 It is opening day. We finally made it here. Lineups are coming out. We are set for the first day of MLB DFS of 2021, which means our first Q&A right here on the Fandall YouTube, Facebook, and Paris, oh, I guess not Paris, but anymore, but by the way, Twitter and Twitch as well, getting you set for MLB DFS for opening day. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com. Here to get you ready for today's opening slate of MLB DFS. The way this thing works, usually will be live for PM Eastern every weekday, right here on the Fandall YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch pages. I'm gonna just figure out how to say all those. Either way, we'll be here live every weekday for PM Eastern because lock is at 1 PM for today, doing things a little bit early. And we have a good number of lineups already in for this slate, not quite everything just yet, but getting there, which means you have questions about individual batters you see in a lineup. You have questions about if you need questions on value plays, which pitchers we like, send those in. We'll get to those questions throughout the day today. You can ask them on YouTube, on Twitch, and also over on Twitter if you have questions there. As always, make sure you are subscribed so you get notifications as we go live each and every day. Usually 4 PM Eastern, we also have the solo shot at 9 AM Eastern getting you set for each day's slate of MLB DFS. We have a first question here from Alvin over on YouTube. He says he's seen a lot of garbage love any reason you are not on it. So Alvin's referring to the solo shot today where I was not in on you, Darvish, and usually I am, I'm always a Darvish person for sure. Alvin, it's more about the matchup than Darvish himself because the Diamondbacks, not a good team. Not nothing's we fear by any means. However, low strikeout rate, their current active roster had a 20.6% strikeout rate versus righties last year. And as you can see here, we got guys like Shane Bieber facing the Tigers, 26% opposing strikeout rate. We've got Jack Flaherty right here, 25% strikeout rate for the Reds against righties last year. We've also got Tyler Glasnow facing the Marlins, 24% is not a high strikeout rate, but it's 4 percentage points higher than what the Diamondbacks did. So Alvin, it's not a question about you for me because I love you, you's tremendous. And he's a great pitcher, high strikeout rate for him and his most relevant sample. No walks, he's elite. He's an, you know, it's a hitters part for today because it's warmer there than it is most places. That's definitely another thing that's working against you. I'm not sure I'm in the hitters tab here. Let's go to pitchers. But either way, I think that when we have those other options, I'm going to wind up being lower on you relative to them. So it's not something where I'm opposed to you, Darvish, the situation where there are other options I wind up liking more. We're gonna have plenty of you throughout the year for sure, believe me, I'm a huge you Darvish fan. But I think for today, there are other options. Let's go through some of those other options here as far as pitching stuff. I think that there's a reason Shane Bieber is the highest salary pitcher on the Slade 11-5 is most rather than sample from last year, a five game sample, 38.5% strikeout rate that is lower than what he was after the full season last year. But I think that's probably pretty fair to be lower than 41%, 38.5% still very high. Based on the Tigers, I think that the Tigers offense will be better than perception this year. So, you know, in general, they might not be a team I target as much as others, but they are gonna strike out 26% strikeout rate for their current active roster against righties last year. So, high strikeout team, Shane Bieber gets a lot of strikeouts, 11-5 very worth it. The issue that I run into Bieber is that 11-5 is a lot and I wanna stack the Dodgers and I wanna stack the Padres. That means I need to find some salary savings. So, it can be tough to go with both Bieber and stack those two teams that I wanna use, which is why if I had just one lineup, I think that Tyler Glasnow is my favorite pitcher for today. Facing the Marlins, as mentioned, not a bad offense, not a team that strikes out as much as the Tigers or the Reds, but they will strike out 24%, nothing to sneeze at by any means. And Glasnow last year, over his final seven starts restoring his off-speed stuff more often, 39% strikeout rate, 2.77 skill interactive ERA. And that doesn't account for the fact that Glasnow potentially might be adding a slider in his repertoire this year. We saw that in spring training. He had 27 strikeouts there across 14 innings pitched. That's pretty nuts, 14-2 thirds there for Glasnow. And if you're looking at spring training stats, don't look at ERA, don't look at it mostly anything else, you wanna look at strikeouts, both are pitchers and for hitters. You wanna see what that strikeout rate was for Glasnow, it was very good. So, that's why I think that I'm gonna wind up having more of him than I have of Bieber just because I get a little bit of salary savings and I'm still getting a massive, massive strikeout rate with Glasnow, especially if we bake in potentially a little bit extra upside there if that slider does want it being as good as it possibly could be. It's kind of been the one knit to pick with Glasnow in the past has been that he didn't have a third