You get a triple dong and you get a triple dong and you … oh, you are Michael Conforto, you get nothing.  That’s your recap from a HIGH scoring but productive night last evening.  Let’s keep rolling. 10 game main slate tonight on both sites locking at 7:05 PM EST.    WEATHER NOTES Hey look, Nats/Phils rain potentially….. First glance is that it should be fine though. UPDATE:  Second glance it looks HORRIBLE   Walker Buehler Ah yes.  Walker at home on a day that ends in a y not named Thursday against a divisional opponent in a year between 2018 and 2036 seems about right.  Anyways, the Dodgers ace (you heard me right) gets to face off against a D’Backs lineup which is not a disaster in strikeout terms on paper but also has pretty much no firepower on the road this season.  Walker was skipped over his last start due to a little blister, but I really think it was the Dodgers just limiting his innings in this short season when they’ll want him locked and ready to go for the playoffs.  Play Walker over Max on FD and move on. Max Scherzer So I was not going to mention Max because I didn’t think it was a slate where I would be able to fit two 10k+ pitchers together on DraftKings.  I was wrong.  Assuming the lineups tonight are what I expect and some specific value players which I love no matter what their price is are in the lineup then I can get Max and Walker together.  Very specifically the value plays on DraftKings are Johan Camargo, Josh Donaldson and Josh Naylor.  After that you can easily get a solid lineup built in and for those who are dead set on stacking you can even stack around any of those three as all teams are mentioned below.  The Phillies aren’t exactly a team I want to pick on because they’re not striking out a ton but with Max only $10,400 he’s going to get 20+ DK points and since we’re locking in Buehler with him then it’s not like anyone’s gonna beat these two out today. UPDATE:  Pivot off Max (due to weather) for me is Crristian Javier Spencer Turnbull Milwaukee is a terrible offense and I wasn’t joking when I said we had finished using them after that one night in Minnesota earlier this season.  […]

Probably my biggest Touting feat this entire season has been something that’s really gone unnoticed.  It’s something that I have done a little bit int he past but have made sure to have a routine with this year.  No, I am not talking about eating properly or anything good like that.  I’m referring to my Sunday night look ahead for the upcoming MLB week.  A lot of folks out there in the Fantasy Baseball world deal with FAAB for their leagues and with DFS I’ve become a really lazy seasonal player but Sunday nights are a great time to look ahead at whats coming up for seasonal AND for Daily purposes.  Each week I have randomly talked to myself on Twitter with some tweets about guys who are slumping and have a good projected week ahead.  And I just wanna share that my lord my forecasting with the look ahead player/team of the week has been absolutely on fire.  Unfortunately the player/team I picked this week ISNT ON THE MAIN SLATES as the St. Louis Cardinals and specifically Paul Grand Slam DeJong woke up in Cincinnati yesterday and once again are not on tonight’ slate.  At any rate, I did say it would be Trea Turner week 2.0 and that guy has been absolutely on fire ever since I said welcome to the season — so lets assume Paul DeJong might continue it when the weekend comes up.  I say this now and had you listened to me last week (or even if I listened to myself) then we all would have had Schwarber and Heyward last Sunday. On to September. Holy hell, what happened to the summer?  I can’t wait to go to a Baseball game and I’m pretty much locked into doing nothing next summer but traveling around the country and going to random Baseball games.  This is assuming I can convince my wife that we should no doubt be spending 4 days and 3 nights in Cleveland next June to watch the Jarred Kelenic and the Mariners play the Indians.  I’m sure she’ll be all in for that… Yes, I know football is coming and yes there is even College Football starting up too.  No changes to the MLB schedule in September.  Every.  Single.  Day.  However, Sunday’s will be MUCH lighter simply due to the sites likely dropping all contests.  If they completely remove tournaments then I’ll […]

