't know the hamstrings health. The Yankees are fighting for a playoff spot. So they have incentive to push him out there even if he's not 100%. He's $11,400, which is pretty restrictive. And when you add it all together, I've got enough here where I will push Cole below Evaldi and I will lower my exposure overall. Like usually on a slate like this, like Cole's probably gonna be like a 60% exposure type guy. I'm comfortable going like 40 Evaldi, 30 Cole, and then spending the other 30 elsewhere. I think that's probably the right way to play things. A little bit more spread out, but I think that with the way things create out for tonight, that's probably the right way to play things just because there are more question marks at pitcher than we usually have. So Garakol to me, not number one, but still someone I want to use for today. The value play for tonight is right at $9,000 as opposed to below it because I think we're gonna need points to hang on this slate. So I'm gonna go with Marcus Strowman as the quote unquote value at $9,000. And Strowman isn't typically great for DFS because he doesn't get enough strikeouts, but he's getting more strikeouts recently, which allows us to appreciate how good of a real world pitcher he is. That's kind of the shame of DFS. I love DFS, but like it does make us under appreciate guys like Strowman, like Adam Wainwright, Zach Gray in the past stuff like that. It is kind of a bummer, Kyle Hendricks as well. But I think with Strowman, I think he's doing enough recently where we can use him in DFS as well. He's been cutting back on his sinkers over his past six starts. And as you know, sinkers are bad for DFS. They're generally low strikeout pitches. So lowering the usage there is a good thing for Strowman and it's working out. His strikeout rate is up to 26% over that seven start sample. He had nine strikeouts in one start, eight in another, and seven in his most recent outing. For those, it was six starts, not seven, for those six starts were on the road for Strowman as well. He's gotten those strikeouts without sacrificing his bad at ball data. Because sometimes we'll see guys increase the strikeout rate, but the losses elsewhere negate that. But Strowman still has a 28% fly ball right a lot in this time. That's a very good number. So if he can get you nine strikeouts, while still being the good real world pitcher that Marcus Strowman is, that's fully in play for DFS. He's facing the Cardinals tonight. I stacked them last night. So I obviously have, there are some guys in this offense, I respect, but they're not as big of a force against righties as the lefties. They're WRC plus versus righties goes down to 90. They have a 151 ISO. I think we can use a pitcher against that. Strowman does get to 40 Fando points pretty consistently. That doesn't matter. Like I don't want 40. I don't want a floor. I want a ceiling. I do think that Strowman can get there. He had 55 not that long ago. I think he has upside, especially with his strikeouts being on the rise. So I'll put him number three for tonight. But I do think he needs to be behind Eavaldi and Cole do the upside. We'll also run through one more guy in things to watch. So it's Eavaldi one, Cole two, Strowman three. We'll talk about Frankie Montas in things to watch. Before that though, let's talk about stacks. And the stacks are amazing tonight. Like my goodness, there are good stacks on this slate. I think the most fun one is the Yankees. They're facing Alexander Wells. Wells has the exact profile we want to stack against. He has had five longer outings with the Orioles so far. In those outings, he has a 4.99 skill interactive ERA with an 18% strikeout rate. He has led up a 54% hard hit rate and a 40% fly ball rate. You could not build a better stacking profile for us except for maybe a slightly lower strikeout rate. The results have reflected that. His ERA is 8.00. It is a five outing sample with just 18 innings, but we saw this in triple A as well because there Wells had a low strikeout rates, led up a lot of fly balls. And it's starting to bite in out of these facing big league hitters. Pretty sure Jean-Carlo Stanton counts as being a big league hitter. That could be an issue for tonight. I think that we can load up on the Yankees here. Feel very good about them. I think that they are the number one stack. And although we have a lot of good stack for tonight, I feel very confident in saying the Yankees are the number one option for today. The one downside of the Yankees is that the salaries here are pretty restrictive. If you want to get access to this team, you're gonna have to try to find some guys, maybe lower in the order, who have a path to upside. Joey Gallo, $3,000, he is striking out a ton. And it's really, really annoying. But again, Wells is a lower strikeout guy. He, you know, I don't think he's someone who's probably gonna overpower a bunch of lefties. So I do think