 It is a slate where we are searching high and searching low for some value hitters we can use to make Max Scherzer's salary of $11,500 more palatable. And I think we can make it work. So we're going to dive on in for today. Take your questions around those value hitters and try to make Scherzer a guy we can get to you because I very much want to. This is the FanDuel Live Q&A right here on the FanDuel YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter channels. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Here to take your questions for the next half an hour to get you set for tonight's slate of MLB DFS. As always, no matter where you are watching, you can get your questions in YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, get the questions in. We'll take them live here on air to get you set for tonight's slate while you're there. Make sure you subscribe. Also, if you're watching YouTube, hit that like button because that does help us out a bunch. We appreciate that as always. So subscribe. Come on back tomorrow. We have a Thursday football preview of the Branding of Dula breaking down the Bengals versus the Jaguars. Beg your action on that game. Otherwise, why would you watch that? That is tomorrow at four to 430. I'll have the MLB DFS Q&A from 430 to five. And then on Friday, we have our snake draft once again in our final MLB DFS Q&A of the year, 430 to five on Friday. Let's take a look at this slate here for today of MLB DFS. And you can see here why I want to get to Max Scherzer. Scherzer is facing the Padres generally a low strikeout team, but that's just not true against Scherzer. He has faced them twice since running the Dodgers. He has 19 strikeouts, I think in his two starts across 15 and two thirds innings. No earn runs, three hits. He's been stupid. He's at home. It's a game the Dodgers want to win to try to get closer to locking up the NL West. I think Max Scherzer is a no-brainer. The problem is that salary is big. That's not a problem, but it's an annoyance. I guess the way I phrase it, it's an annoyance that a salary is very high at 11.5. Our remaining per batter is 29.38. We need value to make this work, but I do think we can I think we can make it work. It's going to be tough for sure, but I do think we can do it. Now let's go over to Twitch and talk to N1TRO991. Sorry, I made that as complicated as possible. Thoughts on Logan Gilbert tonight. Logan Gilbert facing the A's pretty tough matchup, and Gilbert has struggled a lot with hard contact reasons. As you can see in his most recent start, he did go 110 pitches, and obviously the Mariners are in a situation where they need to win. That's good. We got a lot of motivation for Logan Gilbert for today. The problem is I'm questioning where he's at right now. Gilbert, over his past eight starts with his velocity being up, with the slider velocity specifically being up, has a 23% strikeout rate that's lower than he wants. Good walk rate, but that means he's letting up a lot of balls and play. 41% of those balls and play have been hard hits, and 49% have been in the air. It's been a struggle for sure, and I worry about that when he's facing a team as good as the A's. Let's check out what the results have been in this eight start sample, because sometimes results can deviate from the peripherals, and that can be impactful for sure. Let's check out what Gilbert has done here. The ERA in this time, 6.25%. It's been better recently. Faced some lesser teams. The A's aren't great right now. The Royals are not great. Did do decently against the Red Sox and the Astros, but I still have my concerns. Personally, I'm not a Logan Gilbert guy for tonight. I think there are enough concerns where I can't get there despite the fact there is a lot on the line for that game. My preference, if you're trying to deviate from Scherzer, is actually in that game, and Frankie Montas. Montas been really good. He does have the hard hit concern as well, but fewer fly balls against Montas, higher strikeout rate. That's good. Good results, too. This is over. Montas has passed 18 starts with more splitters. He has a 29% strikeout rate with a 3.69 skill interactive ERA. When you pair that with good results and a team that strikes out 25% of the time against Reides, I think that's a pretty good formula for Montas to be a rock solid option for tonight. He's not like a value because he is $9,900, but I still think that if you want to deviate from Scherzer, Montas is the best route for doing so. Let's talk to Jonathan on YouTube, relatively new