Only seven games on the Monday slates — sadly there is no Cardinals vs Reds to include here as this is a perfect spot for the Cardinals to finally get right and good chance the entire series plays out and we get no part of it.  Which totally sucks.  The other major highlight today is that it is Matt Adams birthday.  Happy Birthday to that giant turd nugget who got DFA’d last night… Ha-Ha! Only one inter-league game tonight (Atlanta at Boston)   WEATHER NOTES Washington at Philadelphia – Rain coming in as the game progresses on but … well, no, I am not going to predict weather involving a Phillies and Nationals game…. Cleveland at Kansas City – Same dice   I am paying up for pitching today the hitting feels very flat…. Shane Bieber We started the season off with a bang back on Opening Day when Bieber mowed down a bad Royals lineup at home.  He’ll travel to KC where they are better offensively and come into this game having been better in recent form but it’s still not a reason to really stray away from Bieber tonight. Gerrit Cole The temptation on Cole is that he is a little cheaper than Bieber, but they’re still in the same price tier and thus Cole has to be looked at a notch below Bieber.  Cole is facing a better team and one that the Yankees have really struggled to find a way to beat of late.  While I gotta think he has a solid outing, it’s not realistic to expect him to blow away Bieber tonight, so he is second tier.  If you wanna ride the value train on DK for hitting then get VERY bold and pair them both together. Brad Keller Keller will give you 6 innings and not blow up.  For $6900 on DK if you get the right SP1 out of Bieber-Cole-Giolito (don’t go Giolito please) then you’ll glady take his 6 IP, 5 Hits, 2 ER, 2 BB, 4 strike out performance today.  Cleveland has a couple hitters who are hitting well and Carlos Santana is a favorite play of mine but realistically he’s the guy who walks twice.   Outside The Box / DK Value Trevor Williams I suspect a lot of ownership on Suter in this game but Williams faces an equally bad lineup and his weakness has mostly been against […]

Alright, we have had enough of these wild Sunday mixed slates by now that there’s no more ranting or excuses for not figuring them out. Of course we have mixed slates today, what you thought we could have consistency a third day in a row?  Nah. Leading off, from Boston, MA it’s DraftKings with a 10 game slate that includes the 7-inning first game of a double-header between the Yankees and Mets.  DraftKings does not have the Diamondbacks/Giants, Rockies/Padres, Angels/Mariners or Orioles/Blue Jays games on their slate. FanDuel on the other hand, has all of those games except the Yankee-Mets game, because who wants to play a 7 inning game obviously?  But, why the other games?  Oh, I won’t even bother.  FanDuel probably is prepping for the next e-drone simulation contest roll out….   WEATHER NOTES No PPD risk due to rain.   Even though neither site has a five figure pitcher on their pool today, this is a DEEP pitching slate and arguably the best one we have had all season — I kid you not.  The challenge though for these arms today is that we of course have day games and warm weather in a lot of spots. Blake Snell One spot we don’t have weather is inside of a Dome, and the first of three potential dome closed games is in Miami where Tampa will look to keep the Marlins scoreless again.  Miami hasn’t scored since Wednesday and they haven’t homered since last Monday.  Sounds like someone has a case of the South Beach.  In this case though, I am rolling with the road pitcher on a Sunday in Miami, as Snell continues to build up towards a dominant start and when it’s Sunday,  it’s Snellzilla day.  Miami will score a run finally, but not without striking out a ton as well. Brandon Woodruff Pittsburgh rarely wins in Milwaukee and You don’t need me to remind you over and over juts how bad they are against RHP.  Woodruff is only $8,200 on DK so you have no problems fitting him in with Snell today there and he’s a favorable comp on FanDuel as well. Sandy Alcantara Strong consideration to just game stacking the pitchers in Tampa/Miami again.  The Rays lineup today is … oof.  Not great.  No Meadows and of course … #SouthBeachTheory   Outside The Box Luis Castillo He went far too long in his last […]

A quick recap on last night and boy oh boy that was a nice Friday with the bats.  Unfortunately there were about 3 or 4 pitchers who I decided not to roll with that went off and that kept me and us from taking down tournaments last night.  But ignoring those implied run totals once again paid off as nobody had the best spot on the slate — Cleveland. No specific trends to point out today other than to keep an eye on these double headers and how teams respond after them.  We have more today which means the main slate is shorter than it should be but in a way it might benefit us as lots of games could have rain issues in the afternoon. Main slate tonight locks at 7 PM on both sites and will have the same amount of games — which is only six and does include the Coors Field game. The Houston and Oakland game is NOT going to accrue stats because they decided they wanted a Friday night off last night and used that as their protest game. Side note:  I might be the only one who felt this way, but I really felt like all the MLB players were refreshed last night.  It’s almost like they have been so drained by the COVID testing and lack of fans in stadiums this season that they mentally needed the break more than anything.  It sounds stupid to say this but the pause of not playing games and them focusing on something other than Baseball kind of acted like an all-star break or mid-way pause for them in this short season.  Even though the amount of games is less, it’s definitely taken a mental toll on lots of players being crammed in so quickly.     WEATHER NOTES WAS at BOS:  Light rain in Boston today could really make this slate different as they can easily push it to tomorrow and try to play two without any rain concerns.  My hard rule right now is that if they game starts in a delay — STAY AWAY and if the game starts on time then it will be fine.  Got it?  “Delay, Stay away.  On Time, It’s Fine”.  That’s as much as we can do to simplify what has been a challenging weather season given the new DH rule. Coors Field is nicer today than last night, […]