that Gallo, despite things being really, really rough with the Yankees, is still someone who wanna turn two for tonight. Gary Sanchez, Kali Gashioka, whoever catches for the Yankees tonight, both those guys could be in play as well. So we have to be okay, making some constellations, going at guys who may not be in the best form right now, specifically with Gallo. But I think with Gallo, given the power he's shown, lefty on lefty, you know, it's still there, just needs to make contact. And I think he could for tonight. So Gallo, worth taking that risk at $3,000 and seeing if he can actually run into one and put it in the seats. Another round of statements of salary, outside of Gallo, Sanchez, Kali Gashioka is by stacking the Phillies. Obviously Bryce Harper excluded there, but the rest of the guys in the stack we wanna use all super low salary. They're facing Adrian Sampson. Sampson hasn't been bad this year from a results perspective, but there are some red flags in his profile. He's had six outings in the majors. His ERA is 2.20, which is very good, good for him. I just don't expect that to stick around. Sampson has a lot of the elements that we wanna stack against. He has a 19% strikeout rate. That number was 17% in AAA. He has led up a 46% hard hit rate. And that's likely why his ERA in AAA was 4.96. Plus, Sampson doesn't walk guys, which means he lets them more balls in play. And it hasn't bit him yet. He did let up a couple of homers to the Reds last week, but the underlying data says it's probably gonna bite him eventually. His expected ERA at Baseball-Savante is 5.72. That's why being mostly a longer reliever and now he's being asked to be a starter, be stretched out, pitch longer in games, lose some velocity. I don't think that transition will go super well. The Phillies offense isn't deep, I wouldn't say. I think they've got a lot of issues right now, given all their injuries, but they still got some guys who could hit. And not all of them are high salaried, which makes them really fun for tonight. Specifically, there is a three-player stack to go with on the Phillies that can really move the needle in terms of salary. Those guys are Odebel Herrera, Brad Miller, and D.D. Gregorius. All three guys should hit in the top six spots in the lineup. They all have an ISO of at least 176 versus righties. None of them are big strikeout guys, and they're all $2,500 or lower. So you can get coal with Harper and stack the Phillies, and it not be that terrible, you're not gonna get Harper plus an Astro stack or Harper plus a Yankee stack, but if you want to move the needle a lot, Gregorius, Miller, Herrera are the guys you wanna turn to, and they are going to be a staple for me tonight. Even in the Evaldi lineups and the Strowman lineups, I'm still gonna stack the Phillies because it's going to give me a lot more flexibility to spend up with my second stack. Finally, the third stacker is one I alluded to before, the Astros facing Jordan Lyles tonight, and it seems like Lyles is kinda like the sacrificial lamb for the Rangers. He's not pitching well, but he's going deep in games, and they're just kinda having a neat innings. But either way, we can easily stack against him here. Lyles had a curveball he was using earlier on this year that was jacking up his ground ball rate. For whatever reason, he's gone away from that pitch. He's up to 11 starts with the curveball usage going back down, and his ERA is 6.06. He's out of five plus runs in five of 11 outings, and the peripherals are pretty rough too. He's letting up a 45% our hit rates and a 42% flight ball rate. His strikeout rate is 18%, and you're putting those numbers up against the Astros, which is not likely to end super well. They have a 113 WRC plus versus righties. They're fully healthy once again, so I think we should be high on the Astros here. And against Lyles, we can view righties and lefties as being similarly favorable because lefties do have a higher flight ball rate, but Lyles doesn't keep either side in the ground. He also tends to let up more hard contact to righties, which is good for Alex Pregman. Pregman starting to heat up. He had a home run last night, but I think that was pretty predictable, not just the one off, because he has a 49% hard hit rate since he returned from the IL compared to a 40% rate for the full year. Strikeout rate is 7% since he returned, so Alex Pregman, pre-injury, was a pretty low-power guy, and all of a sudden, he's turning it on. So I'll be high on Pregman here for sure. I know the salary is very high, but I think it's worth it. We can help offset that if Jose Ciri starts once again. Not positive that'll happen, given how hesitant they were to start Ciri once they initially called him up, but if he does play, we should use him. He was awesome last night, minimum salary. If he's in there, let's go. He has McCormick also, still someone I wanted to turn to in terms of value