 There is no shortage of good pitching options for tonight in daily fantasy baseball. In fact, I might argue that there are too many good pitching options because at some point if there are a lot of good pitchers, that means there are fewer teams that I want to stack. In fact, one of our top three stacks today is against a pitcher who I have used this year and will hopefully use at some point again later on this year. So, dicey slate from that perspective, but a lot of options for DFS from the pitching perspective. We're going to break down my favorite guys of that group and get you ready for tonight's slate in MLB DFS. Welcome on into the solo shot. That's right here on the Fandall podcast network. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a managing editor of digital media for Fandall research here to break down Friday night. 12 game main slate would lock set for 705 pm Eastern for today. Now the one bummer about this slate is that there is a lot of rain out east, specifically Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, all spots where we could see delays, maybe some slight risk for postponements as well. Starting Baltimore for the Orioles and the Rockies, it's probably going to impact the game in some way. I just don't really know how yet. So check back on that later to see the timing on the rain in Baltimore. Rain odds are a bit lower in Philadelphia for the Phillies and the Cardinals, though at least still a threat there. So check back on that one later as well. Rain is possible in New York for the Mets and the Angels. That one looks somewhat concerning to somewhere between Baltimore and Phillies. So check back on that one later. And finally, Boston for the Red Sox and Dodgers, I think is the diciest game of the night as far as weather goes. Rain odds are high at the beginning of the game and then don't get as low as you'd like as the game goes along. So check back on that one later again. The game's really some risk of weather for tonight are Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Speaking of that Philadelphia game, if you are in the Philadelphia area tomorrow is Fandall Fanfest. It's going to be in Philadelphia. I'll be out there for this weekend flying out to Philly to go to the Phillies game tonight with Fandall. If you're in the Philadelphia area, Fandall Fanfest, I believe is free with a $25 bet on your Fandall Sportsbook app. If you just Google Fandall Fanfest, you can find details there. Fallout Boy performing tomorrow before the Phillies game. So it's at Xinnody Live. So you can check out all that. Just Google Fandall Fanfest, Philadelphia, if you see the random bald guy hopefully wearing a hat at some point. A Fandall T-shirt, come over and say hi. I would love to chat to all of you out there and Fandall Fanfest. Always a fun activity for sure. We're going to dive on in and get you ready for tonight's slide here. And just one second, a first day reminder to make sure you're subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, our USC Podcast this weekend is already posted. Austin Swain broke down all those fights for this weekend. Find that in your Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Next week, we'll have, or two weeks from now, we have NFL back as well all right here in the same feed. So go search for the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can also find the solo shot on the Fandall YouTube page and Fandall TV Plus. If you want to watch Fandall TV Plus on desktop mobile, go to Fandall.com slash watch. Log in with your Fandall account and stream to your heart's desire. Get ready for the NFL season with incredible offers from Fandall. America's number one sportsbook right now. New customers can bet $5 and get 200 in bonus bets guaranteed. 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Hunter Green, Bryce Miller, Kyle Hendricks, Brady Singer. Christopher Sanchez and Dane Dunning are the others at $8,000 or higher. Now Strider is facing the Giants for the second consecutive start. And his salary is very, very high. And the Giants are a good enough offense where that is a concern. But I still want to be on him despite the salary, despite everything, because he's real good. And part of that is because he gets a big park factor upgrade. It is 30 degrees cooler in San Francisco today than it is most of the time in Atlanta, which means it's a much better environment for pitching. And Strider is getting back into a groove right now. He had a stretch this year where he was using his change up more. And I get why he was doing it because it did give him three pitches. And it seems like he's ditching that idea. The usage on the change up for Strider has been down for his past eight starts. And he is lighting things up. 2.71 skill interactive ERA, 37% strikeout rate, 29% hard hit rain allowed. And other than one bad start, the results have been there too. You know which one I'm talking about. I used him there. I think he scored like negative 14 Fandal points. It was not ideal. I have Strider projected for two strikeouts more than anybody else in the entire slate. So it's Strider, two strikeout gap. Actually, it's like 2.4, honestly. And then everybody else. So he's clearly the top guy here, despite the fact that it is a repeat matchup with San Francisco. I think for the second stud, you could go a lot of ways. A ton of guys are justifiable. Personally, if I'm not using Strider, I want to save a bit of salary. Dylan Cease's salary is $94. He's at home against the White Sox or against the athletics, I should say. And that's enough to draw me in for tonight. And Cease has had a very weird year where he had a rough start to the year that he seemed to turn things around. Now, more recently, he's had some rough starts again. But those rough starts came in justifiable spots on the road at Coors Field, against the Rangers, against the Cardinals. So those are