I do not have the energy to really provide a ton of narrative in this space given what is going on not so much in the world but with the fantasy sites and how they are handling contests.   You aren’t here for thoughts on World Issues (to my knowledge atleast) and thus you shouldn’t care what I have to say about any of that just like I really don’t care what athletes have to say about these things either.  I don’t need to agree or disagree with them for me to enjoy Sports.  That’s not me saying I disagree or agree with them either, just saying that I give zero shits about any of it when it comes to doing fantasy analysis.  It’s not my place and I cannot change things that are out of my control but what I can control is doing an article for your entertainment. So that’s what I will try to do here and why both FD and DK waited until 11:00 AM EST to post is beyond me.  My assumption is they both relied upon an external schedule source which was delayed, to provide them with an API type feed of the games and then they build their slates off that.  But who knows, we will never know because there’s no PR from either system. So your guess is as good as mine and don’t ask what we’re gonna get going forward.  Who the heck knows. Time to focus on winning some money because … wait, what do you mean the Blue Jays home game isn’t on the slate???   WEATHER It is less than ideal today with lots of rain spots.  Be cautious, be very cautious with the rain games as this is the first game of the series and these teams have shown a HUGE desire to play two 7 inning games over two 9 inning games with some rain…. So, given that today is a Friday, we’ll use GIFs to measure these games   Braves at Phils – Seems ok   Cubs at Reds – Should be fine, but keep a close eye on this one.   Nats at Red Sox – partly cloudy.  All the tilt.   Royals at White Sox … absolutely nothing to worry about here folks …  Just the favorite game of the day for everyone else and some Chicago storms…  or riots…   Padres at Rockies […]

SLATE INTRODUCTION I saw once again some people who remain ignorant about choosing the right contests and thus did not find themselves in a good spot.  Then I see good members who are talking between each other about proper contest selection and joining into smaller contests where they are not sweating every single play on the board and doing just fine against any “known” user that you can think of in the DFS world.  You could have a very good night last night even without the stellar no hitter by Lucas Giolito.  Yes, the Gerrit Cole and Yankee/Brave PPD was a major boost for those who didn’t have him (like us) and I won’t say that the positive results from last night didn’t get helped tremendously by that.  But even with a Paddack as an SP2 on DK I was able to return a positive result and you know what, that’s 80% of DFS slates.  Just getting positive results is far better and far more important than the once in a month win that is 10x where you can screenshot it.  We have folks who have boosted up into the $300 per night range in their contests simply by using good contest selection to become a better DFS player. It’s a combination of choosing GOOD contests, accepting 5x as a great win and understanding that you don’t need to play lineups with random 5 man Seattle Mariner stacks just to get CUTE because someone who isn’t helping anyone win wrote them up as a Tier 3 stack for that day and thought they just cured COVID. FanDuel. My FanDuel…. They have actually included the Blue Jays home game today on the Main slate.  Who knows actually why they did this, and lets assume it doesn’t happen again but I love it and the slate locks at 6:37 on FanDuel where as DK locks at 7PM.  DraftKings posted their slate before the Yankee game was PPD last night so they have Yankees/Braves players on their main slate but they WILL NOT count — so dont use them!!   WEATHER Boston at Toronto … Nevermind what I said above.  It appears everything FanDuel touches turns to shit these days as the weather looks terrible in Buffalo.  I’m doing my breakdown earlier than usual today and won’t have a chance to update but this looks less than good right now.  With the 7 inning double header […]

SLATE INTRODUCTION Another low scoring night last night across Baseball.  The pitchers didn’t start clean but they got there and it was one of those nights where a couple guys carried the field. Normally we would be looking at a 14 or 15 game slate today.  Instead it’s a day of 17 MLB games today so if you are a gambling degen on the games, you’ll love that. But for DFS purposes, it’s only 10 games as the sites want these 7:10 lock times for the main slate. Good news is, both DK and FD are 10 games each so the break down can be straight forward.   WEATHER Outside of a typical Atlanta random thunderstorm nothing appears worthy of discussing today.     DK Pricing on arms is once again soft. We continue to see inter-league games being the ones that are the most beneficial for offense.  I have been saying this for well over a week and while I am not letting that blindly drive my plays, it should be something you are considering with yours. Yes, Houston scored 11 runs yesterday but if you look back the Cubs-Tigers and Royals-Cardinals were nice games to consider overall on the slate last night.  Does this mean we should blindly ignore match-ups?  No, but it’s some good information for you to be stashing away right now.  Especially considering some of the pitching choices today.   Luis Castillo He is my guy today for a lot of the same reasons Bauer was the guy for folks last night.  The Brewers offense despite some early work on Beer Chuggin Bauer is not one that scares me off of Castillo today who has yet to have that 10+ strikeout game for a second time since opening day when he struck out 11 Tigers.  Castillo had a longer than normal layoff before his day game start at Kansas City last week but will be on regular rest today in an environment that’s controlled and oh yeah — not an interleague game.  And thankfully for those who have been following me, you know it’s not a Castillo Friday which means we won’t take it in the groin (no GIF needed) Chris Paddack There are three guys today who all fall into that interleague theme but two of them are at home and against bad teams.  I am referring to Paddack (vs SEA), Giolito (vs PIT) […]

