Now I'm deliberately going to make you a little bit uncomfortable and ask that you open your mind and allow yourself to perhaps consider evidence in a different way than you have before. And with that in mind, I'm going to tell you that I may not answer the questions but rather pose a lot of questions that you'll need to consider as time goes on. So with that in mind, let's consider the idea of evidence. We know that evidence concerns facts intended for use in support of a conclusion. Now I'm going to present to you the idea of evidence, the creation of evidence and how we might test and assess evidence. So get ready. I think therefore I know. We're often commonly and even as academics, we think therefore we think it's fact. But in actual fact, our thoughts aren't fact. And some even argue that our thoughts aren't even reality. They're not real. Now when many people, I did an interview this morning, call us called in and they said, I think where does that come from and how powerful is it when it comes to us exploring our world and understanding the ways that we know something, the evidence? Can we really ever know something? It's dynamic. Knowing is dynamic. So we've got to be careful that we were open to that, the nature of evidence being dynamic, that one day we might find something out and the next day that might be completely reversed. But I think more importantly is how will we know about something? How will we know the best way to transport Canberra into the future? Is it by light rail? Is it by buses? Is it by cycle? So what are the ways of knowing?  Are my thoughts reality? So here are the ways of knowing. Authority. So the commonly held notion of knowing things is through authority. We may be told by a teacher or by someone in authority. A tradition. When I was little I never stood on cracks because I was worried we all knew it was, you know, you'd fall into the pitch in the pavement as the cracks opened up and swallowed you in. It's common sense, of course that's common sense. Sounds logical to me that I'm going to be sucked in if I tread on the cracks in the pavement. The media, the media has a lot of control when it comes to framing our ways of knowing because they offer bits and pieces, the whole of the story or little aspects of the story to frame our notion of what's going on. But experience. And this is one I'm more and more coming to as someone who was a quantitative scientist to begin with, quantitative social scientist. I would never have said to you that how powerful experience was ten years ago and I'm going to ask you to reconsider the power of experience. That is the way that we live our lives, the things that we're exposed to that are unique to us actually frame the way that we think and are real forms of evidence to us. But on the other hand we have the idea of scientific evidence, scientific ways of knowing and that is that there is an approach to knowing and that that is through a systematic collection of data, a translation or analysis of that data to inform and then of course an evidence base. What I want you to consider, I want to push you out of your notion of perhaps thinking that scientific is the only way to know and consider this that rather ways of knowing is along a continuum. On one hand we might have the extreme of the common ways of knowing, I think therefore I know and on the other hand the scientific idea of evidence. Now as I promised I'm going to push you a little bit further and consider the idea of lived experience and expertise. So our experiences and observations inform facts, inform facts to us and perhaps to a group of people. Now consider this, when we go out and survey people or we're asked to interview respondents through qualitative studies our respondents are actually experts. They hold a level of expertise as data points if you like. But they should be approached as such. They carry with them a lived experience of difference and in particular this notion of diversity and adversity. Take for example navigating railway stations in a wheelchair. The ABC at the moment is actually launching a survey to consider whether or not transportation in New South Wales, rail networks are truly catering for people with mobility issues. How would we know there's an issue if we don't have to navigate Redford Station which only has one lift for one platform if we're not in a wheelchair ourselves? So that lived experience does grant us an insight or knowledge that is powerful and should not be underestimated. But on the other hand, perceptions are more powerful than reality and that is a worry. Take the idea of African gangs. Perception is more powerful than the facts, than the data. Why? Because our perceptions influence our Bolivia. The question man comes to while valuing lived experiences how do we undo biases formed through them. So I offer you my sniff test, a toolkit for assessing evidence and so I've been thinking quite a lot about this idea of well how do we find out if something's right or wrong? And I offer you the idea that we should consider the claim the who, the what, the where, the source, the platform, the publication, reporting of the author, the context, the remarks around it, the response, the prejudice, the fear, the politics and then the qualifiers, buzzwords or scientific language whether there's language that then goes into moderate or mediate what's being said or offered as a fact. And then consider what are the consequences? Are there any harmful consequences? Is it helpful? Does it hinder? Does it promote? And then we can come to a verdict to challenge either facts that have presented to us or facts that we believe through our own experiences that then go on to influence our behaviour. I'll offer you an example. So Lucinda and I recently worked on a fact check for the conversation and the claim was where the highest growing country in the world with 1.6% increase and that's double than a lot of other countries. This was offered by the One Nation leader as a fact. Kind of looks like a fact. Has data in it? Looks pretty legit. So let's consider the source. A spokesperson after being contacted by Lucinda at fact check said that well actually the World Bank data says that Australia's population growth was 1.6% and that's much higher than the comparable countries with immigration programs like Canada, again another statistics, the UK and the US with statistics. It's quite legitimate. So what's the context? It's being used, these data, this fact to argue for change, to argue for a popular vote on the future of our immigration program. So it's a high stakes game. The qualifiers. So as I said that 1.6% looks quite legitimate. It is in fact legitimate. And then we kind of consider them what else might be going on there? And the spokesperson said the talks about population growth and the context of our high level of immigration because in recent years immigration has accounted for around 60% of Australia's population growth. So the concern is not about growth but something else. Something else within that component of growth. So the sniff test, the consequences could be harmful or they could actually spark a conversation about the future of Australia. The verdict, there were half truths and the half truth is a pretty good lie because it has borrowed legitimacy. And that idea, well it's half right, yes 1.6% but there's more going on there. We need to unpack that. So in conclusion there are myriad ways of knowing lived experience is evidence and shouldn't be discounted but the level of evidence and the fitness for purpose and what we accept along that spectrum should be dependent on what we have on offer. And I offer you today the sniff test and hopefully you'll be able to use that to challenge your own experiences but also to hold others to account. And I'll leave you with that. So I'm the fact check editor at the conversation. My job is to work with academics like Liz who's one of our superstar fact checkers and take claims that are made by politicians and other people of influence in society as you saw this example and test it against the best available data and research. We've been doing this