I am losing count in my old age how many years we are now into the Dongers Club to be honest with you. I think it’s around 7 or so if you do include the pandemic shortened season but I know this will be my fourth season of providing the Dongers Club as a dedicated resource as part of Daily Ambush and in each of those seasons we have had a ton of success with the winnings by you the members going up each season.
I hope that continues this season as we go into a new era of Baseball due to rules changes and Rob Manfred doing his best Agent Smith impression this off-season. The pitch clock, the shift ban, the throw over limitations, the change in baseballs last season, the likely salary cap in future seasons …
Inevitability … or the death of Baseball as we know it?
Not so fast.
Just picture Rob Manfred getting crushed by that train as he tries to destroy the common persons experience with Baseball and replace it with one that more mirrors current society.
One where the value in a short 15 second clip that can be viewed on a device from thousands of miles away which ‘humans’ pay a monthly rate for is more appealing and sustainable for the growth than the overall sum of the product to the person who is spending a fraction of that to attend in person with their family and develop a life time of memories.
The value in getting people to pay for something which they will not remember tomorrow is greater than the value of a lifetime memory. Do you think I am more likely to remember the video highlight I see on April 4th this season from a game involving the Tigers and Astros or the memory I have of Mike Deveraux hitting a walk off home run vs the Angels when I was a kid that was controversial because it went over the foul pole and landed in foul territory but was ruled fair.
I was at that game. And believe me when I tell you I do not need to google it to remember the circumstances, but if you simply google “mike deveraux home run vs angels” you will find out all the information you need on it. I was sitting way up in the nosebleeds at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, and aside from the planes buzzing right over your head in the nose bleeds there I could see directly down the 3B line and from my view — it was fair. But then, who am I to spit in the face of technology advancements to improve things in life. We now have replay and we have advanced video technology that can allow us to determine such things with a little bit more accuracy and improvements for the sake of getting things right is always a good thing.
So when Rob Manfred sets out to change Baseball our initial old man get off my lawn reaction is of course that he is doing harm for the game with some of his ridiculous ideas. But then when we take a step back we can for sure understand that sometimes change to advance things in life is ‘inevitable’ and good.
But at what point will we go from being humans who can breath and touch and smell a ballgame to fields incubated babies who are plugged into the game rather than experiencing it?
I wrote in this space a year ago about how Baseball was turning the page into a new era in relation to broadcasters, with many old ones passing on specifically the ‘voice’ of Baseball and the World Series changing from Joe Buck to Joe Davis. The Buck to Davis transition has worked out well, because Davis is a natural at it in some ways, although still needing to improve and log historical calls himself. Maybe choosing that as my intro topic a season ago was also an inevitable foreward to the Baseball and Sports world losing Vin Scully in August of last season and even in this Spring losing Dave Wills – longtime Rays broadcaster.
Change you see, is inevitable. Change is occurring in our world. Change is occurring in Baseball and change is occurring in the Fantasy and Gambling space. Just don’t remind FanDuel of this and lets be happy that there are no DFS changes this season to DraftKings or FanDuel (thank the lord).
At some point The Dongers Club itself is going to change, and at some point I won’t want to write anymore much like Forrest Gump just decided he was done running.
But no, that is not now. Now is not that time. Not yet…. Not yet…
As we move forward with these rule changes in the game of Baseball, the one inevitable element we must consider is time. Time is going to change how we view the game of Baseball and for the Dongers Club and it’s readers how we can profit and enjoy off our consumption of it. But as David Bowie stated, we cannot trace the time but rather we just must face them and embrace them instead of understanding them.
We may lose little things we cherish, like that 3 hour Saturday afternoon ball game that we listen to on the radio while driving kids around or doing errands to go to Home Depot or Lowe’s only to leave spending $350 and not actually knowing why you went there in the first place.
We may lose the joy of going down to the stadium to watch a ball game knowing we can spend 2 hours, leave before the traffic in the 7th inning and get home at a decent time. Because now you will go there and wind up staying for the full game of 2 hours, sitting in traffic and getting home even later than before.
I did the math, it checks out…
We may lose our patience with a pitch clock violation and even worse, we may lose in DFS or betting because of some infraction which really has nothing to do with on the field performance.
