 What's going on and welcome to the MLB DFS Q&A. My name is Tom Vecchio. Every day I'm here at 4 p.m., taking your questions about the Knights MLB Slate. We have a four game slate tonight. It locks at 805 Eastern, not 705 805 Eastern, not getting that extra hour in for some research. And hopefully more important than research and update when it comes to the weather tonight, specifically for the Cubs and the Brewers. This game at Wrigley Field is set to have plenty of rain tonight, this all according to Kevin Roth on Twitter. He's a fantastic follow for the DFS industry when it comes to weather and weather issues specifically for baseball. We are dealing with a lot of weather, a lot of rain tonight for this game. Now, he's saying that there's a late start at best. There's gonna be a ton of rain, but if they do play, it's gonna be warm and humid, winds blowing out 10 to 15 miles per hour. That's a good bump to the bats. And then of course, as I said this morning on the solo shot, winds blowing out in Kansas City, another bump to the bats there, which is good to see. So a four game slate, which could turn into a three game slate, depending on whether or not the weather in Chicago cooperates for the Cubs and the Brewers. So that of course is something to pay attention to. We don't have too many confirmed starting lineups as of now, only the, I think the Brewers out will circle back on that. Starting off, Sivan, favorite stacks for today. That's what he's asking on YouTube. Tonight's slate, we should be seeing some very chalky teams. We have very, very heavy favorites. We have four heavy favorites. We have four pretty large underdogs. We should see all four favorites as the chalkiest teams on tonight's slate. Looking to the Yankees and the White Sox is probably overall the safest option. All things considered, yes, the Brewers are in a good spot against Alec Mills, especially if the wind will be blowing out, but ultimately we don't know if that game will in fact be playing. So that's why, aside with the Yankees and the White Sox, if we flip to the, some White Sox hitters, of course, they will be getting back, Luis Robeir tonight. He was activated off the 60 day IL and he comes in at the minimum salary, $2,000. I mentioned him this morning on the solo shot. If he's gonna be in the lineup, but just really matters where in the lineup, hopefully we're looking at middle to top of the lineup, which will be great to see. He's minimum salary and that's something we absolutely need on tonight's slate where there's just such limited value and ultimately most people will be paying up for either Joe Musgrove or Lucas Gilito, who are the two best pitching options on tonight's slate. And that's the order. Ultimately I'm gonna be looking at them tonight. We'll be taking Joe Musgrove number one and then Lucas Gilito number two. Now, I think Robeir is probably gonna be one of, if not the chalkiest players on tonight's slate. We should be looking him as a solid overall option. Of course, we're gonna be looking to Jose Ebreu as another fantastic add to the White Sox stack overall. Gavin Sheets was sent down to the minors with them bringing Robeir back. So make sure you don't have Sheets in your lineup. Let's just double check to see if the White Sox lineup has been confirmed. It's not confirmed yet. So we'll look to Luis Robeir, of course. We can certainly add in shares of Tim Anderson and in some Andrew Vaughn. You want that potential power upside after they get past the Ruddy's, which would be good to see. So the White Sox are leading off at number one. Let's just flip to some of their options. Overall, not that expensive. They offer some clear value with Robeir $2,000 and then I'll be filtering in plenty of shares of some of their power hitters. The Yankees would be the number two stack that I'm looking on tonight's slate, right here. Obviously plenty of power upside, specifically from their righties tonight with the wind blowing out to left. That's something we want to see, but we also should be focusing in on Joey Gallo. He's not on the split right here. He hasn't, I guess, will change the filter for plate appearances. Hasn't had enough plate appearances. Obviously a strong ISO from him in 26 plate appearances versus righties as a Yankee, of course, that power upside is always gonna be good for him, regardless of there's wind blowing out or not. So Joey Gallo, Aaron Judge, Stanton, all gonna be super, super popular tonight. Now the Yankees lineup should look a little bit different tonight because of course there's no Rizzo. They got Luke Voitback. Labor Torres went for an MRI after yesterday's game and we should be getting value with again, Kyle Higashioka getting a start at Katcha because Gary Sanchez is on the COVID IL. So we could