for five and a half years and checked hundreds of claims right across the political spectrum and all sorts of issues from immigration to education, health funding, terrorism I couldn't name on subjects. Now so obviously I've had a lot of time in my role to reflect on how successful fact checking is and it certainly is successful in some ways. We know that fact checking operations all over the world overturn harmful false stories every single day and we know that there is a hunger for people to read and share these articles and we know that people appreciate having that kind of clear evidence on the table. What we do is we test claims against data or very high quality research so there's got to be a strong foundation to test the claim against and we need to strip out opinion, conjecture. So hopefully that is a very high standard that kind of rigor and we invest a lot of time in these fact checks and we would hope that that would be enough that bringing these fact checks to people would be enough to convince them of the evidence. It's not our job to convince people but obviously we do want people to be making decisions based on the best available evidence. But it's not as simple as just giving people the facts and that is because we are humans and we have feelings and we're all subject to a range of psychological and social factors that can hinder how we take on-board new information. So one of those factors is called the illusory truth effect. The more often we hear a statement, the more familiar it is to us, the more likely we are to believe it's correct even when it's not and that's because new information is quite hard for our brains to process. So the more we've heard it, the more likely we are to believe it's correct. We're all subject to these by the way this isn't just our foes, it's all of us. We're also subject to confirmation bias and motivated reasoning which is our tendency to seek out the evidence that supports our existing views and to reject or reinterpret evidence to the contrary that challenges us or question it to the point where we just disregard it. We also have a tendency to accept facts when they come from people we trust, people from our own communities, people from our side. Everyone doesn't take sides in issues. And even those same facts when presented by someone coming from a different point of view we could reject exactly the same facts so that's something we all need to be aware of. These sorts of biases don't, they're not overcome by expertise or education or intelligence. It can actually be the most educated people who can be the most polarized on a subject. We're also as Liz mentioned really influenced by our life experiences and our feelings about what's happened in our lives. So if you've experienced something for yourself and then I bring you a fact check that says that's not really happening because it's only happening in 1% of cases but you're in that 1% then that fact check isn't necessarily going to speak to you. Now we've all been in that situation where we're having an argument with someone or we're reading someone's Facebook post usually someone's aunt or uncle they seem to always be the culprits and we're reading it and we're getting our hackles up and your instinct is just to jump in and tell them that they're wrong and try and convince them of your point of view and hopefully reaching for the best evidence to do that but even so our motivation is to change their minds. Now I would always encourage everyone to reach for the best evidence in a disagreement but I think where we're going wrong and where we can be doing better is in acknowledging other people's feelings and perspectives before we reach for the evidence. So acknowledging things that they've lived through seeking out points of commonality so often a fact check is commissioned because there is a point of disagreement often there will be a point of disagreement perhaps there is genuine confusion about the facts or perhaps there's a lot of fear a lot of fact checks are based on feeding into people's fears and those fears are very real so if we can find out what is behind the other person's belief where did they get their information from in a kind way like acknowledging the legitimacy of their perspectives but is there something they're afraid of or worried about and acknowledging that thinking about finding common ground you know for example vaccinations the two sides of the argument they're based on fears for children so if you can find that common ground beforehand and thinking about the fact that within our social groups there are often commonly held beliefs so if you're challenging somebody's commonly held belief and asking them to take on new evidence that challenges that just thinking about the power of what you're asking them to do you're asking them to kind of step away from something that might be part of their belonging in a social group which is an absolutely huge thing to ask somebody to do lost my spot now so while we're having these disagreements acknowledging the other person's point of view also acknowledging how you came to your perspective and only once all of that groundwork has been laid with the compassion with the empathy with the time investing time in people finding that connection only then really is it time to bring in the facts and the evidence because we really need to lay that groundwork if that seed of evidence has any chance of taking hold in someone else's mind and importantly not trying to win arguments on the spot just leaving that little seed in there hoping it's going to grow but just walk away because we know that we double down on our positions when we're challenged too firmly I can see through our readership and through all the academics who work with us there are so many people working to bring out the best evidence and people who are responding well to the best evidence and where we can probably be doing better is just in our interpersonal discourse to make sure that when we're trying to spread the best evidence to other people we're giving it the best opportunity by connecting on that human level Thanks Well what I'm going to try to pick out of this wind energy conflict is a story about the politics of contested knowledge and contested truths it certainly was the case in King Island and so all of this started in 2012 in King Island which is a small island about halfway between Victoria and Tasmania where a very large wind energy facility was proposed to the community and so this would have been about 200 turbines the numbers weren't fixed but about 200 they would have been about 150 metres tall each and this is a photo of Curry Harbour so this is the main town of King Island it's a beautiful place and it's not terribly developed in the way that we picture a lot of our landscapes so the reason I say that is that 200 turbines that are quite tall would have had a significant impact on the landscape well man it's so interesting from a research perspective is that the company who proposed the development did what we would call folk interested in community engagement as being best practice community engagement from a distance and on paper at least it looks that way I won't go into what it was about it that made it look like best practice but you'll just have to trust me that it was because I'm an expert and so where that became extra interesting was that despite doing all of these things that it meant to limit conflict we saw pretty disastrous outcomes in King Island in terms of the impacts on the community so there's under about one and a half thousand people in King Island it's a regional community and in places like this it's especially important that social cohesion and interconnections between people as individuals or citizens or business owners stay strong because it's often those close ties that are so critical but this is a quote from interviews that I did with people who live in King Island this was from 2015 about two and a half years after the proposal was announced about five months after a subsequent announcement that the proposal would not continue so this is somebody talking about their experience