pitch. Now he does, potentially with that slider. So, pulling up his game logs here, yeah, getting deep enough into games, I think that he went 80 pitches, 79 pitches in his final spring training start. So, feeling pretty good about the leash there for Glasnow where I'm not super concerned about how things went of cranking up there. So, Glasnow, if I have one lineup, it's going to be Glasnow as my pitcher. If you want to value play, I did mention John Means in the solo shot, potentially whether saving me from myself with John Means with that game getting postponed. So, if you had any Red Sox or those in the lineup, make sure you take them out now because obviously they will not get points. With Means no longer potentially thankfully an option, I do think that Jack Flaherty slots in as being the best value play on the slate, $8,600. This is a really low number for a guy with his strikeout upside. Facing a Red's offense, it will strike out. The most relevant sample for Flaherty I have here is his final four starts where he's throwing fewer sinkers, which is generally a good thing. I think there's only like a couple guys who, I think Brandon Woodruff may have gotten a strikeout rate spike after adding more sinkers, but in general, sinkers are bad. So, it's good that Flaherty did lower the rate there. 33% strikeout rate and the Reds, a 25% strikeout rate against Reds. Now, they can make some hard contact. They can draw some walks. And that's why I would prefer to get up to Glasnow versus settling for Flaherty, even though Flaherty's salary is lower. The walk rate for the Reds and the walk rate for Flaherty, both high enough where I think there are some legitimate concerns. It's not like Flaherty's a guy who has never had walk rate issues in the past. Like you pull up his pass data before 2020 in that small sample I was looking at, walks have always been tiny bit. Like if you're gonna point out an issue with him, it would probably wind up being the walks of them, 7.1% in 2019, 9.6% in 2018. So, I think that's a little bit of a concern and that's why I do wind up putting in below Glasnow. But if you're looking for a picture below $9,000, Flaherty would be the guy who would point to there. Getting the other question over on YouTube. So again, make sure you get those questions in over on YouTube. For today, we're not on Facebook because more ways to win is airing over there, but we are over on Twitch and also on Twitter. So, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube places, you can send in questions for today, tomorrow back on Facebook where you can ask questions there. Question though, over on YouTube from Aaron, any value plays at shortstop as a pivot from the chalk? Okay, so let's go over to shortstop here. The one guy I had been looking at before was William Domus. I'm more into the raised lefties because if you look at Sandy Alcantra, he has weird, crazy, crazy splits. Whereas his ground ball rate is like 66% against righties versus like 27% against lefties. I'm not sure if those are the actual numbers, but like they're in that ballpark. So in general, I have been skewing towards the lefties within this raised lineup. The problem is that there aren't really a lot of value shortstops who I like, Aaron. So with Domus, yeah, we're dealing with the bad platoon stuff against Alcantra. Potentially, or sorry, let's go to William Domus here. You're getting a worse bad of ball profile against Alcantra by using a righty against him. But, Domus got a little bit of power. He looked pretty good during the spring last year, a 9.9% barrel rate for him. He had a good fly ball right, I believe, as well. So we just go down here over on fan graphs. I guess 31%, it's not ideal. But either way, a good barrel rate for Domus, a lot of strikeouts, but Alcantra, not a big strikeout guy, which is why I'm okay stacking the raise. They're a team I tend to avoid when they're facing a higher strikeout pitcher, not the case today with Alcantra. So I think the raise a pretty good stack. And in general, a team that I would like to stack when I'm trying to get up to guys, like stacks like the Dodgers and the Padres. So to me, I think the raise do stand out as being one of the better value stacks, uh-oh, baseballpress.com down, that could be bad. But I haven't seen the raise lineup yet if it is out. So we'll try to pull this up over here on the other computer and see if we can get their lineup in. It might not be out yet, which is very possible. So let's pull this up here. Oh, okay, cool, we got this. Baseball press can be kind of flukey. So we're gonna deal with issues here most of the year. Okay, so still no raise lineup as of yet, but I do think that Adonis works. I don't necessarily think he's like a super desirable play. Like Aaron, if I could find the salary, get up to Tatis and Seager most of the time, I would like to do that. But I think that Adonis, at least an option you have as far as a lower salary shortstop. Pull up shortstop here and see if there's anyone else who really stands out to us. Again, if you're new to MLB DFS, most of my process revolves around finding players who are in the teams that I wanna stack. So even though I like some individual players, if I'm not stacking their team, it's tougher for me to get on them. You know, I think that's tough with opening days that there are just a lot of players who are in tough matches. Let's check out kinder Felifa here, because he is shortstop and