to fantasy, about two weeks in having too many lineups cause issues in any sport, including MLB. I've used about four lineups or more and entered at least two contests and nothing. Baseball is high variance, and I think you could view that one of two ways. You could view it as, okay, I want more lineups then to take advantage of the variance because if things don't go well, I want to give myself a route for still cashing. The other route for doing so is saying you want to play fewer contests and hoping you hit the, you guess right effectively. So my preference, Jonathan, like the way I want to play things is I love single entry contests because everyone's going to make mistakes and my margin for error in a single entry contest is a lot bigger because I'm not facing teams that have, you know, 20 lineups or whatever in there while I have, you know, my whatever in there, I want to go best on best effectively. So Jonathan, I would try a both honestly. I would check out scenarios, you know, play some exclusively single entry for a couple nights, see how that goes. I would do multi entry. If you're new to it, just experiment, you know, see what works best for you. For me, I know single entry is my best for sure. So I go that way. Personally, that's where I want to go, but it's different for everyone. So find your strengths, Jonathan. I'd recommend tinkering, recommend trying different contests. Specifically for you, I might check out a single entry contest. Those are really fun. You can toggle those over on the tandoel lobby. I think that if you're, you know, if you're trying to identify your best contest type, I'd start there. And if single entry doesn't work for you, then go to multi entry. But for me, just based on the way that I work and my brain works through the sport, I think that single entry is a good way to go. But good question there. And it's good to experiment and try to find what your strengths are. Let's talk to Kyle, shortstop one off with $3,000 to spend. Okay, let's go to shortstop over here. Let's scroll down to $3,000. Okay. So you got Crawford facing Montas. No, I'm at Rosario is facing off with Lynch. That works. I can get behind that for sure. Adamus is facing who are they going to Nicholas? It's not terrible if he plays that could be worse. Didi's facing freed. Don't want that. I think we're going to wind up settling on I'm at Rosario there, assuming he does want to be in the order for today. I think that Jack Mayfield also could be an option down at $2,400, but that's a lot lower than you were asking for. So I would say probably I'm at Rosario because being a guy who does work the speed for Rosario is not as good because he's facing a lefty and lefties don't let up as much as many stolen bases, but I don't think that Rosario is a good option. So I'd say I'm at Rosario for a $3,000 shortstop. Let's talk to Manuel still on Boston and Cleveland from this morning. Yeah, I am. I still feel pretty good about them honestly. I've not checked out the Boston lineup yet. Basin, Zach, Louther, Louther, a guy feel pretty good targeting. And the good thing here is we do get Bobby Dahlback batting up in sixth. I talked about Jose Iglesias. He, I kind of thought he'd bat eighth. Batting ninth is a little bit lower than I thought it was going to be. So that doesn't help. But let's check out Kevin Poecchi and see what things have been like for him recently and see if we can talk ourselves into him batting seventh. I believe, yeah, batting seventh. Okay, banged up, but he's in the lineup. So that's a good sign. And let's check out the stat cast eight on Poecchi to see if we're getting any hard contact out of him recently. Let's go from, well, let's go mid August on in that time, 17% hard hit rate. Two of those hard hit balls been recently did have a barrel as well. That's not a great baseline to work with. ISO is at 163 at least. So I guess that's a little bit better, but not ideal overall. Just 46 plate appearances. Maybe I don't want to, you know, write them off based on that, but it's not, not optimal. I would say checking out the numbers for Poecchi overall versus Lefty's a 119 ISO. This is across this year. 34% flight ball rate doesn't strike out too much, which I guess is good, but it's not the most inspiring profile. I probably still feel better about Iglesias despite the fact that he's batting ninth because he has some power with the Red Sox. And he does, you know, also get the Lefty versus Righty situation here. So I think I'm still going to go with Dalbex one. I would go Iglesias