during the time not that a wind energy facility was being developed but during the time that there was a discussion about whether a wind energy facility should be developed so there was no material change to the island but nevertheless there were substantial impacts on the people in the community there we can develop these things wind turbines, wind energy facilities and people can be very happy with them but the complication that happened in King Island was that not everybody agreed with the company that it would have been a good idea for the community so I'm going to take a little side step to give a small amount of insight from social psychology so this is also my background understanding I'm conflict using social psychology and it speaks to some of the themes that Lucinda mentioned but when not everyone agreed with the company that this proposal should go ahead an opposition group formed what we know from social psychology is that when people are in groups, they behave in a particular way if you identify with me we're part of the same in-group because we're together and we see ourselves as being similar but if we see people that are different from us we see them as an out-group so what happens once we get this intergroup situation is that there's a lot of trust within the in-group there's a tendency to see consensus with people on your in-group as opposed to disagreeing with them even if they might be wrong there's problems between an in-group and an out-group where the leaders of those groups become more polarized because they start to define themselves not in terms of necessarily representing the interests of their group but in terms of finding distinctiveness in the group that they see as being different from them but we see toward out-groups a lot of hostility suspicion about people's motives mistrust of what they're doing but also stereotyping of who they are and that leads to dehumanizing them so when this sort of dynamic happens it can be very problematic for coming to some good outcome this was certainly the case in King Island the conflict was described as being polarized very wind groups and anti-wind groups formed and people were divided and so this wasn't insignificant there were stories of people that wouldn't go into the main town anymore because they were being hassled business relationships that were fractured as an example in King Island there's two supermarkets there was a perception that someone that was managing one of the supermarkets held a particular position on the wind energy proposal so anybody that disagreed with that person then had to decide do we keep giving them our business or do we stop giving them our business this led to substantial boycotting of 50% of the supermarkets in King Island so that's not a small impact on a small community and so despite what appeared to be a good community engagement strategy instead of seeing a few different groups as part of a whole we saw this distancing and so we saw the people who were supportive of the proposal creating this vast social distance between themselves and the people who were in opposition to the proposal and that social distance exacerbates those issues between an in-group and an out-group before I move on I just want to make a quick note about empathy so I think a difficulty that we have when we talk about how we make decisions about what we should do with our environment our land and our resources is that certain groups of people or certain types of people who hold an opinion on an issue sometimes get characterised as being villains in this case with wind often people who oppose wind energy are characterised as only caring about themselves not caring about the greater good and so on but I'd just like to point out this is a quote from somebody who opposed the wind energy proposal and they really suffered they suffered from the fear of what this proposal might mean for them in their community and they suffered from what they felt as being negative stereotyping in the stigma that was applied to them so I really would like to encourage empathy toward people that we might disagree with on these sorts of issues but the social distance that occurred in King Island allowed different things to happen so I'm going to talk a little bit about what the experience was we saw different understandings about why there was this discussion happening in King Island interestingly the company went to the community and they said we don't yet know whether this project is fully feasible so we want to ask your opinion on whether you want us to proceed to do a feasibility study that's quite unusual for a corporate entity to do this sort of thing with the community what we saw was that people who were supportive of the proposal said yes of course we should move ahead we should have a conversation about how we want to do this feasibility study to get the information we need but the opponent said we see this as just being one step along an inevitable pathway toward this thing being built we don't want to go to the feasibility study because we think that that's just signing away our future there were different truths about what was going to be going on there so some people who opposed the proposal felt that it was the first step on a sinister plan to build 600 turbines in King Island and completely depopulate the place and turn it into an energy generation site meanwhile people who were supportive of the proposal saw it as being a boon for the economy that had been struggling and the first step along a high-tech future because there were rumors about some of the big companies like Google and so forth hosting cloud service there there were different narratives that emerged some of Matt's comments about the power of language were relevant here some folks talked about a wind farm others talked about a wind factory and that shaped how this was interpreted but there were different experts as well so there were experts from anti-wind lobby groups who were seen as being relevant to particular people and folks from other organisations that were pro-wind who were seen as being relevant to different people I'm sure you can guess what sort of stance those different people had at the time evidence was contested too and that the experienced, the lived experience of people that felt they experienced negative health consequences due to turbines were seen as the most important evidence to some folks whereas others said all we're interested in is the work of a particular academic who doesn't entertain the idea that turbines cause any health effects and so of course this led to different legitimacy about how the proposal should develop who's in the right position to make a call who gets a say and who gets excluded and at the end of it, as I mentioned it didn't get developed it didn't address any of the economic problems for King Island but there was a divided community as a result and so this was just the effect of talking about something and so it does make me fearful this idea of a plebiscite about population it's very powerful to suggest an idea and then ask for opinions on it as well so I'll finish up here this work is from a couple of papers and I'd be happy to share if anybody's interested but I know I have one over time I work as an economics advisor in Bill Shuntz I was mainly working on tax policy but a bunch of other areas as well I've worked previously for Andrew Lee I've been working for the Labor Party for the entire time in opposition for my sins I can't comment on the merits of Labor's policies today I'm not a spokesperson for the Parliamentary Labor Party but I assure you that they are very meritorious but I can talk a bit about how we develop policy options for our decision makers within the Labor Party and luckily or depending on what you think of my talk this seminar sounds sufficiently dry that I was actually allowed to come so much of your stuff let me come so I just want to give you a brief bit of context about what it means to be a policy advisor for the opposition and what the implications are for how we view evidence the policy battle between an opposition and a government is