be getting a bit of value with the bottom portion of the Yankees lineup. Ultimately, we'd like to side with the top of their lineup and pay up for what is clearly the home run hitters in their lineup. I will say that Luke Voit, $3,000, not super expensive. He came back from the IL, the other day. Yesterday was his first game back. Yeah, 0 for 4, not great to see, but he does have that clear power upside. Best type of stacking method today, Saban is asking on YouTube. I think tonight's slate is a slate that I'll go mostly 4, 3, 1 and 4, 2, 2 tonight. I normally go 4, 4 as a good portion or a good percentage of my stacking allocation, but this is the kind of slate where it's a small slate. This is where I'll differentiate and jump into a little bit of 4, 2, 2, which I think is certainly viable on every slate. Whether it's 10 games, 15 games or four games, I think going 2, 8, 4, 2, 2 could work tonight. So I'll use the White Sox or the Yankees as a primary stack and then if the Yankees are my primary stack of 4, trying to get two hitters from the White Sox which would ultimately include, I would almost certainly say Luis Robeiro because I wanna be spending up for the Yankees full stack, get Robeiro at that low salary, get that value and then probably look to add in a few more Padres hitters. It'd be great to have some Brewer's hitters in there, but we're still waiting on a weather update in fact that game does play. Short Slate's Tyon to be contrarian since everyone will be on Musgrove. That is totally, totally an option. Also the, I would say a slight amount of salary relief that James and Tyon brings at $8,100 is totally, totally something that you want in your lineups and that because you can pay up for Tyon plus three hitters from the Yankees. You can go to a full Padres stack at home. Obviously plenty of home run upside for them and they can be quite expensive up the top. Grisham, Cronenworth and Machado are certainly expensive. So yes, absolutely go to Tyon today. Now I will say I do have interest in Kansas City. Some of their hitters tonight, let's flip to Kansas City quickly and then I'll bring up Tyon right here just to give you a little comparison. So Tyon is allowing too many home runs this season and that's something that we can be taking advantage of with the wind in Kansas City. 1.97 home runs per nine to lefties this year is certainly not good just over one home, one home run of per nine to righties. He's allowing a 51% fly ball rate to lefties and a 44% fly ball rate to righties. We look to some of the power options on Kansas City. Ryan O'Hearn, Sal Perez. I wrote up Perez today on numberfire.com. He's probably my favorite overall a home run call on tonight's slates. Carlos Santana, a hundred dozer, also plenty of power. Injuribin and Tendi hasn't been starting as of late for them he's dealing with some shoulder injury but if he's gonna be in the lineup you could also look to add him. So as much as I'd like Tyon tonight and I will 100% have some shares of him in my lineup build I also am looking to Kansas City again to be a big contrarian because that power upside from some of them against the picture with a 51% fly ball rate against lefties with extra wind blowing out in Kansas City is not something that you want to be passing on. Let's give these an update. Let's hop back in. Do we have no other confirmed lineups? Saban is saying today seems to be a little weird. It is a little bit weird. It's a four game slate which of course small to begin with and we're waiting on major weather information for the Chicago Cubs hosting the Brewers because this game might not even play. As Kevin Roth says, it's a late start at best and he's saying the field could be in rough shape where if it's just gonna be pouring and pouring for extended period of time they might just turn it into a double header tomorrow and then we're dealing with a three game slate where we're gonna be dealing with super, super chalky options, a lot of overlap when it comes to lineups, et cetera, et cetera. So we're waiting on this weather update. If it comes through, hope, I mean it's gotta come through before eight o'clock. I mean it would be like worst case scenario that doesn't come through before eight o'clock. Yeah, so we're waiting on the weather update for Milwaukee and Chicago. Best Milwaukee hitters for today if they play. Milwaukee is right here, we look to their power. William Domus is really, really bringing some power for them after being traded. Rowdy Tiles is also certainly an option you can be looking to. Basically anyone here in the top tier, let's look at some of their salaries for the Brewers. Obviously we've seen Eduardo Escobar be traded there. He's looking solid. The Retinso Cain is back to them. He's been playing outside