We are back and we are ready to get this show on the road or off the rails really quickly. My decision to launch my own personal site was 100% done in time ahead of the MLB season and it’s something that I quite honestly have wanted to do ever since I started writing and had you generous readers looking for my input, humor and whatever other insight I could provide. But to do it in the middle of a season or during another sport would have just not felt quite natural as doing it before a 162-game full MLB season. Not only is the season back to 162 games, but it’s starting in April and the only nostalgia we are missing out on is a Monday Opening Day and the ability to stack against Zack Greinke on the main slate today. But don’t worry, we do have a nice evening slate with ole Greinke pitching on it and we can no doubt load up on Oakland bats because Mr. Greinke is not too fond of your Opening Day ceremonies.
Quick note on the Optimizer / Dashboard. I’ve been working on it quite a bit to get ready for Opening Day but ultimately there’s just so much more to do with it that it’s not 100% prime time yet. That’s okay because a lot of the data benefits from it will come as the season progresses. The Optimizer for DK is working and the FanDuel one is coming very soon as I test some things out with it. I did a ful overhaul of the back-end for this to make it easier to update stats and make the thing smoother and more automated going forward. That said, yes, there will be some bugs here and there likely for the next few days while things get settled…
Over the course of the next six months I will provide these articles in just about the same format every day. Relatively the same way that it has evolved in the past as you’ll get a very brief introduction 90% of the time, then a weather breakdown which hopefully is also very brief and then the different core sections.
Pitching.
Lineups to target.
Positional One offs
And finally, The Dongers Club.
Within the Weather I will tell you what you need to know on relevant games. If I don’t mention a risk spot then it’s either a game we shouldn’t be paying any attention too or it’s one which I do not anticipate there being any problems. This doesn’t mean that you should just blindly ignore a potential storm threat in Minnesota on a random night if that’s where you are looking — it just means I didn’t see any real risk when I looked. Always double check your own weather and I say this not to be a jerk, but to give you honest advice.
The pitching break down is going to vary certainly based upon the structure of a slate. Sometimes we’ll have 5-10 “Aces” going like we do today and sometimes we’ll be staring at a decision between Marco Gonzales and Nathan Eovaldi for our primary pitching target. Overall though I will not write about 15 pitchers on a slate, and quite frankly if I am writing more than four pitchers then I am likely wanting to vomit already. The focus is to give out three to four main pitchers to use on both FanDuel and DraftKings. If one is NOT in play on a site or better on A vs B then I will mention that as best I can. Lots of times there will be a reason I want to share a quick note or thought on another pitcher and I’ll just include that in the “other guys I am not touching/recommending” spot. I do not do MME and I have no intention of giving out MME advice either.
The lineups to target are going to be in the same context as the pitching. Here’s 3-4 teams that are the focal point tonight and ones that should be looked at first if you are building out of a stack construction. Should it be 3 guys? 4 guys? 5 guys? It always depends and I personally can talk through lineup construction in another spot, but I’m not gonna say I like the Cardinals (Example) and then only want to play one player from that lineup. If I like a team, it’s generally a spot you can stack anywhere from 3 to 5 players from. I also will not list 15 teams here either, because oh my fucking god you should not be paying any money to have someone list every fucking stack on a slate and tell you what their implied run total is. You want their implied run totals? Go look at the model, it shows them.
The positional breakdown has mostly been focused on FanDuel positions because they only had one position per player. Well that nice luxury for me the writer is now OUT the window and I cannot promise you that I will stick to one process for this as the season moves along but I will try my best. It will be 3 guys per position but more a breakdown of what the position looks like and this is intended to help with any one off’s or core players to build around and pair up with a stack or just flip the bird to all the math nerds and build a winning lineup with hitters without more than 2 from a team!
The Dongers Club consists of the Chairman of the Dongers Club, my favorite play on the slate to hit a home run. This is not a round robin of just picking Acuna/Trout/Harper/Judge/Whatever guy is in Coors that day. It includes sometimes guys like Evan Longoria, Matt Joyce and yeah, sometimes a Pirate. But generally the player is someone who is in the lineups to target section and also in the positional breakdown too. I then give out one player per position that is in the Dongers Club and these are basically my favorite players to build around.
I do not give out a core, but if you want a core, pick 3 to 4 that work from the Dongers Club. I will include bets when I have them as well in the Dongers Club section this year. Oh, about the 10% of the time when I do not keep the intro brief. You can rest assured that being on my own platform I am allowed to post any and all GIF’s…
Play Ball.
