SLATE INTRO Last night kicked off like it was going to be another high scoring DFS night for everyone but then our horses ended up pushing ahead into the lead.  I haven’t heard from a single person who wasn’t cashing last night and in many cases folks were going extremely high.  Especially those who were using the proper contest selection with their tournaments and raking in 10x to first prizes. Today is a decent Saturday slate as MLB only has a few early games scheduled and one of which includes a Nationals-Marlins double header so cross off your ability to play Max Scherzer and his 7 inning no hitter today.  Sorry.   Everything locks tonight at 7:05 and we have synchronicity as both sites have the exact same 10 games.  But only one of them has Lord Ryan Mountcastle for the Orioles (c’mon FanDuel, fix your player pool!)   WEATHER Looks clear again tonight of any PPD but I do see some heavy humid spots with a lack of rain Baltimore (this stands out to me) Chicago & wind is slightly blowing out again San Diego   After Berrios on Thursday and Buehler on Friday we have no doubt made up for ole Ross Stripling earlier this week and we’re tempted to search for the third straight pitcher who has been below his talent level to start the season and watch him come out and have that extremely solid performance today because things happen in three’s. Unfortunately, that guy is Max Scherzer, who is pitching on the 4:05 early slate and is in a 7 inning game as part of a Double Header & depending upon when I post this and you see this, he’s likely already started and you are wondering why I am wasting space on it.  Well, I just wanted to state for the record that he’s going to pitch all 7 innings today because I don’t think he allows a single hit and strikes out 12 Marlins over 7 innings and we’re all left wondering if it’s a legit no hitter.   On to the Main slate Zac Gallen This won’t be a double digit strikeout performance — or it shouldn’t be in my eyes.  But the Giants winning streak coupled with the Diamondbacks losing streak pinpoints this as the obvious D’Backs win play today.  San Francisco has been raking against LHP and I can’t recall exactly […]

SLATE INTRO Twelve game slate tonight with two games going early and yet another series PPD due to a team getting COVID in South Beach.  The Mets and Yankees will be off all weekend, which means the Yankees get yet another break in their schedule as they get time off for guys to heal up.     New Series beginning today and we have …. Inter… League… Games… That’s right.  This is the trend to keep riding and with the Yankees-Mets getting PPD all weekend there are only two inter-league series as MLB’s obvious schedule this year is to have one inter-league series going on at a time per region.  In the Central it is the White Sox and Cubs and in the West is is the Padres and the Astros.    WEATHER Looks fairly clear of any PPD risk tonight, some storms here and there and we should keep an eye on Atlanta which could PPD if they get a random pop-up storm. Overcast in Pittsburgh, but no heavy threat. Roof will be closed in Seattle due to rain   Walker Buehler Hail to the King … I believe that there are many reasons why Walker Buehler will be the top scoring pitcher on this slate and of all those reasons the only one which can be debated is my number one reason.  I believe he is going to pitch a gem tonight.  If you do not agree with that reason because in your own mind you don’t think he is going to pitch well today, then move along and find another option.  Because that is the ONLY reason why you should not consider Buehler today.  So many people as writers or subscribers or DFS players in general will look for data reasons to tell them why they should be playing someone.  The data could be an optimizer spitting the player out, a rankings on a dashboard, where the player ate his dinner last night, doesn’t matter.  Data comes in many forms.  But the data you cannot argue with is that Walker Buehler is an ELITE pitcher.  I can recite you his statistics from a season ago when he was the best pitcher for the top team in the National League.  I can recite you his college statistics when he led Vanderbilt to the College World Series or we can even go back to when he was a young lad […]