of his big game yesterday. He's actually been relatively consistent for them. Not offering a ton of power upside like he did in some of his younger years, but certainly an option can be adding in. And really for the spot that the Brewers are in, in a game, again, if it plays that has 10 to 15 mile power wins, like if it does play, this is wind blowing out at Rugly, which we know is so beneficial. I wanna say these salaries are very, very affordable. Christian Yellich is under $3,000. The power that Rowdy has at under $3,000, yes. So if I had to rank the hitters on the Brewers, if that's what you're asking. Oh, I would take Eduardo Escobar number one, Adames two, Abyssal Garcia three, and then it's probably just a toss up between Yellich and Tiles at both at 2,900. So Eduardo Escobar has been super consistent. The, I would say point per dollar value that Willie Adames brings at 3,300 is certainly fantastic. Game stack of the Yankees, Royals, especially this turns into a three-gamer diffuse on YouTube is asking. Yes, absolutely. This game has an over under at 10. I believe it opened at nine and a half or nine and it jumped up to 10. Total, totally viable strategy, especially this is a three-gamer. And realistically, you know, we know that the Yankees are gonna be expensive or at least the top portion of their lineups gonna be expensive depending on if Glaber plays with his thumb, MRI, whatever it's gonna be. You know, we could be getting some extra value in here where, you know, Tyler Wade, right? If Glaber's out, Tyler Wade, I guess could be getting the start at minimum salary now. He's not the ideal add to a Yankee stack, but if you're really looking to jam in the hitters from the top and then you wanna get in some of the hitters from Kansas City, right? Like Sal Perez and Carlos Santana and Ryan O'Hearn aren't overly expensive, but when you're paying up for over 4,000 from multiple hitters from the Yankees and then you probably wanna pay up for Musgrove or Geoledo. Like, what would that look like? If you wanna pay up for just take Musgrove because it's a little bit cheaper, we'll go to the Yankees. You just take some Yankees here, you flip to the Royals. I'm big on Santana tonight. I'm, excuse me, Perez tonight. Like this is not the easiest build in the world, right? Like this is barely 3,000 left per player and we have four open spots. So it's certainly doable. And I love the idea of doing a game stack. You just really capture all those runs, especially if it's the over on 10, which we should see. Favorite one-off at second base, 2K and under. Okay, that's very specific. That's from Kyle on YouTube. Like that's a great question. It's gonna be super specific. So one-off at second base, second base from all teams, 2K and under. Ian Hap, I wrote about Ian Hap on Number Fire. Again, if that game plays, so let me give you an alternative and I'll jump into Ian Hap a little bit. So it'd be Ian Hap and then, I mean, if Tyler Wade plays, he'd be minimum salary. That's just obviously a bit of a long shot. Adam Frazier, Adam Frazier at 2,800 or Ian Hap at 2,700. I mean, Rudin O'Dore is also just as good. He could be bumped up into the lineup, especially if Glaber is out. We could see him hitting a little bit higher. So there's three viable options. Ian Hap, I think is going to be probably coming in at the lowest percentage. So he's going up against Freddie Peralta and let me just bring up Hap stats real quick. Now, there's no doubt Freddie Peralta is a very good pitcher, right? He's coming in with his massive strikeout rate overall. This season versus lefties, 29% strikeout rate was obviously great, allowing 0.87 homeruns per nine versus lefties. Hap's a switch hitter, so he'll be hitting lefty. A 53% fly ball rate is terrible, right? Now, if we flip to Hap, now I said this on my article on Number Fire today about Hap is that Peralta is a better pitcher than Hap is a hitter. But if the Cubs are going to be at lower roster ship percentages compared to everyone else, why are we not looking to take a hitter like Ian Hap, who has a decent 32.7% fly ball rate? This is, these are the updated stats for Hap this season. Yeah, he's at an 18.4% homerun to fly ball ratio with the wind, right? With the wind blowing out in Wrigley. So if this game does play, right? Freddie Peralta is a great pitcher, but if this 53% fly ball rates can be shining through, like homeruns can just fly out, right? And there's nothing he can do about that. So I like Hap as a one-off. Frasier should be decently popular. So it'd be Hap number one of door two and then Frasier. Rod on YouTube is asking on a small split, do you focus more on just playing the best plays or focus on what we call roster ship now? We don't use that word anymore. Just to be, just our