asymmetrical the government has access to thousands of policy experts they have hundreds of political staffers to assist in selecting the policy options presented by their guests to call the relevant fads up and ask them about things when the minister has questions and naturally of course stakeholders are keen to inform the government because they're actually in charge there's probably more people working directly for Tim than there are in the entire opposition and he's in charge of social services policy we're in charge of everything policy for the Labor Party on the other hand we do have one key advantage over the government which is that we can be much more selective in the positions we put forward the opposition doesn't have to develop policy on every worthy but uncontroversial challenge facing the country we develop and announce policies for a political reason essentially we want to highlight why we believe the electorate should support Labor at the next election and what we will do if we win because we're not in charge of anything there's no need to announce policy if it doesn't have a political purpose the whole purpose of developing policy and announcing it is political that has huge implications for how we look at things it's much different to how a government policy is done so how do we evaluate suggestions for policies that put forward to us how do we look at the evidence what evidence is useful for a party political adviser like myself and what's less useful I've come up with a bit of a hierarchy of evidence for a political staffer particularly an opposition political staffer which I hope is at least mildly controversial and ranks from ranks from bronze for the less useful through to platinum for the most useful and you can see that there's not necessarily a relationship between rigor and usefulness this hierarchy is about what's useful for policy development and it's political as I mentioned but it's not about spin I'm not talking about how we justify policies that we announce that thankfully is not my department that's the job of the media office and there's a lot of cynicism regarding policy based evidence about cherry picking evidence to support already announced policies I want to talk today about how we develop the policies before they're announced and then go on to justify them to the public so as I said there's not a relationship necessarily between rigor and the tier ranking that I've given these things there are things in the bronze tier ranking for example which are extremely rigorous academic papers that have required a lot of work that have considered all the evidence and have taken months to develop and probably years to finally get published but the reason that they sit along some of the other less rigorous things is because they're not particularly useful for us. Now why aren't academic papers useful? Generally because a lot of the time they do have very interesting implications for policy however generally that's buried in a couple of sentences in the conclusion after 30 pages of literature reviews and methodological discussion which while I'm sure is fascinating to the academics who are researching things not particularly useful in terms of developing a policy agenda to convince people to vote for the Labor Party in the next election. They also generally do not take politics into account, academic work is not renowned for its acknowledgement of the limits that are placed upon political parties in a federal political system and you know then you see it next to other things like push-polling and you think it's obvious that push-polling is not useful for policy development purposes but we see it all the time where I have meetings with stakeholders who put forward their latest wisdom poll about why we should do policy X generally they're well meaning but when they commission polls they're not careful in asking questions and so their findings are unreliable. There's a conception I think that as political advisers we don't really care whether or not the evidence is rigorous just as long as it says what we wanted to and then we're good to go but actually if we can't rely on the polling to be a reliable indicator of public opinion it's not useful for us in developing policy. We want to highlight we want to announce policies that highlight issues with important constituencies and we can't do that if the polling questions actually don't make any sense. Not all policies we announce will be popular. I do tax policy almost none of the ones I announce are popular but we do want to know in advance whether or not they're unpopular. The silver tier is where I think actually almost all of the kind of public conversation in Australia happens around policy and it's potentially useful for policy development. The main reason these types of it is don't make it higher up the tier list is that they generally don't provide suggestions as to how to address problems. They're generally more talking about the fact that there's a problem rather than how it is that you would go about addressing it or if there is a suggestion how you might address it it's generally at the end of an op-ed and it's again a couple of sentences. In many cases this is deliberate so you know the micro simulation modelling that Professor Gray's team does is intentionally factual, apolitical and descriptive. It provides for analysis of a policy issue. It may be useful for policy development but its objective is not to recommend a particular course of action. In other cases people haven't worked out a way to solve the problem they're describing yet and in that case it's very difficult for us as policy advisors to suggest ways forward if the experts themselves haven't thought of possible solutions. The gold tier provides for the most useful evidence I think to develop policies for announcement. Evidence in this tier is relatively rare but its impact is the highest and I explain why I'm saying that even though it's not the highest ranking in a minute. In my opinion the best work of this kind is in Australia's produced by the Grant Institute who regularly release work that is both rigorously researched and comes with costed policy options. For example their negative gearing report was instrumental in our analysis before we announced our policy on negative gearing. Now we didn't have the same policy as what Grant recommended necessarily but the fact that they had costed options that have been thought through was very helpful in terms of us developing our thinking that we then used to inform our policy. Costings are not strictly necessary I don't think but if your policy is going to have an impact on the budget it's helpful for us to have an understanding of at least the order of magnitude effect that they will have so that we can consider what we would get the parliamentary budget office to cost. I think government agency reviews are also important but I think they've disappointed in recent years in terms of their ability to impact change. The PC has written a lot of extremely detailed reports that have reached a thousand pages which I have disappointed in terms of policy impact. So the Platinum tier is that it's kind of a unicorn that these things actually really exist but I wish there were more things in the Platinum tier which is the policy pages with cost of recommendations and analysis of public opinion. Generally speaking in Australia which has a pretty small policy community, particularly independent of government the most rigorous work in Australia is done by organisations that are generally apolitical and so they tend not to want to get involved in discussions about what may or may not be electorally popular for either side of politics. If that work did exist though it would be really useful. So I think if there were organisations that would do more of this work it would be much more likely to become part of our agenda going forward. So this is my subjective tier list of usefulness I'd be happy to hear how wrong you think I am whether you disagree with the placement or the concept is offensive to you generally but it was I found fun to sort of have a think about it I'm not in a particularly reflective job so it was fun to to have the chance to sort of think about this in a more detailed way.