SLATE INTRO I did my weather analysis too early yesterday and with lots of site migrations going on it was a challenge for me to get the update in that the ATL/WAS game was likely going to get PPD.  I got this update into the SLACK channel but even then it came very late for a lot of folks.  The issue here remains that both FD and DK have not built into their sites the ability for a game which never starts to unlock.  I understand that they have this 2016 brain lock mentality that ownership % is so important that you cannot show player ownership and then allow someone to change off that player to another spot.  Normally I would agree, but in the case where the player isn’t playing at all then the point about ownership % being important is completely lost.  It doesn’t matter.  The player is getting a 0.  Of course you want to swap off them…   It’s bad customer service and design and leaves a poor taste in the users mouths while also making the competitiveness of the product far less.     WEATHER I believe we should be all clear today.   This is a very good pitching slate and I envision there being only a couple automatic spots for offense tonight.  So it’s telling me that our lineup construction today allows for some ole “DFS Game Theory” (a term I hate) tonight when it comes to blindly picking your pitchers.  So follow along good friends, follow along…   Jose Berrios He is my top and favorite arm on both sites.  He has the same upside that Bieber has and the Twins are not losing this game to the Brewers.  I joked last night that as Milwaukee was hitting more and more homers that we had concluded our one day for 2020 of using Brewers hitters and now we must refresh our memory that they’re terrible against RHP and all those guys who had big games last night (Braun, Avisail specifically) are going to go back to sleep tonight.   Berrios has fallen into that ‘Bauer’ category that I labeled on Trevor last season when he started to see the AL Central teams far too much.  Berrios is a very talented arm but at times struggles with knowing how to pitch out of trouble and so far this season he has faced the Royals twice and […]

SLATE INTRO 11 games today, both sites lock at 7:05.  I have been really bad on DK lately.  I am focusing to clean up the pitching plays there for everyone.  They sometimes have been good but not in the right range given the bats I like and honestly trying to like a play one site versus another is very challenging with the way pricing is.  It will clean up going forward. WEATHER No issues except for the fact that supposedly California is on fire and the smoke/air quality is bad. Awesome.       Gerrit Cole I really thought his last start was the one where he would come out and reach over 60 points on FanDuel and quite honestly he almost got there.  Today’s a far better strikeout spot so with him being at home and getting very comfortable this season he’ll likely dominate the Rays today and be a lock FD SP1 even though there are some affordable second tier options.  Cole wont burn you and you can find some cheap bats on FD to go with him.  He’ll beat deGrom — again! (I’m cheating because last time deGrom got scratched). I am locking in Cole on both sites today once again because there’s value in the bats.   Casey Mize / Jesus Luzardo – DK Combination I don’t roster rookie pitchers making their debuts, and I am really stretching it here to allow myself to break that rule as there’s only one other current young pitcher I’ll consider it for.  Mize to me has as much upside today as someone like Paddack who is coming off a bad start and is in my mind not going to break the slate.  Mize says he is ramped up to go a full outing and he is one of those special arms who has the ability to deliver a Strasburg like debut performance in his first start.  Chicago will strikeout against RHP at a good clip and even though he’s on the road, he doesn’t exactly have road fans to deal with or anything. Luzardo does not have a great K% upside against the Diamondbacks, but he has good ballpark on his side and he’ll not have to be forced into a rush start like he was over the weekend.  His price point is appropriate considering Oakland pitchers (and young guys like him) don’t go deep.  But if we’re gonna […]

THE AMBUSH NFL Playoffs Conference Championship Games We are in the final DFS slate of the season for football.  I don’t want to talk about the Showdown for the Super Bowl because outside of making a few predictions and prop bets on the Super Bowl it’s the most just have fun/random slate of the year.  […]

THE AMBUSH NFL Playoffs – Divisional Round Well, last weekend sucked.  It wasn’t just having a couple blinders and missing on a few plays here or there, I had the game theory wrong on all four games and actually picked all four losing teams.  So I guess if you are bad you are bad.  No […]

THE AMBUSH NFL Playoffs – Wild Card Round – Sunday Updates   I said in my article that I would have some updates for Sunday because Saturday was mostly a go light day in terms of how heavy your lineup was.  Overall there really wasn’t a single play that I think broke the entire slate […]

THE AMBUSH NFL Playoffs – Wild Card Round The Playoffs are here!  The Playoffs are here!  The Playoffs are here!  We have two weekends in a row of four game slates and three weekends in a row of two game slates across Saturday and Sunday the next two weeks before the final real DFS slate […]

The AMBUSH previews the NFL slate for the main contests this Sunday.

The AMBUSH previews the NFL slate for the main contests this Sunday.