 Lock Time for today and MLB DFS with the main slate set to lock at 105 p.m. Eastern if you're looking for some action later on tonight we will talk about the after-hour Slates at the end of the show if you want a time stand for that check out the episode description but we're going to break down this five game main slate and get you ready for it should be a fun day of baseball over at Fandewel.com welcome on into the solo shot that's right here on the Fandewel podcast network and numberfire.com my name is Jim Saunders I am a senior writer and analyst for a number fire here to break down Thursday's five game main slate with locks set for 105 p.m. Eastern for today again if you want some thoughts on the after-hour slate check out the episode description to get a time stand there if you're listening to us after 105 p.m. Eastern no big weather notes here for the main slate so we'll be good to dive on in break down the slate here in just one second but first a reminder to make sure you're 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main slave Blake Snell checks in with the highest salary on fandewel he's at $10,800 followed by Joe Ryan at 10 five Bryce elders 99 with Aaron Nola at 93 that we have JP Sears and Logan Allen as the others at $8,000 were hired now this is one of those unique slates or DFS where I think our cash game option and pit tournament option for pitchers should be separate because there are guys who fit very different roles and have very different ranges of outcomes the tournament guy will be Blake Snell so we'll start things off with him and then talk about the cash game guy later on the reason that Snell is not a cash game guy is because he can make you a little skittish and I think we should still be skittish with Blake Snell but for tournaments we want upside and Snell right now has untouchable upside relative to guys on this slate he's facing the Giants that's a high strikeout low walk matchup with a 27% strikeout rate against lefties and a 7% walk rate they average just 3.81 pitches per plate appearances again against lefties which is a low number you know you're looking around for there usually so lower number for the Giants than most teams and that's a huge thing for Snell who is still pretty inefficient with his pitches and it does give him a boost to face a team that is not patient at the plate and Snell has been throwing harder recently his Velo has been up for his past five starts and the old high strikeout Blake Snell has come with that increased Velo he has a 2.98 skill interactivity array in that time with a 39% strikeout rate that above data has been pretty good too now that does not mean it will stick around I want to make that very clear because he is very erratic but Snell did make one of those six start starts against the rates maybe a little revenge game factor there but he can do that I feel like I can have faith in him so is it risky to use Blake Snell in daily fantasy when he is very popular absolutely is it still a good decision to use him for tournaments today yes I think it is nobody can touch his ceiling so Snell is going to be the top tournament picture of the day and I think that we can feel pretty good about that so for tournaments specifically Blake Snell is your guy for cash games I don't mind dipping down to a value play and going Logan Allen Allen the reason not getting here for tournaments above Snell is not the biggest strikeout guy especially compared to Blake Snell and that typically makes Allen less appealing for DFS but Allen has been a very good real world pitcher and on a short slate and in a good matchup I think that's enough to make Allen a tremendous value play 84 and the top cash gameplay of the day Allen is at home facing the A's and obviously we're going to love that the A's are especially rough against lefties their WRC plus there is 90 with a 122 ISO and that does up the appeal in Allen quite a bit and again the real world output for Allen has been very good he has a 3.95 ERA his walk rate is low so he's been solid overall the strikeouts have not been there he has a 22 mark so far now there is some hope that that number could go up because his swinging strike rate is 12.1 so maybe there's upward mobility in the strikeout department and again the matchup helps here too Allen did have 10 strikeouts in one game he said eight and two other games so he can have upside I just think there is a clear path to a huge game from Snell than there is for Allen so if you want to go Snell and Cash I get it personally it makes me a little little hood comfy to do that if you want to go Allen in tournaments I don't blame you but for me the preferred allocation these guys is Snell for tournaments Allen for cash games I think Allen is definitely in play for tournaments too if you you know want to deviate from Snell as a chalk but I think those two guys are your top options depending on the game type so having Allen as our top value means our third pitching slot can be either a start or a value play and I think that decision comes down to Joe Ryan at 10-5 and Aaron Nola at 93 Nola facing the Braves after that postponement last night and Ryan gets the red sox both those matchups stink but Nola's salary is $1,200 lower and I think that's going to put me on Nola for tonight I do think that Ryan is at least a consideration given how good he's been this year we talked about Nola pretty extensively yesterday and that game again got rained out