What's going on and welcome to the to the MLB DFS Q&A show? My name is Tom Vecchio I'm here for the next half hour to answer your questions about tonight's six game MLB slates locks at 705 As I went over things this morning on the solo shot. We're in a pretty good spot for tonight's late We have no weather issues. We need to be worried about we are free of that just to give up that a quick recap This show as always can be found at 4 p.m. On the fable YouTube twitch and Facebook page Make sure to give it a like follow or subscribe on the given platform. That is greatly appreciated As I said six games locks at 705 we have a few confirmed lineups. We're still waiting on some I still think that we're in a good spot. We should see some offenses be very very chalky tonight We do have some very powerful offenses up at the top They're all in good spots the Astros the Reds the Yankees the White Sox and the Blue Jays are leading the way But of course we'll be looking to some other teams as well Starting off Crooked tooth is asking. What's the winning lineup for tonight? You know, it's a great question if I had that answer Every single day I would probably be on a beach somewhere And not here. I'd be like in Bora Bora somewhere DJ on Facebook is asking sunny gray versus Pittsburgh. Yes, of course sunny gray is shaping up to be One of if not the top pitchers on tonight's slate now There's an argument to be made for I would say three pitchers to be the chalkiest on tonight's slate and that would be sunny gray Framber Valdez or going to Nester Cortez all the way down at the bottom I spoke about Cortez and gray at length this morning on the solo shot didn't really touch on Framber Valdez But I do think, you know, he's a solid option as well For me I'm gonna be leaning towards sunny gray as my number one overall picture because we want this strikeout rate that he brings very consistent at 29% if we look to the pitchers on today's slate These is all the pitchers on today's all today's game is not just today's slate But we look to Framber Valdez and he's down at twenty one point five percent That is significantly lower than sunny gray up at twenty nine So yes sunny gray versus Pittsburgh is my number one pitcher on tonight's slate I still think that there's room to get some of the Toronto hitters in your lineup You want to pay up for Houston with Yankees whoever might be there's there's plenty of room on this slate going to the other end Would be going to Nester Cortez to really really get some value and then you can literally roster whoever you want Savon is asking a favorite secondary stack for today. That would be the Cleveland Indians now They're only coming in with a four point one three implied run total But they're going up against Ross stripling tonight a pitcher that I mentioned this morning on solo shot 2.26 homeruns per nine. He's allowing to righties 1.60 homeruns per nine to lefties. That is terrible We also see him coming in with an over 43% fly ball radar higher versus both lefties and righties So we look to the Indians for plenty of power. I wrote up frame will raise today as one of my favorite under the radar homerun options and the Indians make a great secondary stack tonight due to the salaries that they have now Jram and Fran mill rayors are the really the only two expensive hitters on their lineup I know if you're going with them as a stack, maybe you're paying up for the Yankees or Houston or whoever might be You can't afford both of them. You might have to pick and choose between Fran mill and Ramirez. It's kind of a coin flip. I would take Fran will I want the multi-home run upside And he has a little bit more than Jose Ramirez But then we drop down and all of these Salaries are so so easy to get into your lineups and then looking to some of the power that they bring of course some of these players You know loopholes are not on the team anymore or just nailish her Rosario's on the team anymore But Bobby Bradley to 47 ISO in this split Bobby Bradley's $2,500 now Bradley Zimmer doesn't bring a whole lot of power But he's at the top of the Indians lineup usually once we get that confirmed obviously brings plenty of value So I'm looking to the Indians as a really really solid option tonight only a 4.13 implied one total I do not think rush tripling is that good of a pitcher Alvin on YouTube is asking do you prefer toku or gray if we're doing a single entry? And if we're doing a 4 3 1 top 2 stacks for that type of lineup uh Well for the single entry if you're trying to avoid You know If you're taking everything consideration you would go with to a song because he's probably gonna be less popular compared to sunny gray And he is boasting a was it a 28 percent street at 28.5 percent strikeout rate this year So he can compete with sunny gray when it comes to his potential strikeout rate So if you are worried about how popular sunny gray is going to be you would simply shift to Tucson because he won't be as popular and you take a few hundred dollars of savings and then for a 4 3 1 lineup Uh, I really think toronto is in a phenomenal spot Going up against cleveland and tristan mckenzie who sure has a 28.5 percent strikeout rate this season He's also allowing 1.99 home runs per nine and he has a 51 fly ball Rate so the home run upside for toronto tonight is absolutely phenomenal really doesn't matter who in their lineup We can be seeing so toronto would be my number one I would probably then turn to the reds as the three stack And then if you can get in reyes or judge or stanton Whoever might be as that one off. That's where you want some of that home run upside Tim vest is back asking for another money line that he was here yesterday. I think all three of those yesterday the red socks the fillies And whoever else it was all came away as winners fillies red socks Can't remember the third but you know the problem tonight's late is that there's and and the braves last night That's what was uh, those three teams they all came away as winners There's a lot a lot of heavy favorites tonight and that's a bit of an issue if you're looking for You know some betting Value so the braves would be my pick again They're also another team i'm kind of targeting as an under the radar option because I don't think wavelength blocks are the picture I still think the braves are in the same spot they've been over the past two days facing lefty They have righties that have power so braves at minus 120 would be a solid option And then if you you know, you want to fade some of that shock the indians at you know Plus 158 would be good if they get that power going against ross stripling You know again like laying, you know two and a half dollars or you know just about two dollars to one for the Yankees or the white socks the ashore's whoever might be I personally think that's a lot If you want to parlay some of the favorites together Again, I don't know you're like you're betting tendencies or what like what you're comfortable with But I would say the braves maybe the indians and then Maybe you go with your braves indians and yankees if you want to put them in parlay So you get you know some some amount of safety uh, so far is asking a method question Uh, what's the best type of stack to do today? uh Today like I look I don't think today is any Like that different compared to most other days where i'm still gonna be focusing in on You know a main four three one stack Smaller slates is generally where I shift away from a four four stack Uh in terms of a large majority of my lineup, so if i'm making 25 lineups, uh, you know, I might do You know half of them as you know or 13 out of them as Four four and then the other 12 of them as four three one on normal slates tonight since it's a smaller slate That's where I incorporate a four two two slate a little bit more Where I'll take like the main stack that I like whether it be toronto and then add in two hitters from sincey two hitters from houston Etc etc so I I do mix things up just a little bit On smaller