The comfort I get in writing about Baseball mostly stems from the fact that for the better part of 6 months it is the only game in town and for 4 warm summer months from May through August there’s NOTHING that occupies the time like the daily routine of Baseball every day. Games starting in the afternoon, 30 teams in action, lefty pitchers walking batters and the Pirates doing Pirates things. It’s just relaxing, the pace, the sounds, the sights, the smells, the stats.
Terrence Man was so right.
We don’t know why we pay for MLB.tv as blackouts grow and additional streaming services take over, but we just hand over the money and say here, take it. Because it’s money we have and peace we lack.
We’ll sit down on the couch with a cold beer on a warm afternoon day or at a bar/restaurant while still having the pressures of family life, personal issues, work conflicts or maybe if you are having a good day, no cares at all. None of it will matter, because a Baseball game is on. The Reds are playing the Brewers on a Thursday afternoon and we’ll watch the game, just as if we were a 9 year old boy at an Angels/Orioles game sitting in the nosebleeds.
There will still be time and ways for stories to be told like the Pirates fan whose husband drives her to every game, drops her off, and then heads back home to work while she sits at the game and watches it, doing this 81 times per year. And when the game is nearing an end, he drives back to pick her up. Classic stories, which we know to be lies because that man is going straight to the bar or strip club for 2.5 hours and now his drinking time has been cut down to 1.5…
There will still be the dead time in games to pan to fans, like the girls at Chase Field who were eating hot dogs, and taking selfies on their phones rather than watching a Diamondbacks game.
And we’ll still have plenty of time for John Kruk or other color commentators to completely go out into left field with their thoughts and distract us from a 9-0 game that the home team is fixing to blow somehow in the 9th inning. Because trust me, there will be more blown saves now with the pitch clock…
So, while change is inevitable, it is up to us to decide which pill we are going to swallow and ultimately we will be the ones who must change with how we see game. Because time, you see, is all we have, and it is time that drives change in this world. It’s time that is at the front of the biggest rule change this year. It’s time that is causing MLB to make changes now and in the future. Time is what is truly inevitable and Baseball, has marked the time.
Welcome, to the 2023 Dongers Club Manifesto
For this years edition of the manifesto, I want to focus on a list style breakdown of things which I think we overvalue when doing MLB DFS Analysis on a day to day basis. So here are the top 7 things which I know people talk about and look at, but really, they don’t matter as much as you think.
#7. Umpires
I listed this one last because it is honestly the one which gets looked at the least among the topics here. Everyone wants to think that Umpires are out to get their pitchers or hitters. This ump favors high strikes or that ump favors low strikes. I’ve seen the data, heck, I have pulled and imported the data into the site. And I am here to tell you, it doesn’t mean jack shit over the course of 180 days of MLB DFS
Yeah, there will be that one day an umpire goes VERY askew and hurts a specific pitcher in an inning, but guess what, that’s one inning. Will it play out over the full game? Not as often as you think.
One of the WORST umpires in my mind is Ramon DeJesus. Why? Because he is as consistent as a pregnant woman deciding what she wants to eat. We all know this to be true with Angel Hernandez and label these umpires as “BAD”, but when it comes to doing DFS projections you are looking for something which is predictable and consistent. And just simply being inconsistent won’t actually translate into a consistent result for analysis.
This is not to say that we cannot do some statistical analysis on umpires and assign them ratings on a day-to-day basis. Over the last 5+ seasons Jeremie Rehak has added the most strikeout upside and provided the best result for unders, while Alfonso Marquez has been the worst at these two categories. But those are the extreme ends, or the one offs. Most umpires are going to sway towards the middle and offer very slight balance between helping or hurting pitchers and good luck predicting their mood on a given day. So yes, I value umpire data more than the rest of this list, but it’s also not something you’ll find relevant for about 90% of the games you look at. I mean, is a good umpire really going to convince you to play Yusei Kikuchi vs the Orioles? I didn’t think so.
Hey, wait, that’s not a dare. Please. Do not do that.
#6. Weather
Yes, weather matters in DFS. But holy fuck, not as often as some people want to make it out to be and it’s not complicated.
This is how most DFS Weatherman view themselves providing analysis that there will be a home run boost in a game with extreme heat and humidity in Atlanta on the third week or June.
When in reality, this is how we all want to find our weather information and until this happens you don’t need to be watching a live stream for gods sake to get weather information.