so won't die super deep here but peripherals for Nola are improving after what was a pretty rough start to the year his skill interactive ERA in 10 stars with more sinkers is 3.55 he has a 27% strikeout rate so you put that in with the matchup and stuff like that I have Nola projected for 6.9 strikeouts tonight Ryan the 6.2 so about 0.7 strikeouts lower and again his salary is higher than Nola's so with Nola the safety is not there but if you're looking for safety we were talking cash games and that's where we go to Allen so I'm looking for upside and I think to me Nola would be the next guy up behind Snell I think for tournaments I would go Allen above Nola as well so ranking for tournaments is Snell 1 Allen 2 Nola 3 followed by Ryan and ranking for cash games is going to be Allen 1 and I don't really know who the second option is for cash games but Allen 1 definitively there let's go now to the stacks we're not going to have a things to watch for today because we'll talk about the late slate instead so let's talk about some stacks and some teams to consider when you are filling out your hitting slots over on Fandral the Diamondbacks are facing Jake Irvin and Irvin has shown some signs of improvement recently but I still think that Arizona is going to be the best stack the big shift for Irvin has come in his past three starts where his velocity has increased a pretty decent amount that's primarily on his foreseeing fastball but he's also been on his sinker occasionally as well and it's worked out pretty well because we saw Irvin have a really great start last time out that was the second best start of the year he led up just a 13 percent hard hit rate in that game which brings his season long mark down to 35 percent he's actually been pretty good in that specific department this year he could duplicate that in this game and if he does it would hurt Arizona for sure but that super low hard hit rate game came against the Marlins in the start before that we saw Irvin struggle and struggle a bit more he had just one strike out compared to three walks that game the one before the Marlins game was at home against Arizona the exact same situation that we have for today and now they're familiar with this stuff because I just saw him about 10 or so days ago they didn't hit him very hard there and again that's probably been a skill of his this year but Arizona really solid offense with a 113 WRC plus against righties it's the best match up on the slate I think there is enough here to make Arizona pretty easily at least to me the top stack on the main slate when we're looking at the Arizona offense we do want to prioritize base dealers because the nationals have led up the fourth most deals of any team in baseball this year and Arizona obviously will run not just Corbin Carroll but Geraldo Perdomo batting leadoff recently and he runs and also there's some power in his bat too so Perdomo I think a fantastic play for the main slate Ketel Marte will run his powers picking back up and Alec Thomas just came back up from the minors he'll run too so Arizona I think both for the matchup and for the base stealing really fun stack for today even if they don't go for a ton of power they could still pay off via their legs which is always I think a pretty enticing thing for daily fantasy number two stack as a twins their offense has been pretty rough against lefties and they're facing one today in Brandon Walter making his big league debut but I do something we want to give the twins a look for today the Walter is going to follow Ryan Garza as an opener I guess not official Walter will be the bulk reliever though it sounds like he still will be but I'm assuming you will be Walter not lighting it up down in AAA his strikeout rate down there 22% with a 9% walk rate and he was letting up a lot of hard contact that all led to a 6.28 ERA in AAA with a 4.61 exit the numbers in AA last year for Walter were really really good but they also came as a guy in his age 25 season facing for the most part batters who were younger than him it does seem like Walter will get some ground balls he had a big ground ball rate in past years but the fly ball rate this year at AAA at least manageable at 30% so he could do well given they have no big league tape on him but overall Walter does profile like someone we can stack against so I'm fine doing so for today even with an offense that has not lived up to expectations thus far and has been a pretty big disappointment so the twins to me the number two stack behind Arizona and the good thing here is if you want to get to Blake Snell the twins make it a lot easier because nobody on this team among the the hitters has a salary above $3,000. Byron Buxton finally showing some life the past two nights he had not done so since he came off the IL we've talked about Carlos Correa's improvements those have largely stuck he's cooled off a bit here recently and Royce Lewis has hit a barrel in back-to-back games so I think the twins played out decently in this spot they did release Kyle Garlich a guy who can hit lefties pretty well or DFA'd him so one less guy who had lefties well but still think the twins are the number two stack here behind Arizona that's the Snell stack the one where you're trying to say some salary if you go Alan you're going to have salary to burn obviously you can put a lot of that onto the the on Arizona because Corbin Carroll's salary is pretty high and other guys are too