slate so a four three one stack or a four two two stack is generally where I Lean towards a bit more on smaller slates uh jerry's saying uh Houston and sincey I think that means for the win in terms of tim's best moneyline bets. They are heavy favorites Uh crooked teeth is a tooth is asking what do you mean by chalk? I mean by chalk He's gonna be like super popular where sunny gray is just I like without a doubt Sunny gray is the best pitcher on tonight's slate where he has the highest combination of You know and and we have to factor all this in he has the uh a favorable salary where it's not overly expensive He has a very soft match begins Pittsburgh He has a high strikeout rate and of course we want those strikeouts That's what brings brings us upside in terms of fantasy point scoring So we combine all those things all those things and Ultimately sunny gray is just the best most consistent option on tonight's pitching slate Now this is not to say the other pitchers aren't going to perform But all things considered we want to be looking to sunny gray and then when it comes to chalky hitters It's just oh there's a really bad pitcher going Everyone wants to be targeting this bad pitcher So everyone's going to be rostering, you know, toronto everyone's going to be rostering new york or houston Whoever might be so chalky just means very popular Uh DJ is asking what I think of toosan I wrote him up today on number fire as a potential under the radar option I just think he's going to go a bit overlooked compared to sunny gray where a lot of people will say I can find an extra eight hundred dollars and just pay up for gray Uh, who's that home? He's a favorite. He has a little bit of a softer match up going against Pittsburgh So I think people are going to be spending up to the top for sunny gray Or they're going to be dropping down and taking nester cortez at fifty five hundred dollars Who is going for a second straight start, you know, five innings and five strikeouts against Tampa Bay With one run and his most recent start and twenty seven Fandal points might not seem like a lot when in terms of oh, this is my pitcher only getting me twenty seven fandal points But he's fifty five hundred dollars Right, he doesn't need to go out there and put up 50 points or whatever it is, you know When you're paying up 10,000 for you know, coal or scherzer or the rom or whoever might be like He's fifty five hundred dollars if he puts up 30 points again, we're roughly around there like that's awesome And then you can pay up for literally any hitting stack that you want with that savings. Uh, it's absolutely phenomenal Uh Michael on on on youtube saying Pittsburgh line of sight looks quite weak more reasonable like gray absolutely Looking to go to gray in all formats Alvin white is asking process question Also, do you look into recent forms of a pitcher and offenses you want to stack or just focus on their overall numbers So it's both you want to look at their overall overall form You want to look at uh, you know last two weeks of their of a hit of a hitting stack or a pitcher Obviously pitchers, you know, I can't just look at two two start and say okay He pitched 10 innings in those these two starts. What are we looking at? I'll look back over, you know the entire month of July and tire since june or say since the start of july since the start of june and then his season overall saying Okay, is his strikeout rate dipping in the past two months Or actually okay his strikeout rates the same He just gave up a few home runs here and there and that's why his starts look bad Or you know a couple hitters that they had a couple bad games But you know, they bounced it out with home run upside that we're always chasing So it's it's a bit of both you can't just say oh I'm only looking at his start since the beginning of june and he's been bad since the beginning of june When it's really he's just getting burned by a couple of home runs, but his strikeout rate is still strong So it's it's like halfway between both you don't want to like Put blinders on And block out information. You want to say how does his overall Season long stats reflect what he's been currently doing. Are we on the same path? Is he regressing? Uh, is he getting better blah blah blah Jared on facebook is saying uh, do you play nick castellanos in his first game back? Absolutely if castellanos is able to go which he is he was activated off the il today I mentioned that on the solo shot this morning that he was expected to be I want castellanos like he's a phenomenal hitter. He's $3,500. I think that's relatively affordable for a player Of his caliber. I want a top four stack from the reds. I'm going to be going straight to this Exact four man stack here of vado winker india and castellanos I'm also going to be dipping down a little bit because I need a little bit of value in some lineup builds We're paying up for sunny gray Plus some hitters is getting expensive So I'll certainly look to drop down a little bit and and take some shares of kyle farmer and tyler naikwin just to go with like a three four six seven kind of lineup build just to differentiate and also get that needed salaried relief Jared on facebook is asking favorite stacks of the day atlanta new york sincey. What's your take? I'm on board with all of those. I think new york and sincey are going to be very chalky But then atlanta a team that probably shouldn't be too popular they're kind of falling in this mid tier which Uh could have them going overlooked, but they're going up against wade leblanc Who's a picture that's been in the majors for a number of years? He's giving up too too many home runs like this is a combination of Too many home runs a picture that does not strike hitters out Too many walks and we're and we're seeing some you know good fly balls from him No, that just has me leaning more towards the braves and like I said, they've been in the same spot the past couple days They're going against john lester two nights ago Jay hap Last night now for since now now for st. Louis These lefty pictures that don't strike out hitters that give up too many fly balls You know, why are we not going to so many of the braves hitters done? I i'm fully on board with the braves night Which is give a quick refresh to this to see if their lineup has been confirmed the braves. Ah, just confirm Oh and gary is out for the Yankees tonight, so that'll change things up So higashiyoka is now starting for them. All right, so for the braves Albie Soler freeman riley swanson duval All of those hitters are in play the top six for the braves are all absolutely in play now. So layers numbers are uh inflated is saying that he has a 600 iso Versus left-handed pitching is obviously not the case this season because it only counts for his time specifically On the braves obviously it's going to be much lower than 600 But so where? Historically a great hitter versus lefties plenty of power swanson is someone I have a ton of interest in tonight Really like his hitting profile versus uh wade labanque and then going to adam duval going to freder freeman Going to azi albies or all players i'll be looking to so since he absolutely Going to the Yankees absolutely and then the braves if they're going to be under value tonight along with the indians teams That are not going to be heavily targeted. That's exactly where I want to be going Do I like the royals tonight? I think I understand why people are going there going up against dallas kaiko as I've said As I said this morning, you know dallas kaiko isn't a big strikeout pitcher I'm going to have a few shares of him tonight Just because I the match up versus Kansas City is good overall But we do see dallas kaiko struggling a little bit when it comes to The home runs this season let's take a little bit of a more look at some of his numbers So not a big strikeout pitcher, you know walks are okay. They're not terrible.  