But this isn’t my annual rant on a few Twitter profiles that wanna setup a Discord for MLB Weather. This is where I give you the straight facts. Most games which start will not end up getting PPD, and most games which get PPD, will do so before they start. So really you are just looking to determine ‘is there a game that I gotta check back on for weather?’. Most rain events happen in April and September and in September teams are going to try and get the game in because they cannot make it up later in the season.
Plus with the new schedule format, teams will not be re-visiting cities that often this season either, so they are going to to be quick to cancel early in the series to play a DH the next day or they will be waiting it out. In short, I have a rule that if a game starts in a delay, you fade it. If the game starts on time, you play it. There are 180+ slates in an MLB DFS season. You’re gonna be that jackass that wants to be the smartest guy in the room playing a 1% owned rain delay stack on one of those days and roll with that risk? I mean come on, why not just open your sportsbook app and go bet on Women’s Tennis in Malasia.
This is not an endorsement for betting on Women’s Tennis in Malaysia. Side effects include insomnia, screaming “stop hitting the fucking net” and “what the hell was that animal running across the court”…
You just don’t need to bother with it on the rare 1% times it happens.
There are of course much more important weather elements than rain which DO matter, but again, this isn’t rocket science. We have the weather information scraped into our Dashboards and you can easily google them for various stadiums.
Wind under 10 mph really means nothing, and most wind over 10 mph is going to be either in really cold games or Chicago (Wrigley mostly). Sure, San Francisco too some, but A the Giants offense is boring and B, well, it’s never that hot there.
The other element is heat/humidity. Dew point turned out to be the most important metric for the new baseballs last season, but the high dew point spots were far and few between. And once we get into June-August, guess what. Every game is warm. So the difference between Boston and Texas is minimal, although Texas pretty much becomes worse because they have a stupid roof now.
So please, spend 5 seconds looking at the weather on a game the same way you just look to see who the hell is playing on a given day, and after that, move on unless there is something you need to note and even then, it’s just a note — you don’t need a degree.
#5. Projections
You know who uses projections? People that don’t watch Baseball or actually write about it.
Now I know what you are saying. But wait Steve, didn’t you build an entire projections model here at DailyAmbush dot com? Well, no. I built a ratings model, you see there’s a difference.
Ok, nothing really. At the end of the day, a ratings system can be used the same way projections are. But really what I am getting at are the projections who are trying to project fantasy points for hitters on a daily basis. LOL. MLB is a binary outcome and last I checked, we aren’t in the business non-binary Baseball yet, thank God, but as mentioned above, change is inevitable ya know ….
Anywho. Players are either gonna get hits or not, they’ll either hit homers or not. They’ll get a 0 or they wont. Plus the projection on one hitter getting an 11 and another getting a 7 doesn’t help when there is no true ceiling on the projection to provide a scale comparison. So I greatly prefer to do ratings which are intended to be a score from 0-100% that values the strength of the match-up for a player. This to me is a much greater value than saying a player is projected to score 11.47 points when no scoring system allows for said score in the first place. But more importantly, what is the ceiling? Is 15 the ceiling? Is 30 the ceiling? Is 11.47 a good score for Trout? What is his normal projection? Is he getting a boost? Yada, yada, yada. You get the point (hopefully).
Don’t use projections.
Use ratings.
#4. Stacking
Stacking Sucks.
Sorry, I just had to do it. It’s long been the joke phrase that I utter when it comes to stacking, and I try to break it done annually every season only to see Tweets and complaints in mid May from people who say “stacking has not worked this year”.
Let’s first break down two different parts of this word….. Stack … Ing
Stack = Absolutely a stack in Baseball is a logical method and with the transition to more steals this season we should be embracing the correlated lineup stack of players together in order rather than just lumping in multiple players from the same team hoping for home runs and extra PA’s. There’s 100% value in doing a stack of a lineup because the more they each produce the more PA’s they get and more PA’s is the only way to get more chances in MLB DFS. Duhhh. I think everyone gets this concept by now.
Ing = the pural aspect here though implies that you are doing it multiple ways, which means you are doing multi-entry, which means you are REDUCING the probability of winning each time you do it unless you are able to finish in first place based upon how the prize pools work.