  SLATE INTRODUCTION We kick things off on Monday with the main slate featuring all new series and that is my favorite kind of Monday.  Seven games on both sites, as we have site synchronicity and the slates lock at 7:10 PM EST on both sites.   WEATHER Cool in Texas so the Rangers likely open the roof… No word on Arizona roof, doesn’t matter to me today it can only help. Wind blowing out to right ~9 MPH in Cleveland. And elsewhere …       This pitching slate is not like Sunday’s and that’s a nice thing.  Loaded.  Very loaded.  And I can smell this a mile away — DraftKings has softened their pricing.  Go look and tell me it’s not soft.  Then do the math.  Why would they want softer pricing?  Well, naturally to make it easier for casual players to come in and play.  We are three weeks away from NFL Week 1 and really by the time you get to Thursday this week it’s two weeks away.  There’s going to be a ton of promotional advertising by DK to get new players in.  I would include FanDuel in this, but let’s be frank, their promotional advertising probably consists of paying some kid $15 an hour to go stand on the side of the road in a state where they are banned to promote their product.  I can see it now, there’s some poor schmuck kid in Alaska who is saying why the f*** do I have to do distance learning?  We live in Alaska.  Nobody is coming up to Alaska and catching COVID and if they do that’s the least of their worries because they’re likely going to geat eaten by a grizzlie bear before they die of some other disease, and if they do get the disease then they get eaten by a bear anyways and the bear gets the disease and then the whole world is screwed because we have mad Bear disease problems.  And nobody wants that.  So yes, FanDuel, I will gladly go stand on the side of the road in my giant fur coat and sip on my fathers flask with a giant sign that says come join our $3 BEST BALL CONTESTS NOW IN THE LOBBY ON FANDUEL DOT COMMMMM… I think I got a little off topic there, but the point is the soft pricing seems to be […]

SLATE INTRO Good Morning. Normally I would have some thoughts regarding the prior days slate when there are items which I want to point out or comment on and I certainly have a point to make in reference to nuggets I had laid out there on Friday and yesterday that would have shifted the eyes onto San Diego.  But overall it was just one of those days and I’ll just reference the phrase we are onto Cincinnati to move onto more important things. Like Sunday Baseball … And then I logged into FanDuel dot com. Their level of incompetence never ceases to amaze me. FanDuel’s slate locks at 12:35.   DraftKing’s locks at 1:05 FanDuel’s slate has 13 games on it.  Yes.  13.  This is their Main slate.  The All Day slate has 14 games on it as it includes the SNB game between the Phils and Braves. DraftKings has 7 games on it. I am on full tilt this morning already due to this, but nothing ran ruin today.  You see, not only is it Taysom Hill’s birthday, but it’s also a Santana, Domingo day! Lets go.     WEATHER Isolated storms around Camden Yards All other games play clean.   Carlos Carrasco Really hard not to like Carrasco against the Tigers today — even at home where he’s never been as good as he is on the road. Corbin Burnes The Brewers will win today after dropping the first two to the Pie-Rats!  With Burnes we get someone who can be extremely nasty to opposing righty bats but given that the Pirates aren’t heavy on RHB he will need to be better than his 33% K rate against them to have an elite day.  This is mostly due to my belief that the Brewers win the game and he pitches a relatively clean 6 innings. Tyler Mahle Mahle needs three things.  He needs a big ballpark (check).  He needs a team that doesn’t have LH power (check).  He needs an umpire who can be favorable to him (Check).  If you are venturing into the insanity house of FanDuel he isn’t your play there, but on the 7 game slate at DK I would roll with him.  Having not pitched since August 12th, he’s probably good for 5 IP tops.   FanDuel Only Mike Minor   Chicago Cubs & Chicago White Sox Ian Happ, Anthony Rizzo, Yoan Moncada, Luis Robert Warm and […]