I think that's certainly fine I'm not looking to fully stack the royals But I do think that taking a one-off or or two from them wouldn't be the worst call Especially if you go with like a four to two lineup build be a little bit different in torments grab Santana and Perez that could be good for canons in city Mike Mike on facebook is asking who's the best pitcher tonight the easy answer sonny gray He's the best pitcher on tonight's slate Um, that's just the reality of the situation That's the reality of a six game slate where we can say that he is the best pitcher on tonight's slate Framber valdez. I think is slightly more expensive than he should be Especially given the fact that he has a strikeout rate That's eight percent lower than sonny gray sonny gray is up at 29 percent Framber valdez down to 21 and a half percent. So sonny gray is the easy answer on who's the best pitcher on tonight's slate Nathan's saying that carnals are also playing horrible. That's true. That's why I have a bit of interest in Tucson tonight Uh, you know boasting a strong strikeout rate this season I'll give her this at 28.2.   I'm gonna have plenty of exposure to them I think you should be going to them Very confidently who are you prioritizing on cleveland after reyes and ramirez and michael on youtube is asking That would be bobby bradley. Let's flip to cleveland Uh, bobby bradley $2,500 obviously very affordable 247 iso this season versus righties is obviously great to see Uh bradley doesn't generate a whole lot of fly balls, but he does have a very strong 41.2% home run the fly ball ratio. So when he is getting the ball in the air, it's going for home runs a very strong percentage of the time So broadly, uh, bobby bradley at $2,500 with the 247 iso would be the next player That would be the ideal three-man stack from the indians would be ramirez reyes and bradley And then if you want to add in just like zimmer at 2200 just to round out a stack and you grab a bit of value That wouldn't be the worst case For cleveland stack, uh, nathan on facebook is asking rizzo show tonight. Sure. Uh, i'm on board the Yankees tonight weather I'll let's just double check their lineup because so gary is out So lemeku rizzo judge stanton gallo treas o dory higashiyoka and davis. So davis is the newly acquired jonathan davis, uh Right here minimum salary. They just the Yankees just picked them up off of waivers Uh the other day so You know minimum salary, uh, if you were to You know do a wrap around stack again just to be different in tournaments because most people for they're gonna be stacking Yankees It's gonna be one two three four or two three four five something like that We know that but just to be a little bit different It doesn't hurt to take nine one two three or nine one two four something like that Just to mix it up a little bit and you're getting a player that's at minimum salary And and ultimately he's on a team with a 5.46 implied one total So that's like those are the situations where I do go to a wrap around stack. It's where I know I'm trusting the offense overall And just also because we're dealing with a smaller slate where you know, I want to prioritize paying it for sunny gray And that isn't the easiest when i'm trying to pay up for multiple hitters in the high $3,000 range Or if we go to toronto multiple hitters in the $4,000 range like we just need Salary relief at some point jerry on facebook is saying homer city in st Louis and lanta bats two through six all hitting homers Listen, if that happens, I think we will all be very happy because As I said, Atlanta should not be overly popular tonight. They should be less popular compared to some of these top teams going to Uh, the braves are confirmed, right? We have the braves. Uh, yeah Outside of albies who I understand you say it doesn't have a ton of power But so they are freeman riley swanson and duvall Yes, any of those hitters all of those hitters. I want all of those hitters to hit at home on tonight. That would be great Uh, do you like diaz or mccormick and value plays for uh from houston tonight? Uh, let me just double check this to see if houston is confirmed They are not so i'm on board with houston tonight. It really comes down to what Uh, their lineup looks like I would side with almedes diaz over chasm and cormick for houston Really looking to stay mostly in this, you know mid to upper tier Obviously your don and kyle tucker bring an immense amount of power from the left hand from the left side For houston, I think you can be firmly looking to them going up against griffin jacks for minnesota Only 26 inning sample size in his first year in the majors If we look to his splits, he's also not a big time a strikeout pitcher 20 and 18 percent To over two and a half home runs per nine to right. He's over one or at one and a half as I say versus lefties I think we can be looking to plenty of the houston bats tonight. I would side with almedes diaz as the value play from houston Uh braves won't need a lot of runs to win tonight. Nathan is saying yes because um I think you're that you're implying or someone said before that like uh the cardinals are struggling right now Which is true. Uh savon i'm looking for another secondary stack for today. I know seattle was cheap before some players Yes, seattle's fine. Uh, I think cleveland and You know cleveland and atlanta are probably my top two like you know quote-unquote, uh secondary stacks Uh, depending on who makes the lineup depending on how cheap that you actually need You know if you have a libero salary duval and swanson and soleir are not that expensive But if you want to go to seattle, I understand it like there's no doubt that they're in a good spot It's not a great spot. You know nester cortez is showing Some good stuff, but you know hanager has some great righty lefty splits I wouldn't hate looking to tie france abram toro has been very hot as of late He's only $2,500. So I wouldn't hate looking there if you uh if you need the salary relief But cleveland atlanta are my favorite secondary stacks on tonight's sleep I guess you could put seattle third If you took a two-man stack from the royals of pares and carlo santana I wouldn't hate that as like a a little mini stack for the royals against dalas kykel That's not horrible when you're you know, they certainly have plenty of homerun upside It's just for the white socks like if they get the lead, you know that bullpen for the white socks is very strong so Certainly not something I like enjoy picking on especially if they're not going to get it done early Who would you roster on the reds who anyone on the reds? Uh one what did I say one through? Or the reds they got confirmed one through Four is my favorite stack If I I mean if we could pay for anyone india winker castellanos and vado for the reds is absolutely awesome But again, it might have to take a few shares of kyle farmer or tyler naikwin just to differentiate differentiate things So going like three four six seven from the reds isn't uh Um Isn't the worst like three four six seven from the reds you get some power on the top You get a little bit of value with farmer and naikwin You can certainly do that. What does wrc plus mean? So wrc plus stands for weighted runs created Which is right here. It's a better way of Looking at you know, well the plus w weighted runs created plus it's a better way to Like show the value of a hitter like we don't use batting average You know, you don't want to use like on base any of those things. So you want to look at Like woeba and wrc plus. It's like when we account for Not only what they do but their park factor if we account for the park factor obviously because some Parks are significantly better for pitchers some are significantly better for hitters So if we account for park factor and wait what they're doing appropriately, we get a better number. So 100 So like a 100 wrc plus would be the league average. So anything below 100 would be below league average So like the cardinals are what's like a 94 wrc plus whatever versus right-handed pitching Which means that they are below the league average versus righties Uh, should I roll with uh zavala ref schneider or carpenter and or carp? Oh, it's a 2v2 Zavala and ref schneider or carpenter and tom murphy Uh, yeah carpenter isn't the same hitter. He was a number of seasons ago like