company policy, but we use roster ship now. Do I focus more on playing the best plays or? No, I focus on just trying to nail down the stacks to make roster construction work where I'm gonna get exposure to what should be the chalkiest teams and I wanna make roster construction and my player pool allocation appropriate. So I will, if the Yankees are gonna be super popular and it's a three game slate and you don't roster the Yankees and they go off for 10 runs, you're just done, like you're just left behind. So I want plenty of shares of the Yankees. I want plenty of shares of whoever it might be and then it'll work in a secondary stack which could be Kansas City tonight. So it could be Kansas City plus the Yankees, Kansas City plus the White Sox, Kansas City plus San Diego. So that is just the way I go about it. Like I don't focus on like any, like one specific position on slates like this just because it's mostly gonna be about stacks on this. Savannah is asking which game we think we'll have the most offense tonight. It will probably be New York at Kansas City just based on, you know, we've seen that implied run total jump up or the overall run total jump up. But it's tough not to say Milwaukee at Chicago. Again, if we get an update on that game because Alec Mills, a low strikeout pitcher for Chicago and of course, Glaver is placed on the 10 day IL. We got an updated lineup from both the twins and the White Sox. Okay, so this means he's obviously not gonna be playing. We're gonna see a bump in the lineup for probably Ruben and Odore as I said, we'll probably be seeing Tyler Wade start. So that gives you plenty of value. White Sox, Tim Anderson. Her name is a brave man. Okay, so Luis Robert is batting seventh. He's minimum salary. You would certainly look to, I mean, Robert should be one of the most popular players on tonight's slate. Twins, the twins also should not be popular. I did write up Kepler as a potential under the radar option for his home run upside. He absolutely has plenty of power versus righties. Geolito struggled a bit recently with home run. So I wouldn't hate taking a few shares of some twins players as one-offs in tournaments. But this twins lineup is pretty solid. You could go to three, four, five, seven as a stack. You could just go one through four, but Robert should be popular at only $2,000. So to answer your question, New York and Kansas City is my favorite game stack. Millwalk in Chicago is two. Yeah, as Michael Starr just said on YouTube. Yeah, these lineups are, these are good lineups. Robert makes lineup construction now much easier today. So if you go to this game, Robert in there, you wanna pay up for Musgrove, that's totally fine. You wanna add in the power with Judge and Stanton. Also totally fine. You wanna get, let's see, shortstop for Tim Anderson. Like that's the start of a good stack, right? 3,100, if you take Tyler Wade, he's $2,000, increases your average that much more. Like a full Yankees White Sox stack, if you wanted to go four-four, which is obviously totally viable stacking strategy on every slate, is certainly doable tonight. I like India and Farmer from Sinsi today. Yeah, those players are always in play. They're not on this, the main slate, that's the earlier game that starts at 6.05 or 6.10 or 6.15, whatever that is tonight. 6.10 tonight. That game's not on the main slate, but yes, Jonathan India and Kyle Farmer are both solid options from Sinsi, especially if you're playing the single game slate, like Jesse Winker, Nick Castellanos, and Joey Vado should be much more popular than Farmer and India. So that makes a nice option if you're building single game lineups. So tonight's a slate where I'm gonna be looking for my main stacks, which will be the Yankees and the White Sox. I guess we're just at the mercy of Chicago and Milwaukee and the MLB, if they just decide to cancel this game and postpone it until tomorrow if we get a double header or whatever it might be or sometime later in the season. But really focusing in on the Yankees once their lineups confirmed what that looks like, getting plenty of shares of Chicago, getting some New York and Chicago stacks together, but then also getting some Kansas City with New York and Kansas City with Chicago just because ultimately, Ty Ohn's giving up too many home runs, right? He's giving up too many home runs specifically to lefty. So looking to some of the power from Kansas City, again, a team that probably shouldn't be as popular I think is a really, really solid tournament called tonight. Perez has great splits versus righties. Even it's a ready, ready match for much I'd say. So I'm going to Ryan O'Hearn, Perez, Santana and Dozier from Kansas City as the main four players. Like Ben and Ten deal, take some shots on depending