number two among the, the non super high sour guys facing Louther. As far as Cleveland facing Daniel Lynch, let's see if their lineup is out yet. No lineup yet, but the reason we're going at Cleveland for today is that Lynch still struggling. He's tinkering. He's been using his changeup less over his past six starts, but a 5.35 skill interactive ERA in those starts, 18% walk rate, not a lot of whiffs and a 44% fly ball rate. Faced Cleveland last time out and they kind of got him a little bit. He went six innings, but they still hit him around a bit, put the ball in the air a bunch. So I think Cleveland grades out really well. We'll see if the lineup gets in before we close up for today and we can go through that lineup later on. But yeah, I'm still on them for sure, but well, let's talk to Salvatore. How do we feel about Max Freed? His Frank has been down recently, kind of a bummer. I like freed a lot as a pitcher. I think he's really good. This is over his past seven starts as you were sinkers, a 22% strikeout rates. That is a bit disappointing. He's facing the Phillies. The Phillies like non Harper guys get a bump up when they're facing a lefty versus the righty. So I prefer targeting righties against the Phillies versus targeting lefties. Let's see here what Freed's been doing from a results perspective and see how things have gone. Obviously the shutouts pretty good thing back to back shutouts. Really good length. So the strikeouts haven't been there, but the results have been great. He's been getting some whiffs. So I would say he's fine. Sal, I think is 9,000 on Freed. Is that correct? Yeah, 9,000. I think he works. I prefer Evaldi personally. I know the results are very different for Evaldi than Freed. They would very much favor Freed, but I like the strikeout numbers from Evaldi. Do like the matchup quite a bit. So I prefer Evaldi, but I don't think Freed is totally off base. Totally okay. Um, Jason is asking Web as a picture on FanDuel. He was last night, if you're talking about Logan Webb, maybe you're talking about him. Yeah, maybe you're talking, I don't know. I clarify what you mentioned there, Jason, I'll get back to you. Salvatore, two days in a row where I'm getting some Rangers and Angels in my lineup. I have some interest there as well. I just want to be sure I'm not going too hard because both those teams stick right now. The Angels are fine. I like Max Stasi. I do like some of the other value options they've got inside that lineup. No lineup yet for the Angels, but Stasi is fine. I think Mayfield is fine depending where he hits. So the Angels are okay. As far as the Rangers go, Willie Calhoun is minimum salary and he's batting lead off. So we are pretty desperate to get to Scherzer for today, which means we can go down here, click Calhoun, and that makes it a lot easier. 3071, that's going to allow you to at least have some fun with your other stack. Let's go with the Glacius. Let's go second base, and let's go Dahlbeck. So specifically with a Red Sox stack, we put those two value guys in. We're up to 3240 left. You're still going to save some salary elsewhere, but with Cleveland being decent, I think this would work. So Willie Calhoun to me, Salvatore, a really solid option for today. If you're trying to find like a one-off guy who saves a lot of salary, I don't mind the Rangers, don't mind the Angels, but hard for me to go out of my way to like prioritize them a bunch. I'm just giving how bad they are. So it's hard to find four dudes I want to use, but I think Calhoun specifically rates that well. Mayfield is fine and Stasi is fine on the Angels. DJ, can you show me how to stack Aaron Nola with Boston, St. Louis, and San Francisco? Nola's weird to me. They finally let him go a bit deeper in this most recent game. He only went 84 pitches, but he went 25 batters and he hadn't been going that long. I feel like it's because the Phillies have realized that maybe the third time through the order is not ideal for Aaron Nola. He was awesome against the Padres, but since then he's been getting roughed up. So the Phillies have been like, okay, we're going to cut this dude out after like 21 or so batters faced and prevent it from facing the middle of the order a third time. It's work. I mean, his peripheral has been really good, but that does worry me from a length perspective. Let's check out. Let's just look at Nola's fan dual totals in this time, because length matters a lot in terms of trying to decide how we want to view a guy 24, 37, 47, 30, like it's fine. But since that San