all pretty explainable. Over the past 10 starts, Cease has had different movements on his slider. And in that time, he is walking too many guys. His strikeout rate is 27%. He's also letting up just a 35% hard hit rate, which is something he excelled at last year. So seeing that come back to me is enticing. He's facing the A's here. They're not a team that draws a ton of walks. And that does help Cease. They have a 24% strikeout rate against righties. That helps as well. I have Cease projected for 6.9 strikeouts. That ranks third on the slate behind just Strider and Coday Senga. But Senga's salary is $1,500 higher. So if I'm not going Strider, I'd rather take the discount and rank C second among the studs. Now I worded that intentionally, saying second among the studs. Because I think our top value play may actually be in consideration for number two overall for tonight. And this is a guy we actually talked about last week. And he pitched well there. I think he can pitch well again tonight. And that guy is Brandon Faut. And I like Faut quite a bit for $7,500. Faut is facing the Reds, who are a high strikeout team. They're a very fun team, but they will strike out. They have a 26% strikeout rate on the current active roster against righties this year. And that does give Faut upside. He's also been pitching much better recently. Faut has made six starts since coming back up to the majors. And the first start, he was solid, but he did let up three home runs. Didn't get a lot of strikeouts there. In his second start, Faut changed approach. He started throwing a slider a lot more. And he had a 31% usage on that pitch in that start. It has been 30% or higher in every start since. And we look at just the five starts with more sliders. Faut has allowed just two total home runs. He has a 23% strikeout rate and a 7% walk rate. Now, the two home run number is probably fluky because his bad at ball numbers still are not perfect, but they are much better than what they were when he was up in the big weeks previously. Faut has had five plus strikeouts in all but one of those starts. He had seven and one, eight and another. So I think he has upside, especially at home in a plus matchup. And Arizona needs wins. I have fought projected for 6.3 strikeouts tonight. Again, I have ceased at 6.9. So saving almost $2,000 in salary, being within 0.6 strikeouts of him. It's a pretty good number. So I'd at least consider ranking Faut's second behind Strider tonight after considering his low salary. So Brandon Faut, pretty good value play for tonight. I am very high on it. It would be willing to consider ranking a second behind the Spencer Strider above all the other honestly pretty good studs in tonight's slates. So Brandon fought to me very much in play as a value on Fandual. Let's dig in now to the stacks and talk about the options here. Now I do want to copy out this by saying again, check back on the weather in Baltimore. But if we get the all clear for stacking there, I want to be on the Orioles. They're facing Kyle Freeland tonight and Freeland has had better velocity since he came off the injured list. And that's usually a good thing. And he's also not at Coors Field. But I still think we want to be here. Freeland has made five starts with that velocity being up off the IL. His strikeout rate is 17%. That's better than what it was for him before. But he's also letting up a 51% hard hit rate. He struggled with that all year long because Freeland's hard hit rate allowed for the full season is 44%. That's part of why his ERA is 5.02. It's not just the fact he pitches at Coors Field. In fact, Freeland's ERA is actually worse on the road than it is at home. The strikeout rate also goes way down the road too. He's at Camden Yards tonight where it's 90 degrees. The Orioles have a 112, a WRC plus against lefties. So I think it all aligns to allow us to stack them here and feel pretty good about it. So Baltimore to me the top stack, if, if, if, if we get the all clear on the weather. I do think it's noteworthy how Adley Rochman has evolved this year because to open the season, he was a guy for DFS. I wanted to use just against righties because he had a lot more power as a left-handed batter than as a right-handed batter. But now we're up to 157 played appearance for Rochman against lefties and his ISO is up to 185, which is a big improvement. It's still a small sample. So you don't want to overreact. But I think that what we should do with Rochman is take where we were with him against lefties before and just kind of bump it up. Nudge it up a little bit to account for the fact he has hit for more power against them recently. So Rochman climbing slowly for me against lefties and very much in play for tonight facing Freeland. Again, assuming the weather is okay out in Baltimore. The White Sox risk stacking option last night and they get the A's again here. So I do think the White Sox back on the map once again for today. They're facing Zack Neal this time and Neal has spent most of the year in AAA. He had a 5.40 ERA there. And now he's being stretched out as a starter. I'm a bit skeptical of how that'll go. Neal doesn't get many strikeouts. He has a 17% strikeout rate in AAA. It's 16% so far in the majors though. That's a very small sample of just 12 innings. Neal spent most of last year in AAA with the Rochies. His strikeout right there was 18% as well. So I would expect a lot of balls in play for him. And Neal doesn't get many ground balls. A lot of line drives and a lot of fly balls. That doesn't always translate to tons of power because it is skewing more towards line drives than you'd think. But it probably is not ideal regardless let up a lot of liners. As we discussed yesterday, the White Sox are not a good offense right now but they get to face Neal and the A's bullpen. So that should be enough to make them more palatable for tonight. Now the most