plays on the Astros as well. Let's finish up here with things to watch. I mentioned Frankie Montas before. He is the one other pitcher I'm considering for today. He's facing the Royals, who are not a high-strikeout team, and Montas is on the road. That's why he's fourth. But he can get strikeouts. He has a 30% strikeout rate in 12 starts, with more splitters. That's the second highest mark on the slate behind Cole. He's $9,300, so I kind of think that it's a night where I'm okay, spreading out my exposure to pitcher more than I usually do. Putting Montas in there, putting Strowman, Cole, Evaldi, having exposure to all four and seeing what happens. That's not how I try to keep things at three usually, but I do think for tonight, four is fully in play. Montas will be fourth. Again, check the weather for that game, because it's not just Montas, but also I do want to stack the A's. They're facing Jackson Kowar. They, I think, are a team that could do well against him, because Kowar, the strikeouts he got in triple A are starting to follow him now. He has a 26% clip in the majors. That's why the A's were not in the top three, but he's still letting up a lot of fly balls and a lot of hard contact. We know the A's, specifically Matt Olson, can bring that sauce for sure. It's not the best park for offense, but it's still an upgrade over Oakland for sure. So I think they're a good second tier stack that may fly a bit under the radar relative to the others, especially with the Yankees and the Astros being super popular for stacking in general. I think that could help with the A's here. So if we get the all clear on the weather, check out Montasa pitcher, check out the A's for stacking, and feel good about both those options. I am uncertain about how I want to view Haysus Lazardo for tonight. He's gotten a lot more strikeouts recently, and I still believe in Lazardo's talent, despite how rough things have been this entire year. Lazardo's had eight strikeouts in two of the past three starts, but his approach hasn't changed that much in that time, which means I'm not sure if it'll stick. Like he's had the same approach for about six or seven starts now, and the early part of that window was pretty rough. So I'm a bit nervous about how well Lazardo has pitched recently, which means that I can't get two eye on the Nationals, but I do still think that it's worthwhile to get some Nationals exposure in case we see early August or pre-trade Lazardo come back up, which I think is very, very possible. It could happen. And that's here. Just not going to go too crazy due to what Lazardo has shown the past couple of starts. Home run calls for two nights. I had a hard time choosing the boring one because like we've got the Yankees, got the Astros. I think Matt Olson's a good one for a boring home run call as well. I'm going to wind up going Giancarlo Stanton just because we get him against a low strikeout pitcher who lets up a lot of fly balls and a lot of hard contact. Really hard for me to say no to that. So the boring one will be Giancarlo Stanton, but there were a lot of good contenders there. Matt Olson is someone I would check out if you're looking like for a home run bet. I think that Matt Olson probably grades out pretty well there. The fun one, going back to the Phillies, D.D. Gregorius hits a lot of fly balls, facing Samson who should let up a lot of balls in play. Gregorius, low salary, same with Miller, same with Herrera, but I think that's a good bet to go yard for tonight. So the home run calls for this Tuesday Slate are going to be Giancarlo Stanton and D.D. Gregorius. And again, Matt Olson also in that boring discussion for me as well. That is all that we have here for today on The Solo Shop. And again, more baseball talk coming up later on. We have the MLB Q&A. That is at 430. We have the Waverwire Q&A with myself and JJ Zacharias. And at four on the Fando YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter pages, go subscribe there. Come back at four with your questions in hand as well. PGA Podcast this week, Brandon Kudula is flying solo. That podcast either up now or should be up pretty soon. Previewing this week's PGA event, I will be back on that after baseball is over. A little busy right now. So Brandon's flying solo. I think he's doing it for the Ryder Cup next week too, depending on if they have contests for that. So check that out on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed, week one recap podcast posted, NASCAR and UFC later on this week. There's also a lot of good stuff here on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. If you've got more questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the Fando podcast network at Fando podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you tonight. Go win some cash. We'll talk to you once again on Wednesday. This has been the solo shot right here on the Fando podcast network.