third base on FanDuel and see what we're working with him here. Because I know that Rangers, not a bad match for them against Brad Keller, low strikeout guy, does a pretty good job at suppressing hard contact, but we're dealing with so many good pitchers. If we find a guy who's more middling like Keller, I'm pretty inclined to use batters for our facing. Okay, so kinder Felifa last year, 14% strikeout rate, just a 2.2% barrel rate, but does steal some bases. So there's at least a path to upside with kinder Felifa just because he can get those stolen bases. He's probably gonna put the ball in play, which is helpful, but the barrel rate pretty lacking. So if I'm choosing one lower salary shortstop to focus on for today, it's gonna wind up being Adonis, but I do think that if you don't want to deal with the bad ball issues against Alcantara, I think that your best alternative would wind up being kinder Felifa there for the Ranger. Let's refresh this here so I can get updated spots in the order in case they are out there. As far as the reason that I'm targeting the Padres and the Dodgers, Dodgers pretty obvious there at Coors Field. I'm a big Emma Marquez fan, but not at Coors, not on a day like this. He did a good job last year. He is one of the guys who did increase his sinker usage and it did lead to an increased ground ball rate. Just allow just a 2% barrel rate over his final five starts. It's a small sample, of course, obviously, but a good outing there or a good showing by Marquez in that sample, but not a lot of strikeouts. 19% strikeout rate, facing a Dodgers team that doesn't strike out a lot, makes a lot of hard contact at Coors Field with warm temperatures, 68 degree temperatures out of Coors Field for today. That's a really bad combo there for sure. So to me, I think the Dodgers stand out because of that. The reason I like the Padres, they're facing Madison Bumgarner. And sure, we could see a situation where Mad Bum gets back to what he was previously, but the problem is A, the Padres are very good. B, Bumgarner even in 2019, it's not as if he was like a shut down pitcher. He was fine. He was definitely fine, but gave up some hard contact, not a big strikeout guys. Let's say we assume, let's make the assumption right now that Mad Bum goes back to what he was in 2019. Still an 8.5% barrel rate allowed, just a 24% strikeout rate of 5% walk rate. That's a lot of balls in play against a Padres team that has a lot of power. So I think that's enough for me to go at the Padres. Sure he could be better, probably will be better than what he was last year. That's still not a great pitcher and one we can target especially on opening day when the other pitchers are so good. So to me, that's why I'm on the Padres is my number two stack behind the Dodgers for today. Question over on Twitch from Mr. Zach T, avoiding the Braes and the Phillies. Okay, let's pull up the Braes and the Phillies here. I'm assuming you mean from a batting perspective. So Max Freed, not a big strikeout guy, but really good job of suppressing hard contact, a 3% barrel rate for him allowed last year over his. Final five star, it's another guy who's landing more on a sinker. So that's why I'm not really on the Phillies here. The Braes, I love Aranola. Aranola is such a good pitcher. I can't use them in DFS today because the Braes offense is so good, but I'm also not gonna use batters facing. The other thing here is the temperature, just 50 degrees for that game between the Braes and the Phillies. So I think that's enough for I'm okay not going there. If I were to pick one, I would rather stack the Phillies than the Braes. But because Freed does such a good job of keeping things in check from a bat at ball perspective, they're not gonna wind up being super high on my list as a result of that. Alvin, any love for Castillo or Maeda? Okay, I like both. So obviously like again, it's opening day. I'm not gonna say no to most people. The reasons why I'm not on them, because they're not my top three. So I think I should explain why that's the case. As far as Kenta Maeda goes, it's not a talent thing. I think he's tremendous. This Brewer's team will definitely strike out. And as you can see on the pitching tab over here, there's a lot of green with Kenta Maeda for sure. And he was also tremendous. It's like just disgusting throughout the entire spring. The reason I don't wind up going there is I'm a little bit concerned about pitch count with him. He went 43 pitches in his final tune up start but 75 time for that. So if I'm projecting pitch count for Kenta Maeda, it's probably gonna sit somewhere around like 85 or so. Whereas guys like Bieber, he's not quite Trevor Bauer from a pitch count perspective, but he's a guy you can reasonably expect to go 95 or so. So about 10 plus there. Glasnow, he did have the situation last year where he would often leave games pretty early. But he saw down the stretch where they were more willing to let him go deep into games. And I think given how good he's been, I feel like we'll see a decent amount of willingness here for the raise to actually just let him go a bit deeper into games, five innings, 10 strikeouts for him. And his final spring start, you can see pitch count numbers by going to more BB under the game logs over on fan graphs, went 102 and 105 a couple of times. So Kenta did have that one game where he had the no hitter going and they let him go, I think like 115 for that one. But outside