if you started or not, just be dealing with the shoulder issue. Do you like Ryan Jeffers or Thales whether puny? It would be Thales. Like I just want that power, especially in that park with the wind blowing out, as you said, whether permitting. It's Mr. Jack Moon and everyone who has Fandall sports but better have 25 ready for Dinger tomorrow. Yeah, it'd be great if we get some Dingers today, you know, get the week started off on a good note. Get maybe South Perez to hit a home run since I wrote him up today on number five. That'd be the player I want to hit a home run today. I also think he's like legitimately in a good spot going up against Ty Ohn. Let's just look on him. So of course I'll be back tomorrow for another home run call. Perez is my number one option onto night slates for a home run call. Like 189 iso slightly a little bit lower than we'd like to see but solid fly ball rates, solid hard contact rate and a solid home run to fly ball ratio from him. You know, it'd be great if it was a lefty like Andrew Keeney if he was pitching for the Yankees this would be an absolute crazy spot for some of the righty hitters on the Royals. But, you know, we're working with Ty Ohn who still is giving up too many home runs and too many fly balls, especially with the wind blowing out. The weather again, major, major concern on tonight's slate. I would say that if Chicago does play, Peralta is a risky option. He just is. There's no way we can say that Peralta with his 50 or 48% fly ball rate overall is it's 53 against lefties. It's 42. So that makes it was a 48.7 overall. It's 48.9 overall. There's no way we can say that Peralta is as safe of an option as Musgrove or Geelito which is why this morning I ranked them Musgrove, Geelito, Peralta in that order, all things considered. And the matchup for, you know, even though Chicago is not a good team anymore, they trade away all those players, they're still better than Miami. So I think we could be looking to Musgrove absolutely overall number one. And then, you know, going to Geelito number two, I know he burned a lot of people last time, myself included, putting up zero, Fane two points and four innings with six earned runs against these Royals that are on tonight's slate. Obviously just not a good performance from him, but he had been consistent for the most part except for the zero. That's the All-Star game. Don't worry about that. Or just some random thing. Overall, just like not a picture that we really need to be that concerned about. He is much better than he showed in his most recent game. So Musgrove, Geelito, Peralta in that order, Yankees, White Sox as my two primary stacks, San Diego, just half a step behind New York and Chicago, Chicago, White Sox, I should say, and then Kansas City as kind of that next best option. Milwaukee would be in there. It just depends on the weather. I think Milwaukee is in the same tier as New York and Chicago, White Sox tonight. Can you rank the players from the Padres game? I assume you mean the Padres hitters, not the Miami hitters. So do I still have the, let me just bring up the Padres real quick. They are facing Righty, San Diego here. Obviously we want to get Manny Machado leading things off as the number one option. $4,000 can be expensive if you are trying to pay up for Musgrove or Geelito and Yankees or White Sox stack depending on how you go about things. But they do have plenty of other options obviously. It's still without Fernando Tattis. Going up Manny Machado is solid. Jake Cronworth, 202 ISO is fantastic. Will Myers, Trent Grisham and Tommy Tham are all three hitters. I think you should be very interested in tonight because we're getting decent value on all of them. Will Myers, 2400 I know he's been underperforming this year overall, but he's affordable and can be used in a larger stack for the Padres. So ranking them would be Machado. I think it's just one, two, three. Machado, Cronworth, Grisham, Myers, Frasier, Pham. Hosmer's also been underperforming this year just really not bringing a whole lot of power upside. Also not a player I've been rostering a lot as of late. So I would just go one, two, three. Myers, Pham, Frasier. Like those, all those players should be super solid tonight. Especially, you know, I like these players on the bottom tier just because they make line of construction a little bit easier. They actually don't have much power as these top players, but that's why you're paying a more expensive salary. So I'm going to the Padres tonight, half a step behind the Yankees and the White Sox. I do like their matchup tonight at home. Best pictures for tonight. Mike, Mike on Facebook is asking, it would be Joe Musgrove as just the best overall option. Point per dollar option, best matchup, best park