borderline usable guy in this team is Andrew Benintendi. Now Benintendi hit a home run last night. I was going to talk about how doesn't it for a lot of power. That makes him less appealing for DFS. But he hit a home run last night. He also does swipe some bags. Hasn't done a ton of stealing in August and his overall numbers are not ideal. So has to feel good about Benintendi from a DFS perspective because we want to make sure our guys have paths to legitimate upside. But Benintendi occasionally apparently has some power. Two home runs in the past three games. Maybe he's found something. Maybe we can add on power to that. I'm not expecting that but his salary is $2,800. I have to save salary to get to Strider for tonight if I want to get Luis Robert in these stacks as well. So Benintendi borderline viable play but it doesn't hurt that he's been hitting for a bit more power recently. Now for a third stack this is the one that makes me sad because Hunter Green is making his second start off the IELT tonight and I like him a lot. And I'm happy to use him as a pitcher at times have done so this year but Green let up a lot of homers in his first start off the IELT. So I think we should at least consider Arizona against him tonight. That game for Green where he let up all the home runs wasn't Cincinnati. So some home runs there are forgivable and the roof is closed tonight in Arizona. That game was against the Blue Jays. So I don't want to overrate that one game where he struggled. What I do care about for Green in that game was his slider velocity. He averaged 85.4 miles per hour on that slider. That's down about two miles per hour from where he was before his injury. And even those numbers pre-injure were down from where he was at the beginning of the year. Overall Green has made eight starts with his Velo climbing down on that slider. His hard hit rate allowed is 49%. He has let up a 50% fly ball rate and it's led to a 5.48 ERA. And a big chunk of that is from Sunday but it also shows that rough games are within his range of outcomes. And it's also the long time we've seen him since his injury. Arizona still has a 111 WRC Plus against righties. Our ISO is 188. So Green could pitch well here. I'd love to see him be viable down the stretch but I do think it's necessary for us to consider Arizona from a stacking perspective against him for tonight. Now when stacking Arizona or stacking against Green in general I want to skew towards the lower strikeout guys because even with the lower Velo on the slider he's still getting strikeouts. And for us not many guys in this team strikeout much. That includes Alec Thomas about a 20% strikeout rate against righties so far this year. $2300 salary. He can steal some bases. He can hit for some power. Not a big enough fly ball guy as much as you really want but still definitely enough there to feel good about him. So Alec Thomas $2300 a great value player for tonight if you need help getting up to Strider within your lineups. Let's finish up here things to watch. The Phillies facing Miles Michaelis tonight who is in a pretty big rut. He's tried throwing more sliders recently but that has not fixed his issues. The Phillies offense has perked back up recently so I don't mind checking them out whether it be for stacks or for one-offs. I'm unclear of what to think about Bryce Miller. He's had a good year but more recently he's throwing more stinkers and his results have been fine but he's letting up a 45% hard hit rate with a 54% fly ball rate. I don't really want to stack the Royals against him because Seattle's bullpen is very good but the thought of doing so did at least cross my mind. So maybe some one-offs in the Royals could be in play for tonight. Finally the Mariters on the other side of that game are at least a consideration I would rather not do it because I like Brady Singer a lot and they're facing him and singers pitched really well recently getting a lot of strikeouts but he's also one of the few guys in the Slade who does let up some hard contact. So I don't want to do it I like Singer but stacking is pretty tough for tonight due to all the good pitchers so I don't mind if you have to I'd rather avoid it and rank the Phillies higher the Diamondbacks the White Sox and the Orioles whether permitting for tonight. Dinger calls for this Friday let's go Christian Walker basing off against Hunter Green Green can occasionally have some weird diverse splits Walker does hit for a lot of power against righties and lefties as well but I think he makes a lot of sense so Christian Walker the boring home run call for tonight but the fun one let's go Jordan Westburg he's been typically batting sixth or so for the Orioles against lefties playing entire games he is shortstop and third base eligible on Fandle only two home runs so far in the majors but he did it for a decent amount of power in triple A doesn't have a super low fly ball right and does hit the ball pretty hard so he's a little bit more loft out of Westburg and I feel like we could get some home runs out of him so we'll make a call for tonight with him go with Christian Walker and Jordan Westburg as our two Dinger calls for this Friday that is all we have here for today I'm a solo shot as mentioned UFC podcast via Austin Swain is up right now on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast if you go find that wherever you get your podcasts hit subscribe and if you like what you hear leave us a five start rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify 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 Fandle Research at Fandle Research wanna thank you all for tuning in for today good luck to you with your MLB DFS lineups we'll talk to you once again Monday Tom Vecchio and for me Monday Tuesday I'll be back with you on Wednesday and a fantastic weekend this has been the solo shot right here on the Fandle Podcast Network