of that, he wasn't someone who went super deep into games. So if we're talking about Kenta Maeda in a vacuum, I think that he's gonna have tremendous peripherals today. I think that he's gonna get some strikeouts while he's out there. Just a little bit more worried with him versus others that'll go super deep into the game. We did let him go deeper later on, but it started off pretty conservative there in the low 80s last year. So I think pitch count projection for Kenta, probably 85 or so, which is lower than other people. With Luis Castillo, I am generally okay with targeting the Cardinals. If you were listening to our other podcasts this year, the covering the spread, talk a lot of times about why I wanted to bet the Brewers to win the division. I wouldn't do that now because they've shortened a lot. So it's a different number than it was then. They were plus three 80 then, they're plus two 80 now. But part of that was because I don't think this Cardinals offense will be all that good this year. Look at their active roster numbers against righties last year, 89, WRC plus, not a lot of hard contact, 23% strikeout rates. So that is about average. The reason that I didn't get up there is because Castillo, a 30% strikeout rate, it is most relevant sample, which was as final six starts, he's throwing his change up a bit less often, did a good job with suppressing hard contact. So I think the floor for Castillo is very good. I think the ceiling is lower for him relative to guys like last now with that 39% strikeout rates, like Bieber at 39%, and they also have higher strikeout matchups than him. So again, it's similar to the you Darvish discussion where it's not a situation where I think that player is a bad play. I just think that there are other options I like more. And again, on opening day, we have to be a little bit picky because we have so many good options. So Castillo, the salary, very forgiving, $8,900. He is at home. Those are all good things. I would assume that the Reds are probably favored for that game. Yeah, minus 120 on the money line for them. So they're favored, he's at home, checks a lot of boxes. I would just prefer to go with Flaherty on the other side or get up to Glasnow and Bieber instead. Other team that I mentioned as being a team I'm targeting for stacking is the Tampa Bay Rays. Talked a little bit about that before, but you see Alcantra here in his most relevant sample last year, a final four starts where he's landing more on a slider. 22% strikeout rates, 4.35 skill interactive ERA. Most days that's very fine. Like you'll definitely take that for sure. But on opening day, when there are so many other good pitchers, we got to find somewhere to stack. And the thing with Alcantra is that, you see really big batted ball splits for him versus Reds versus lefties. I was talking to Craig Mish, who's one of the beat reporters for the Marlins yesterday. And I was asking about if Alcantra's changing anything, try to get better against lefties. And he said that, yeah, working on a changeup during the spring. So it does seem as if he is trying to, he's cognizant of the fact that his biggest struggles are with lefties because if you throw a changeup more often, it tends to be better for you against opposite handed batters. It seems like he does understand that the lefties are kind of the crypto net for him right now. And let's show why here you can go to the splits tool over on Fangrass, super useful because you can kind of customize your samples with most stuff I like going with small samples. With splits, it's a bit tougher because you just wind up inherently having smaller samples. It's a lot more fluke-ness involved. So we can go to a preset time range here. Let's go 2020 and 2019. So we'll have numbers in both those years. We go against left handed hitters. His ground ball rate against lefties is 41%. Whereas versus righties in this time, it is 49%. So definitely a big split there for Alcantra based on the hand is the opposing batter. And that means that we should favor Alcantra or favor teams facing Alcantra when they have a lot of lefties. While you look at this Ray's lineup, which again, I don't think has come out yet, which is a little annoying, but either way, Tsutsugo, lefty, Meadows, lefty, Rosarena, righty, Lau is a lefty, Wendell, lefty, Adamus, righty, Kiermeier, could be Margot, depending on how they decide to platoon things there, a lefty as well. So basically what we're getting is a very lefty heavy lineup facing a guy who very much so struggles more with lefties than righties. He could get better this year. If that change winds up being a very effective pitch for Alcantra, we might not mind up being here all that often and going with lefties who are facing him, but for right now, I do think that there is incentive to use lefties facing Alcantra, seeing if that improvement does come to fruition, because if it doesn't, we're getting a lot of value from this Ray's team in a situation where I wouldn't expect them to strike out all that often and still no Ray's lineup, because why would there be? But I think that the Ray's in general, a team that can provide you a lot of value if you're trying to get up to teams like the Padres and Mike, the Dodgers. Okay, so if we go Tsutsugo here, third base and outfield, Joey Wendell, probably not a guy I'm gonna use like more than a couple of times this year, but I do think that because we need the salary savings today, I