mac carpenter in 2015 2016 was like awesome versus Both lefties and righties I would go with zavala and ref schneider if uh, if you have to make that choice Eric on youtube saying my favorite stack is Cincinnati, but I have sunny gray also Is that too much exposure to one team? No, you know, if you If you look to correlate things If you look to correlate things you know It makes a little bit more sense in other sports, you know, specifically When it comes to nhl. I I've explained this more when I when I do our nhl podcast uh, but when it comes to baseball there's there's less correlation, but Ultimately if sunny gray in terms of real baseball is going to pick up the win Right, and you want those win points those win fantasy points out of sunny gray How is that going to happen? Well, it's likely going to be happening happening happened by a him pitching well Which means he's going to be limiting runs going deep into the game and probably picking up strikeouts But it also means that Cincinnati is going to have the league Like the only way he gets the win is if when he leaves the game They have the lead which means you want their hitters to produce runs So they are correlated since he goes off for a bunch of runs Sunny gray picks up the win and what how does he pick up the win? Which means he's probably you know, he's going five six seven innings limiting the runs he's giving up and The uh, hopefully picking up strikeouts along the way So you are kind of putting your eggs in one-ish basket But when if you're right, you're gonna be very right. All right, and that's how you get to the top of tournaments Uh, Nathan is saying that Matt Carpenter is done for baseball. Yeah, it's probably uh Probably true Cal our wonderful producer is saying talk me into Jonathan Davis besides Being the singer on corny allows me to get to vladi junior and sunny gray, which is true and You know, ultimately there's a difference between taking value Like on a bag team or like on a a team that we're not expecting much from or You know, Jonathan Davis on the Yankees as the nine hitter. He's on a home favorite that's expected You know with the with the third highest implied run total So looking to him like is not it's not the ideal call But you're still getting exposure to a good team and you add him into a wrap-around stack or whatever might be You have to take him as a one-off because he's minimum salary Like ultimately that's fine if the rest of your lineup is looking perfect Do you have any faith in seattle that they do hit the ball? Well, they do hit the ball well at times Tyfrans seager and hanager. Yes, uh, listen, there's no doubt that this is a um positive park shift for seattle going from I don't know if it's still called safe go up in seattle, but they're at yankee stadium regardless, which is a great hitters park Uh, i'm big on mitch hanager on most nights. He has a solid solid splits regardless of these uh facing righties or lefties Kyle seager has let me just bring up uh seager real quickly because he has actually Despite it being a lefty lefty mac or for kyle seager. He actually has some significant fly ball numbers Uh significant fly ball numbers versus lefties this season I think it's that like 45 or 50 versus lefties Uh fly ball for seager. It's at 48 versus lefties So like a 48 fly ball, uh rate and a 37 hard contact rate versus lefties at yankee stadium is certainly something that will play so Uh going to seager or hanager and france. I think it's a fine three-man stack dj is saying wouldn't toronto be your number one stack Yes, I think that toronto has immense upside tonight going up against tristan mckenzie A 51 fly ball rate is absolutely horrible Coming in with a 16 walk rate right now Listen, he's got some gas on the mound as I said on the solar shot this morning a 28 strikeout rate is you know nothing to Uh, you know laugh at and 33 is absolutely unbelievable as well And he showed this over his first two years in the majors But a 16 walk rate The potential downside for mckenzie is legitimately Two innings six or seven earned runs like letting runners on base against toronto As I said last night is not going to end well like Seven or eight times out of ten now sure can he pitch himself out of trouble as I kind of mentioned Yes, if he gets that strikeout rate to shine and he gets these hitters to chase He could go five innings and have seven eight strikeouts and only give up two earned runs But the potential downside for him is massive with that fly ball rate and the walks allowed So yes, toronto would be my number one stack Uh, do you have the white socks or red? Ranked higher. Uh, I would go with the reds. I'm going to lean with the reds tonight. I like them slightly over the white socks Uh, for me it would be toronto To rate my top stack tonight would be toronto Cincinnati new york Chicago white socks as my main four and then the secondary stacks would be cleveland Atlanta seattle for those How do you like stripling tonight? I don't I will have zero shares of Stripling stripling is a picture that I'm when I when I go to make my lineups It's unclicking his name removing him from my player pool Too many home runs not a favor of that too many fly balls Listen, if I get burned by raw stripling tonight, then I guess I'll just take that loss there And and move on but he is not a pitcher that I am Comfortable with rostra and given some of the potential power on cleveland better choice for value Dickerson or davis cori dickerson on toronto If that lineup is confirmed We're looking at a bit of a toss up here that has been confirmed toronto. Is he still minimum salary? He's still minimum salary If he's batting sixth Right, this hasn't projected to bat sixth if cori dickerson is batting sixth You would want to take him over davis who's batting ninth who's confirmed batting ninth So wait till we get the it's only 4 30. So just wait till we get the Uh confirmed lineup for the blue jays But if dickerson's at sixth you would want to take him because again as I mentioned yesterday A player higher in the lineup, especially in a home team where if they're winning they don't bat in the ninth So they're always going to have lower expected plate appearances dickerson will always have More expected plate appearances at sixth in terms in uh over davis at ninth So I would lean towards dickerson in that spot And then dj final question. Do you play donce? Uh, I assume you mean josh donelson? Despite the hamstring on minnesota Probably not. I understand why people go to minnesota as a stat tonight Uh, I just don't think especially especially at the third base position overall I think that there were better options that we can be going to where I would want to take shares of dj La mayhew Who's a little bit cheaper to get exposure to the yankees or I just would rather pay up for austin riley or jonathan india To get exposure to offenses that i'm a little more confident tonight over minnesota gallo or stanton tonight if you had to pick one to build new york sting uh new york stack around, uh What's it gallo is like he went ahead four strikeouts last night, uh, if there's any time for him to get his yankee Uh, his his like first head of yankee stating or whatever is going I guess would be tonight, but Are they the same salary do we know that gallo stanton I mean stanton is cruising right now. It's tough. It's it's you have to take stanton You have to take stanton in the righty lefty matchup over gallo and a lefty lefty despite his fly ball rate All right, so that does it for today's q and a I think we're gonna be in for plenty of scoring tonight Plenty of home runs. Hopefully plenty from the reds the blue jays the Yankees all these sorts of teams I will be back tomorrow morning at 9 a.m For the solo shot right here on the feindl youtube page You can't be tomorrow here at the same time four o'clock on the feindl youtube twitch and facebook page answering your questions tomorrow We have 14 games late So there should be plenty of options as always you can find this on the A feindl youtube page you can find me on twitter at dfs underscore tom until next time good luck in your contest