Diego game, not a lot of big totals for Nola. He has not topped 50 outside of that San Diego game since July 25th. So it's been a rough stretch here mostly because this number here, the innings number has just been too low, which prevents him from getting the quality start bonus on fan dual. So he's okay. I prefer Evaldi over him. I know again, Evaldi just absolutely just scorched earth me last week was not fun, but I think that I'd rather go back there because for some reason I feel better on going deeper in games, but like he's gotten rocked the fast two starts too. So who knows? Anyway, with Boston, with Nola, I feel like you would still want to get doll back in there at $3,000. It's not like you're like swimming in salary savings there. Yeah, I go doll back. I would say you don't need a Glacius there, but you're okay with that. If you need to go there, I'll check out the Red Sox here. Under the assumption we're going Nola. I'm going to put doll back over at first base. I'm going to get Renfer in there. I know he's not low salary, but I want him in my lineup. So let's do that. And let's go over here. We'll get KK in there. And then from the side of you, Bogarts and Martinez, let's go over here and check out the numbers this year. Bogarts are 164 ISO versus the lefties and JD has a 199 ISO, 45% fly ball rates. So to me, if I'm picking that fifth guy, I'll go JD. You got St. Louis in there and San Francisco. The Giants, I think they work for sure. Depends on what the lineup looks like for the Giants. If we get enough value to go there and feel really good about it, but we'll see on that one. Just to see what they're, you know, if we get water floors and stuff like that, that does help quite a bit. And St. Louis is facing Adrian Hauser. Hauser gets a lot of ground balls. He does lift a lot of balls in play. So I think there's a pathway there, but not as into it overall. Grimfan is talking about in that Ranger stack we're talking about before. Consider Jonah Hine. Let's go here and check out Hine's numbers versus righties. I've used Hine before this year. So broadly receptive to this Grimfan. In addition to our Willy Calhoun thoughts before. Okay, let's sort by plate appearances and see where Hime is at. Why can't I see him? Okay, there we go. 135 ISO. I prefer him against lefties. I would say that he conceals in bases. So it's not totally out of the consideration for him to get there without power, but I really think Calhoun is a great play for tonight. Jason Stain, San Francisco's pitcher web. He pitched last night. So web is not starting for today. It'll be Merrill Kelly starting for, or sorry, for the Giants Wood. It's Alex Wood starting for the Giants. He's not going to go super deep in this game. He's gone to start so far. It's going to be off the IL 37 and 61 pitches. So I would not touch Wood tonight web pitched last night went about five innings. We was fine, but not pitching for today. DJ, how would you do the sex of the picture of your choice? Let me go to sure. So that means looking for value. So looking for Iglesias, Dalbeck on the other stacks in there. San Francisco said I'm hoping that Flores plays because that makes things a lot easier. I'm guessing the lineups not out yet because they're a later game. Yeah, no Giants yet, but try to see if one more Flores is in there. Mike, do you like Kyle Tucker as a one-off? I like Kyle Tucker a lot in general. He's facing Drew Rasmussen. Rasmussen is, he's gotten really good results, but the peripherals are not as great. As you can see here, it's with his, his seven starts since his pitch count got up, letting up at 55% hard hit rates, 17% strikeout rate does get some ground balls, but he's going to let it balls and play. And those will be hard struck. What that leads is to base runners and Kyle Tucker can steal some bases. So yeah, I think that Kyle Tucker is totally fine. Not opposed to that at all. Larry's asking about NFL stuff. We're here. Why not? Let's talk about it. Running back this week, trying to decide whether I should go Kareem Hunt or Cordero Patterson. We both had successful recent outings. Hunt is facing the Vikings. Cordero's facing Washington. I would go Kareem Hunt, between the two very similar roles, because I'll just go with the better offense there. Mike, any home run calls or locks this evening? Unfortunately, no such thing as a lock in baseball. Everything is super high variance. So I won't use that word, but if I were to go home run calls, as far as guys, I feel good about going deep tonight. We'll phrase it that way