So really my rant is far more of a rant against MME on the surface, but in the end I am looking to reduce the misses and mistakes in my lineups and I do know that this is a sport where there are going to be a high number of players who don’t do much on a nightly basis. But combining proper contest selection with a solid player pool and limiting your exposure to bad spots you will put yourself in a position where a full lineup can go off more so than not.
I am great a identifying one off hitters from teams who will hit homers or have big games. You can be too and you can use these together on most larger slates (10+ games like every Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat/Sun) to build a lineup that has 4-5 good hitters in it and then fill in the last few spots with the team out of that lineup which you like the most. Thus, giving you a stack.
But stack-ing? Nah. I’ll pass. And show me the P&L statement on someone who is doing a ton of stacking on a nightly basis. I’ll wait, because it’s not better.
#3. Value (Pricing) Hitters
This is hopefully going to be very simple. There is no such thing as a value hitter. I will sometimes still slip up and refer to someone as — good value — in MLB DFS and I hate myself when I do it.
But what is meant is “this guy is a cheap hitter that I think will do well today”. The phrase value hitter is NOT the same as ‘punting’ a position. Punting a position means I don’t like anyone at the spot, to the point where I would even consider no talent frauds like Chris Owings, Matt Adams or Wilmer fricken Difo for the hell of it. Often this is Catcher and 2nd Base (although 2B is gonna be good this year, just wait…), but it could even be OF, SS, 1B, 3B, anywhere. That’s not ‘value’ per say. Value just isn’t a phrase that should be used and this is why I prefer FanDuel hitter pricing over DraftKings, and here’s a great example.
Which player are you using?
A: Mike Trout, $3000
B: Franmil Reyes, $3000
The answer is what?
The answer is that it depends. Their price isn’t the driving factor here, their matchup is. And we should look at that over the price with hitters given how limited opportunities they get within a game.
As for pitchers, absolutely, value matters.
#2. Ownership
You know why ownership doesn’t matter to me at all? See above. I don’t care about value or fitting players in based on an optimizer. I do not care about building a ton of lineups and having to worry about where my exposure falls. So I do not care about ownership.
You can ask anyone you want that might have tried to talk to me about MLB DFS throughout the years. I avoid talking about a slate like the plague before I do my article and I try to my article 3-5 hours before the slate locks. My opinion is my own and I have zero appetite or curiosity to read someone else’s opinion on why Yusei Kikuchi’s xFIP is relevant when facing the Yankees unless the analysis is “Kare wa seikō suru”.
So I encourage everyone to have their process on picking pitchers and hitters each slate and to trust that process/analysis. If you do trust it, then who cares about ownership and leverage? Chances are you won’t be landing on the chalk plays at every position in your lineup, which is usually all the wiggle room you need for diversification in the right sized tournaments. And if you are good at picking players who do well then the ownership is not ultimately going to be a reason why you lose, the players will be.
And on those slates when 40% owned players go off, you really wouldn’t have been ‘winning’ much of anything by simply locking them in. Plus, by the way, I have confidence that most of you will know who is going to be chalky when a team like the Dodgers are going into Coors Field against Jose Urena, right? So who cares about ownership. Please, do not mention ownership to me. I will just say “dont care”.
As for those of you who want to ignore analysis and play leverage pitchers against chalk hitters or use hitters against fragile chalk pitchers? Go right ahead, but you don’t need to do analysis to determine that. You’re just playing the leverage/hedge game and while I don’t always personally desire that route, I get it and understand it. But lets not act like it’s rocket science deciding to use a Nationals stack against Justin Verlander this season, it’s roullette … or in other words…
#1. Implied Run Totals & Vegas Odds
You can login to your favorite sportsbook and bet on the Atlanta Braves on Opening Day against the Washington Nationals and if the Braves will go over or under 4.5 team runs. That is not what is used as an implied run total in MLB DFS. What is used as an implied run total in MLB DFS is a made up stat that factors in two elements. The money line and the total on the game.
The money line on a game is going to be 100% driven based upon the starting pitchers on that game. If Justin Verlander is removed from a start for an average replacement the line will move FAR more than if Aaron Judge is removed from a start for an average replacement. Yet many want to use this made up metric to tell them which teams they should be stacking on a nightly basis. Again, there are other far more relevant metrics which can get us to this destination.