factor, all these sorts of things. He's number one, G-Lito would be number two, and then Freddie Peralta would be number three, accounting for his salary, you know, which makes line of construction that much more difficult on a four game slate. Also the weather is an issue. You don't want, you know, Milwaukee and Chicago to say that this game is going to be delayed and you have Peralta in your lineups. And there's, you know, there's no real direct swap from Peralta to, you know, one of the other pictures, like if you drop from Peralta to Musgrove, that's $1,200 of savings. Like you'd have to change up roster construction quite a bit. So if push comes to shove tonight and we don't have a confirmed update on Milwaukee and the Cubs, the Cubs line up is in, you know, I like Hap in the three spot. I just spoke about him. I am on board with Ian Hap tonight. If push comes to shove and it's coming down to roster lock and we don't have an update on the Cubs and Brewers game, I'm simply removing, you know, Peralta from my player but I just don't want to have him in there. I don't want to have to rearrange things. I'll keep some hitters in there just because, you know, generally we see the slate, the lock move back for that specific game. So you can swap the hitters out. It's obviously easier to swap the hitters out than it is the pitchers. Musgrove would be in the later game, but the Chicago White Sox game would be starting at the same time, I guess, as the Chicago Cubs game. So I would remove Peralta from my player pool, keep Geolito, Musgrove, Tyone as my main three pitching options and then just take a few shares of Milwaukee and, you know, like a one off like Ian Hap from Chicago, trying to gain some of that fly ball potential from Freddie Peralta. Again, if this game does play, that's what we're really waiting on for this because, you know, this lineup isn't good. Like Hap and Wisdom, I guess would be my two favorite plays from the Cubs for that home run upside. Do you like Carlos Hernandez at all with the San Diego, Chicago White Sox stack? Yes, so I mentioned him briefly this morning on the solo shot. Obviously a smaller sample size from him, only 39.1 innings, like a 28% striker rate like is solid. It's above the league average, 14% walk rate, that's an issue, right? Allowing Yankee hitters on base when you're also allowing a 40% fly ball rate in a game with wind blowing out is a deadly combination. Too many hitters on base for free and a high fly ball rate, you know, with wind against the lineup like the Yankees is obviously a deadly combination. So I do like him tonight. I mentioned it again on the solo shot this morning, like his strikeout upside is pretty solid. Like as long as you can get deeper into the game, none of these like relief starts. We want to be looking at, but like he's putting up some decent performances like six strikeouts through four innings, granted it's Baltimore, six strikeouts through five innings against the White Sox only one or run, like that twice, I should say six and four, 10 strikeouts over 11 innings versus the White Sox and one or run like isn't bad. The walks can be a big issue for him. So I do like Carlisthen Anders to answer your question. It would be limited shares of him, right? And it's just to be different. It's just to differentiate the roster construction, differentiating my player pool. I have no interest in, Bo Burroughs by the way is just gonna be an opener for Minnesota. He's actually not actually gonna be starting. So he probably shouldn't be rostering him. He's literally gonna pitch like an inning, maybe 1.2. So he shouldn't be rostering him. Alec Mills going up against Milwaukee, even if there was no rain in this game and you know, it was just normal amount of wind. Like you probably still shouldn't be rostering Alec Mills just because he doesn't have a whole lot of strikeout upside. And then Zach Thompson for Miami. Listen, you wanna take a picture against the Padres knowing that the power that they have in that lineup. I mean, more power to your braver man than I am. I would not be doing that. So tonight's slate I wanna say is very clear with the options that we have. And if this game gets rained out in Chicago versus the white, the Cubs Brewers game, it will become even more clear where you just roster Geolito or Musgrove and then you just pay up for the Yankees, the White Sox and San Diego with a few shares of Kansas City as a bit of a one-off. All right, so that does it for today's Q&A. I'll be back tomorrow 9 a.m. right here on the Fandle YouTube page for the solo shot. I'll be back tomorrow for the Q&A at 4 p.m. right here on the Fandle YouTube, Twitch and Facebook page. You follow me on Twitter at DFS underscore Tom. Until next time, good luck in your contests.