as, uh, as noncommittal, I guess is the word maybe we can use there. I would say that, uh, Framio Reyes is a good one. He was not on my home run calls for this morning. Uh, Hunter Renfrow and Yu Chong were my two home run calls from this morning. If I were to add one, I would say Framio Reyes against, uh, against Daniel Lynch would be a good one. If you want one, that's a bit more fun. Let's check out the Marlins lineup quick. Make sure Luindiaz is in there. No Marlins lineup yet. And I've got nothing. So if Luindiaz is in for the Marlins, Mike will go with him. So hopefully he's in there. Uh, but I'll say the official run calls from this morning, Hunter Renfrow, Yu Chong. Let's talk to Renee. What do you think about Polanco at shortstop? Okay. Jorge Polanco is facing Casey Meis. Meis not been lights out by any means recently is also not going super deep in games because I think they're just kind of saying, you know, we're not going to burn you out in the law season. So yeah, I think he's fine. Jorge Polanco, very good batter, not a pitcher I need to fear. Warmer today in Minneapolis, 79 degrees. So yeah, Renee, I think that totally works. Jonathan, any twins value plays that are decent for today? I didn't consider the twins a ton today just because, you know, not necessarily a team going super hard at right now. Looking at this lineup, I'm guessing, I don't want to rise. Arise is not a guy who grades out well from a DFS perspective. Let's look elsewhere on this twins team as far as value goes. Donaldson is under salary. Not sure if that counts. Max Kepler can get some dingers. So yeah, I think that Max Kepler works as a one-off. Is that his hair? Interesting. Bleeds weird behind his ears. Anyway, Kepler can go deep. So yeah, I think that Kepler works as like a one-off there, Jonathan. I'm fine with him. Nick Orton's been hitting the ball better recently. I'm not as sold on the power necessarily sticking. So I probably wouldn't want to go there. But I think that Kepler as a one-off, pretty decent value for today. Salvatore is saying, I like Gallo and Rizzo. They don't project well. They don't project that well. Not too sure if the win will play a factor, but I'm thinking of getting to one or both. So the Yankees are facing Jose Barrios. Barrios does struggle at times with lefties, but because the strike area is so high, I'm probably not going to go with the Yankees for today. Again, I know he struggles with lefties, can give up tanks. I think though the roof opened just because they tend to leave it open. I think it's 10 degrees Celsius is when they shut the roof there, which is I think like 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I could be wrong on that, but I think it's 50 degrees Fahrenheit. So I think the roof should be open. So the win may matter. The way it's built, the stadium is, it probably won't matter too much, but I'm probably not super high on Rizzo and Gallo for today. Kyle, interest in a Minnesota stack of value? Arise Kepler Gordon? Kepler like. Not as into a rise, just not enough upside. And then I'm not a huge fan of Gordon, not quite there yet. Maybe I should be. Let's just look this really quickly, really fast about Nick Gordon versus righties because making sure just I'm not overlooking a potentially good value play here. And let's start by plate appearances. Okay, Nick Gordon, 161 ice is actually not terrible. A lot of hard contact. And I'm still in bases. Sorry. Gordon's fine. I actually don't mind that at all. Sorry. I should have looked more into it, but yeah, Nick Gordon's fine. Love Kepler. Not going to use a rise though. It's not enough power for me to go there. Salvatore, someone calls our jazz Chisholm in that same game I saw before at the Marlins, like that's Brandon Lau. Lau is facing Garcia. I think Garcia has been slipping a bit recently. So for his past eight, it starts with the velocity being down. I considered talking about the raise from a stacking perspective today just because I think that no one's going to use him against Garcia. I couldn't get there because I still have faith in Garcia, but I considered it. So I like those. Salvatore on CEO goes. DJ, he's got Luis Robert. He's got Eloy Jimenez, Adam Duvall, Manuel Margo as the homerun calls for today. White Sox based on Sonny Gray. Sonny Gray, that's bad results, but good peripherals from a bad at ball perspective. Those dudes have power. Lot of power, DJ for sure. Manuel, when attacking a single entry, do you lean on a 4-3 stack or minis everywhere? Great question, Manuel. I lean