“But this helps predict the teams most likely to score the most runs”. No, it doesn’t. When I go back to look at the historical data on this, the success rate of the top 5 teams on a nightly basis actually finishing in the top 5 for that night is below 30%. And again, if you are just here to stack every team at the top and weigh it by their IRT then you are doing the MME dance, which we outlined above is a losing P&L method every. single. time.
So why do I want to use some bullshit metric that has NOTHING to do with the actual matchups and everything to do with sportsbooks associating probabilities on who wins and where they want $ on overs/unders. Not to mention, in the first month of the season, we’ll see far more dogs and unders than any other time of year, so really, it’s a worthless statistic which should never be referenced in an MLB DFS article as a reason to play a team other than someone who is asking for ChatGPT to replace them as a MLB DFS “Expert”.
Good luck this season!
If you want my full list of CORE Theories and Beliefs, keep scrolling. But for now, it’s time to embrace the change as Inevitability…
The Dongers Club Manifesto
- Contest selection determines what type of player you are.
- If you enter into a tournament with over 10,000 entrants as the main tournament you want to target then you’ll not like what I have to say.
- Any content writer who focuses their content without explaining the contests they are entering into themselves is like selling you a gallon of paint and not indicating what surface it’s being painted on.
- You do not need to stack to make money in DFS. This is the point of the joke that “Stacking Sucks”. Obviously we WILL stack often and it will pay off quite a bit, but you do not have to only follow that model to having success. There are contests which will pay out 10x to a lineup which is constructed very well and if you are only playing 1-5 lineups then that’s going to be the way you are going to profit in any DFS sport, especially Baseball.
- To those who think you can only win with 150 entries in a mini-max because Baseball is a sport of “variance”, I argue that you are just blindly rolling the dice because you’re not disciplined enough to make a decision.
- Define your contest, then go from there.
CASH GAMES
- Yes, you can play as many cash games as you want throughout the course of the season. I have in recent years dropped my cash exposure because the ownership in cash is getting to the point where it’s too high to make sense playing cash in a high variance sport. When there are slates that have mostly “optimal” lineups in cash there will be a lineup that is full of 60-80% owned plays in it much like NBA is. But in Baseball why would I want an 80% owned Fernando Tatis just because he is Fernando Tatis? So what if he is going to get two hits and score a run? On a big slate I can find a lot of guys who can do that as well at lower ownership in many cases if I like them more. The bottom line here is you should be able to play spots that you trust and are good in any lineup — especially cash — but any contests where chalk is that high become almost silly when you consider your max upside for beating it out is — 2x? Hey, if you wanna just grind 2x all the time, go for it and I support that.
- Just don’t assume you gotta play someone — anyone — because they are chalk.
- And don’t assume that you need Judge, or Trout or Jose Ramirez in all your cash lineups.
- Pitching is the most important position in cash. Figure out that chalk and go from there.
MY BELIEFS — PARK FACTORS
- I believe in park factors first. Then pitchers.
- Park factors matter more than anything else and not the park factor list that is on ESPN or other Statistical websites.
- I mean real legit park factors. Like the dimensions, the wall size, the wind flow, the dugout massage tables, the local food spots, the local clubs, the humidity, the sight lines, the chick behind home plate with the giant rack keeping score. Well, mostly the dimensions — but you get the gist.
- Lefties in Cleveland – #LiC
- Freddie Freeman in Arizona because he says he loves the Batters Eye.
- Nolan Arenado in PETCO and LA because he grew up near one and went to school near the other.
- Jackie Bradley Jr in Baltimore because his family attends all the games there. Wait, never JBJ.
- If he ever wants to unretire, Ryan Braun in Philly
- Juan Soto in Philly too.
- Lefties in PNC. It’s 2 miles to left field and on the way to left field you gotta get past Sidney Crosby’s shrine to himself and nobody wants to do that. It’s a park that has continued to get stronger and stronger for LHB.
- Why do teams suck on Sundays in Miami? South Beach on a Saturday night. Google it.
- Kauffman Stadium is huge but gets really hot in August and in day games? The ball flies.
- Wind in Wrigley is your Grandma’s Weather Factor.
- Wind in Comerica is Dongers Club Level sharp.
- Camden Humidty? Not quite Atlanta, but solid.
- Pay attention to the buildings around the newer outdoor stadiums. The more they add buildings, the more offense improves around them.