but we could have salary to burn with Alan and I think we could funnel that salary toward the San Diego Padres they're facing Alex Wood today and the park factor is pretty terrible but the matchup works Wood is kind of an odd duck where last year his results were really bad but the peripherals form were good this year it's flipped where the peripherals are worse but the results are better we have seen some blips in the results as well though because Wood let up six earn runs the pirates at home in his final start before he had the IL came off last week and held the Dodgers scoreless or five innings but in that game he let up two barrels and they had a 54 percent hard hit rate against him in that game for the full season now the hard hit rate allowed for Wood is 40% he's letting up more fly balls than he used to as well and the Padres he left ease 114 WRC plus and a 198 ISO so looking at this third stack it was between the Padres the guardians and the nationals I'm just going to go with the good offense so we'll go with the Padres here and I think again if you go with Alan you can get to the Padres stack them pretty easily and if you do go Arizona as your other stack clearly the building block here is for Nato Tatis Jr. I don't need to sell you on that but I also want to get to Juan Soto here obviously it's a lefty-on-lefty matchup and Soto's numbers against lefties are muted the past couple years but he's not going to face lefties the entire game and he does have good plate discipline numbers and he puts the ball in the air those are the kind of things you look at so the power numbers haven't been there but he hasn't been atrocious against lefties by any means so to me Tatis is the top priority here and then I think the number two priority is between Soto, Manny Machado, Xander Bogarts we think of those two more against lefties and we do about Soto but I think Soto is very much in that discussion so don't just gravitate towards Machado and Bogarts because they're righties I think Soto is right there with them as far as a consideration for today. Let's go with some dinger picks here for the main slate the boring one I gotta go Byron Buxton it is warm at target field for today Buxton barrels and back-to-back games similar to Royce Lewis and it's my guy so Byron Buxton the boring home run call for today the fun one I want to go out Thomas it's not a lock that he plays because I think he has everything he got called up but it's not a lock that he plays but if he does he hit the ball really well in triple A has looked good since coming back up so I like Thomas a lot if Thomas does not play I would go Geraldo Perdomo just five home runs so far this year but the power number is pretty good maybe we get inside the park home run or something like that so home run calls Byron Buxton Alec Thomas and then if Thomas does not play we'll go Geraldo Perdomo as the alternative that wraps up the main slate let's talk here about the after hours slate for tonight and technically over at Fandall there is no slate posted as of yet so we're talking hypotheticals but should be three games with lock at 6 40 p.m. Eastern my favorite picture here is likely to be Mitch Keller although I would say Braxton Garrett is in that discussion should Garrett have a much lower salary than Keller winds up happening I just like Keller's pitch count more I've got Keller projected for a hundred pitches whereas Garrett is 85 these guys are facing each other so Garrett facing the pirates Keller facing the Marlins Garrett still projected for 6.9 strikeouts which is a very high number but for such a low pitch count but I get how he gets there Keller is at 7.3 strikeouts chamber clan hand 6.6 so Keller my top pitcher on the after hours slate but if Garrett salaries a lot lower I don't mind giving him a look as well if you're about the entering stuff like that the top stack has to be the rays they're facing a bullpen game for the Royals I'd expect Austin Cox to get a lot of work here and he's a lefty and the rays have smoked lefties so it's the rays against the bullpen that we don't fear too much so I think the rays with top stack on the after hours slate by a wide margin I'm also okay stacking the Mariners again despite what happened last night they're facing Domingo Ramon today who is really struggling right now he's been trying to throw more sinkers and the results have lagged in that time it's a great park for home runs so the Mariners disappointing last night but do so think they're a good option here so top pitcher Keller although potentially Garrett in play there top stacks can be the rays and the Mariners for the after hours slate that's all we got here for today on the solo shot again get those lineups in for the main slate with lock set for 105 pm eastern for today back once again tomorrow to break down a full Friday slate again as always make sure you're subscribed to the number fire daily fantasy podcast feed wherever you get your podcast also check us out of the fandal youtube page and download the fandal tv plus app to get this plus covering the spread and all of the awesome fandal tv shows 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 fandal podcast network at fandal podcast i want to thank you all for tuning in for today good luck to you with your nlb dfs lineups for tonight we'll talk to you once again tomorrow to break down third friday slate this has been the solo shot right here on the fandal podcast network