heavily, heavily, heavily, heavily towards a 4-4 if I can get there or a 4-3. That's just the way I play things in general. What I would say is I wouldn't deviate your single entry strategy from what you're doing in multi-entry because your goal is still to get the highest score. You still want that top prize. That should always be the goal for a tournament. And the best route to getting a top prize is by having as many correlated players in your lineup as you can get. So 4-player stack with a 3-player stack and a 1-player stack. That's still the way you want to go. I know some people do play single entry a bit more cash game centric. I can't do that personally because I use different types of players in cash games versus tournaments. I am still with a full-on tournament mentality just that I'm getting only one lineup in there. So yeah, good question, Manuel. Very good question. And I would say for me, I still want to aim for that top prize. In my eyes, the best route to the top prize is being very stacky, very concentrated with my stacks for single entry. But very good question, Manuel. Eric, sorry I'm late. Just my 4 stacks like Boston, San Francisco, the Dodgers, and one outfield and one offs from the players you mentioned thoughts. The Dodgers facing Ryan Weathers. Yeah, I mean, he struggled in the rotation, went to the bullpen. He's gotten better there recently. It could be a situation where it's been because he's pitching in shorter bursts and that could dry up as he goes back in the rotation for one start. Or it could be he discovered something. I think I'm okay being lower on the Dodgers because of, you know, they're not as, I don't like them as much against lefties and stuff like that. But yeah, I don't think that's bad at all. I think that those work. I love Boston, very into San Fran. So I like those a lot, Eric. DJ says his home run calls are Robert Jimenez, DuVall and Manuel Margot. Sorry, I read that one before, my bad. But yeah, I agree, DJ. I think those guys have some power. DJ, how do I stack the Cardinals with the Giants from Rodin? Or do you think Rodin be limited so he's ready for the playoffs? I'm worried about the velocity and the health more so than the pitch count. Pitch count's concerning too, because he went 69 last time out. Nice. But 86, 77, 67. I can't use Rodin right now. Very worried about the way things look, not just from a pitch count perspective, but also like the effectiveness is pretty bad. So I'd be very wary of Rodin just from those, from, for those reasons. I think I need to see more before I buy back in. Grim fan thoughts on Taiwan Walker. Great matchup, just not convinced about where he's at right now. And like, there's always a range of outcomes where Taiwan Walker does well tonight because of the matchup. Like the Marlins are not good, but it's just really tough. You know, 19% strikeout rate over his past nine starts with his splitter usage backup, 49% fly ball rate, 40% hard hit rate. That's all really tough. So if you made me choose Grim fan between using Walker as a pitcher or stacking against him, I'd be more inclined to use the Marlins against him. I know their implied total is like 3. something. What is it? 3.32, very low. So I'm guessing Taiwan Walker is going to catch some popularity tonight in DFS. I will not be there personally. Strikeouts too low, too much hard contact. So again, it could work because like baseball is a volatile sport. It is a very good matchup. It's a good park for hitting or for pitching as well. So it could work, but I'm not going to be there personally because I have enough concerns about Walker and the way he's pitching right now. That is all the time that we have here for today on the Fandual Live Q&A. As mentioned, we're back once again tomorrow from four to 5 p.m. We have the Thursday night football preview with Brandon Kudula. That is from four to 430. I will have the MLB DFS Q&A from 430 to 5 p.m. So make sure you are subscribed on your platform of choice and come back here tomorrow. Also hit that like button because that does help us out a bunch. If you've got more questions for me, I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis and J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. Big thank you to Calvin Theobald, their video producer for running the videos that are things here today. Thank you, Cal, as always. And thank you to everyone for tuning in. Good luck to you tonight on this Wednesday night of MLB DFS. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow. This has been the Fandual Live Q&A.