- We also want new stadiums in their 3rd year, it has to do with the concrete drying. Long story, just trust me here.
- Tropicana Field is known as COSTCO
- Globe Life Field is known as The Graveyard when the roof is closed
- We love the roof open in Arizona, and it’s fixed this season (for now)
- The Reds almost always play after a rain delay.
- The Nationals don’t do weather
- The dimension changes in Toronto are going to help hitters. The dimension changes in Detroit are going to hurt lefties. The dimension changes in Citi Field will help lefties.
MY BELIEFS — ANALYTICS
- I love stats. I honestly do. This includes analytics…. But anyone who is doing research 7 days a week for the specific slate and looking at analytics is doing it wrong.
- Your research should consist of looking at who, what and when. Who is playing? What do I think about the game and when am I going to stop tinkering so I can go to the bar and tinker more.
- Your research process should consist of those three W’s.
- And a walk up song. Get a walk up song. Or in this case, a lineup making song.
- Mine is Testify by Rage Against the Machine… Or if it is in the afternoon on a Friday I switch over to when the Levee’s Break by Led Zeppelin.
- I may or may not sometimes force a musical narrative in my article based upon what is playing at the time I am writing. How in the world do you think Freddie Freeman became the Sharp Dressed Man?
- If you want to break down Sean Maneaea and how often he throws certain pitches to RH and LH batters + the velocity and all the other metrics then fine. Do that when he isn’t pitching and do it so that you can actually remember it about the players if it matters. What you will find is that someone like Sean Manaea just plain ole sucks and you won’t even consider him 80% of the time unless he’s
- WHO – Pitching
- WHAT – Cheap and facing a team you already know cant hit
- WHEN – Is going to be someone you might consider when you build out lineup(s)
- So get to know the new players when they come up. Do a little research on them that does not involve fangraphs.com. Find out about their path to the big leagues, how big they are or how small they might be. Find out what scouts said about them but then also what they are showing in their career in the minors or now in the majors.
- Which stats are helpful? The ones which produce the most fantasy points. Duh.
- I want hitters who can hit for power. So yes, I believe in ISO and SLG and yes I believe in the X stats. Because this remains one area where we can talk about X without talking about Y and not be canceled out of society. The X stats simply put stand for the expected output of an event and over the large scheme of things give a better true indication of luck/variance and overall skill. That is why those stats are incorporated into the model which is intended to simplify the research for us lazy bastards who don’t wanna scrape every single aspect of things to store in our tiny noggins.
- For pitchers I believe in strikeouts but unfortunately we gotta find non strikeout guys lots of times. And I want someone who can get into the 6th inning and do that with a high amount of ground balls. Keep the ball down, keep the pitch count down and get to the 6th.
- Not all X stats are good though. XFIP? Worthless.
- Guys who already ran some are going to run a lot more now. And they will do it more against bullpens and especially when teams have the lead. So take steals upside on teams who are favorites/likely to win and take unders on dogs/teams likely to lose.
RANDOM STUFF (as opposed to the rest of the damn Manifesto)
- Baltimore – I once ate about 8 hot dogs at a game when I was a kid and wound up so sick in the bathroom that the security had to let us out of the stadium because they had closed the gates long after the game while I was still there. So you see, going to the game early does no damn good for the kids.
- Boston – My brother in law passed away a couple years ago and he was a huge Boston fan. After he passed my wife and son snuck into Fenway park and spread his ashes there. True story.
- Yankees – Giancarlo Stanton when he is on a streak is crazy good. Otherwise, he stinks.
- Tampa Bay – The Rays win at home on Friday’s.
- Toronto – When in Toronto they always win Saturday afternoon home games and I never understood why until I went to Toronto and stayed right next to the stadium and had lots of lots of drinks.
- Cleveland – Someone once wrote an article claiming the batters eye was bad for Lefties here. LoL
- Minnesota – I miss the Metrodome. One of the best playoff games I ever watched was played there. Should be easy to name. But they have a change to their animated dudes in center field now and after a home run it looks like they are trying to dock with each other. It’s quite disturbing, but also quite amusing at the same time…
- Kansas City – Yes. Yes, I am a Royals fan.
- White Sox – My least favorite team in Baseball. Jack McDowell did not deserve the 1994 Cy Young
- Detroit – The strip from the pitchers mound to home plate I believe is the last active one in the big leagues. A+++ and fuck off Chase Field grounds crew for removing theirs. This MUST remain in Comerica!