could be okay with it. He doesn't get enough barrels where I'm gonna be here very often, but he's a lefty facing Alcantra. I need value for today. I can get there. I actually think that Kiermeyer's gonna play over Margot. Bitch surprise, see the projected order has Margot in there, but I think that Kiermeyer is probably gonna play, so put Kiermeyer in there and then you've got the guys like Meadows and Lau. They're both pretty low salary, so you should be able to get there. Maybe not if you're going like Tatis or Machado and all those guys, but in general I think you should be able to get there. So the Ray's an affordable stack if you need salary flexibility to get to teams like the Dodgers and the Padres. Alvin, stack rankings for single entry. So I do think that that's tough. I feel like the Ray's would probably be there, Alvin, because again, my mindset is I'm gonna use Glassnow. So I'm gonna use Glassnow, which means, okay, I lock him in. I know that I need some salary flexibility. Even if I had those three value plays from the Ray's in there, still 35 too. That doesn't necessarily make it very easy to get to the true studs for the Padres and the Dodgers. I will say you can fill out a lineup with Glassnow, Padres, and Dodger stacks. So honestly, Alvin, I might want to go in there even knowing the Dodgers will be pretty popular for today just because I think that's the right way to play things. But if you want to get to, you know, not just Seeker, like if you want to get multiple stud Dodgers in there, you're probably gonna have to go with the Ray's as your second stack. So I think if you give me one lineup, I'm personally gonna try to jam in the Dodgers and the Padres, which I know I can do. But I think that if we are being realistic and you're like, let's say you're less comfortable using the bottom tier players on these stacks. Like I'm fine with AJ, Paul, Gavin, Lux, guys like that. If you want the true studs, I would go Ray's as one of those stacks in order to get up to the superstar. But the good thing is both the Padres and the Dodgers have some lower salary players we can use, which does make it easier. We've got Will Meyers here, Tommy Fam is $3,000. I probably shouldn't use Jurick's in Profar. Someone like sent me a tweet after Profar signed us. I was like, oh, you'll finally stop using him in DFS. No, no, no. We're still here. He's $2,300 in the slate where I need savings. So I'm still gonna wind up there so I can use these guys and give myself salary flexibility, which is why I know that I can get to both the Dodgers and the Padres in the same lineup. I don't know why, oh, Will Smith, that's what I was going for. But like you can fit both of them in there. So I would say probably Alvin Dodger's Padres, but I think the Ray's are there. If you want to be more contrarians, I don't think any, that people will be on the Ray's for today. Pierre, haven't heard you talk about the Yankees. Is it because of weather and or Ryu? I'm not as concerned about, I guess the weather's pretty bad too, 45 degrees. So maybe I should be concerned about the weather. I think it's more about Ryu because I think Hange and Ryu is really good. Made a change last year where he was throwing his curveball more. It was still just 15%. So it's not like he was, you know, we're leaning fully on that curveball, but 15% is bigger. 1.7% barrel rate allowed, 27% strike out. If you give Hange and Ryu a 27% strikeout rate, he could be pretty nasty. So I'm not really into the Yankees here. I have the numbers of the Yankees from 2020 against lefties. I don't think that's super smart. Like they're going to be better than 90 WRC plus this year against lefties, but it's Ryu himself who pushes me away. Combined with the temperature, I think that's a good call out as well. That's why I don't want to get in there. So to me, it is Glasnow, one is pitcher, probably Bieber two, then Flaherty. For stacking Dodgers one, Padres two, Rays three. Should be pretty good foundation for today. If you need additional one offs, I think the Royals and the Rangers, probably the teams I would turn to there. That is all the time that we have for today on this Q&A, but again, we are here every weekday getting you set for MLB DFS. Usually we are 4pm Eastern on the Fandal YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Twitter. Again, I got to figure out the order to say those because they change everything up with Periscope being gone either way. Back again, 4pm Eastern time tomorrow to get you set for MLB DFS. We also have the solo shot, which is the daily MLB DFS podcast that I do. That is recorded live here on the Fandal YouTube page, 9am Eastern every weekday as well. Goes up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed immediately after that. So make sure you subscribe there, but also here on the Fandal YouTube page, regular schedule begins tomorrow, 9am solo shot, 4pm MLB DFS Q&A and continuing with that schedule every day, starting next week. Big thank you to Calvin Theobald, our video producer for running the video side of things here today. Thank you, Cal, as always. If you have additional questions for me, I am on Twitter at Chimsonus. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in. We made it opening day finally here. Good luck with opening day. Good luck with playing the late slate as well. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow. Gonna be a fun year. This has been the Fandal Fantasy Live Q&A.