- Yes, I curse in my articles.
- Seattle – Dave Sims is awesome, he has made Mariners games enjoyable to watch.
- Angels – Same is true with the Dodgers, but guys who are from the L.A. area always do well in L.A. stadiums it seems.
- Oakland – I love drums, but not sure about this guy.
- Best all time Drummers? Go!
- Neal Peart
- End of list
- Thanks for coming
- Best all time Drummers? Go!
- Texas – Stadium is a dump, should have kept the old old stadium w/ the Giant sign shaped like the state of Texas.
- Houston – Kyle Tucker in LA
- Atlanta – Righties park. Deal with it.
- Philadelphia – Why do the Mets always score 8 runs in the first game of a 3 game series in Philly?
- Washington – Don’t ask me about the weather, I give up.
- Miami – South Beach Theory. Sundays. 1PM.
- New York Mets – Sunday Home Overs.
- Cincinnati – There will be minimum 2 bench clearing brawls here this year. One with the Cubs and one with the Pirates.
- Milwaukee – They have a slide. that’s pretty damn cool. unfortunately it’s in Wisconsin. But there’s a restaraunt in Wisconsin which has an outdoor whiffle ball field you can play on while eating. That’s cool.
- St. Louis & Pittsburgh – Pirates/Cardinals is an auto play the over all 3 games in the series and profit.
- St. Louis – Unders on Sunday’s
- Pittsburgh – Pitchers on Sunday’s at home.
- Wrigley Field – I am the guy who was complaining about having to walk what felt like a mile to go from left field bleachers to the pisser in my stadium article.
- Dodger Stadium – Why. Do. We. Not. Have. A. Vin. Scully. AI. Bot. Doing. Games. Period.
- Giants Stadium – Looks ugly on TV. Looks amazing in person.
- Padres – 2nd Best TV crew in the league, behind the Mets.
- Rockies – Nothing legendary about these broadcasters, but their social media team is the best in the bigs.
- Diamondbacks – Google Chase Field girls on phones.
The Three must watch MLB movies before every season are
- Major League
- Bull Durham
- Field of Dreams
- Honorable Mention: Eight men Out
THE GOOD STUFF: The Dongers Club CORE
- Lefties in Cleveland
- Chalk rookie pitchers are a trap. Every time. Most of the time someone is going to be hyping up a pitcher prospect because he plays for a well known team or he ranks somewhere on the prospect list without knowing exactly how the pitcher has been progressing along since he came into the organization. Unless it’s named Brady Singer, Casey Mize, MacKenzie gore or soon Jack Leiter, stay away. It happens every year and every year the young pitcher gets lit up like a Christmas tree.
- Absolutely positively do not play Luis Castillo on Friday’s unless you want your nuts ripped off. Don’t make me post the GIF.
- LiPNC
- Friends don’t let Friends Stack Pirates
- Right handed hitters in Atlanta and Target but not Wal-Mart.
- I had a near panic attack when I heard they were rioting Target in Minnesota during the pandemic.
- When Matt Joyce is in the Dongers Club, you play Matt Joyce. Thankfully, Matt Joyce is done playing.
- Same with Matt Adams … I think?
- Mike Trout on a Saturday Night
- Thursday’s in MLB DFS aren’t real. They never happened.
- Sunday’s used to be my favorite MLB DFS day…. It’s now Monday. So yes, I love a good case of the Monday’s…
- Friday’s though have long been a GOAT day of the week. From 1pm to 3pm on a Friday afternoon that little twitch to crank out the article for the night slate and then grab a cold beverage cannot be topped.
- again, I don’t know what you are talking about, Thursday’s aren’t real. We don’t like them.
- I once watched 5 innings of a Royals-Orioles game a lone at a bar in August when neither team was above .400.
- And by once I mean every year.
- It was 1-0 Orioles
- Both times…
- And yes, I enjoyed every damn minute of the peace and quiet.
- Jose Urena was right to bean Ronald Acuna and beanings are fine and part of the game.
- Could there be a more pathetic way to tout a team than their “Implied Run Total”.
- Everyone keeps saying I need to do more podcasts.
- Ok…. Fine….. maybe by 2083
Play Ball!