WEATHER
We have lots of weather to talk about on Opening Day and while that’s not unusual it’s certainly not what I was expecting when I glanced a week ago at the forecast. Rainy, Windy and Cold in many spots and that is just not that unusual for April Baseball. The most consistent money maker over the years has been to just avoid most of these spots and take the goodness that comes from dome parks or good weather areas. The Dodgers rake in April for a reason compared to the rest of the league. Miller Park is always a good environment and home games for the Marlins, Braves, Rangers, Diamondbacks, Padres, Mariners can also look very good this time of year.
Indians at Tigers (FD Only): Nothing like starting off day one with a Dongers Club Manifesto play. The wind is over 14 mph in Comerica and blowing out to CF (wish it was LCF, but it is what it is). In fact, did you know that in Comerica they have this new Little Ceaser’s advertisement out over the left field wall? Supposedly if someone hit’s a home run on the Little Ceaser guy (Pizza! Pizza!) then everyone in attendance gets a pizza. What is not specified is if it’s a Tigers batter or one of the many AL Central guys (Ramirez, Soler) who rake in Comerica. So we have “Splish Splash” homers in Chase Field with the pool and now I guess we can say guys will hit one into the oven in Detroit… Just doesn’t have the same oooompf… Ah, yeah, its cold and fucking windy.
Orioles at Red Sox: Cold, light rain, cross wind. Cross it off then. And looks like it’s ppd
Pirates at Cubs: First team to put a runner on 2nd base wins. 15mph wind in and 33 degrees. Fuck that noise.
Braves at Phillies: Temp and rain is FINE here. Just very windy in.
Cardinals at Reds: Arenado, Goldy, Yadi and DeJong will head into Cincinnati and they will receive temps above 40 degrees (ok, it’s something) and the wind blowing out at 10-15 mph to right field.
Diamondbacks at Padres: Bee’s are taking over the stadium. Ok not really. That is legit the only ever concern for San Diego.
By the way, there are no April Fools jokes in this article. Sorry
We generally avoid paying up for pitching early in the season for the following reasons. Pitchers are generally not stretched out enough to warrant paying up for someone who in mid season will easily get into the 7th or 8th inning and reach double digits on strikeouts. Secondly, there are a lot of upsets early in the season and most of these come from bullpens blowing games. Lastly, if the hitting conditions are bad everywhere then even some schmuck pitcher who is 7500 can find a way to give you 5+ innings with limited damage. So no need to force a higher priced player in all the time. That said, when there are 10+ games and everyone’s ace on the mound, we’re likely going to wind up with an ace or two in the first couple of days — like today.
Yu Darvish (Padres)
Something I rarely like to do is use a pitcher in his first start or two with a new team, but here we go. The adjustment to a new catcher and environment can be enough to limit their upside and especially with a language barrier situation like Darvish there’s some added value with it. However, among the top end arms to consider today outside of Cole on FanDuel the choice for me is either between Darvish or a really good at home but really bad in the afternoon Aaron Nola. Darvish is the chalkier play, but I cannot find any logic in going with someone on Arizona other than the D’Backs of old hit well in PETCO. Yu is not my favorite pitcher but he’s the best top end choice. I expect 6 innings and 8 strikeouts with 2 ER.
Brandon Woodruff (Brewers)
Something that you might forget early in this season is that we’ll be getting pitchers hitting once again. This impacts the NL arms both positively and negatively, however in the case of Woodruff he’ll get to avoid any Nelson Cruz in the lineup tomorrow. I mentioned above Miller Park (yo, they changed the name? Can you believe this shit???) is a good park early in the season — but this match-up screams 3-2 at best.
Brad Keller (Royals)
Welcome to a chalky cheap option and I don’t hate it but I also don’t think it’s so perfect we gotta lock it in. This is more to do with facing a horrible Rangers lineup than just chasing a high strike-out upside, because Keller doesn’t do that. When he is on he is getting good movement in the zone but not enough to generate a ton of swinging strikeouts. Look for lots of ground balls and a few clean innings from Keller against a lineup we should be ready to pick on quite often in 2021.
Max Fried (Braves)
Expect a quiet day in Philadelphia offensively. While he has to deal with the Bryce Harper opening day HR narrative, Fried to me is pushing into a tier close to Nola and beyond facing a lighter lineup he carries the smaller price tag which is favorable if you already have Darvish locked in.
As you can see, I tried to stay with home pitchers outside of Fried and I honestly don’t have anything against Nola in that game. This is one of those slates where we have quiet a few pitching options and I can see some logic with Eovaldi, Means and a real long shot in Chad Kuhl. But we have plenty of guys here who are better and should garner priority.
SAN DIEGO PADRES
Tatis – Pham – Myers & Machado
Which Mad-Bum are we gonna get? The one from 5 years ago or the one who last year was giving up 45%+ Hard hit rate early in the season, stepped away and only came back later to … yep, get hammered more. Bumgarner just doesn’t have enough velo to do enough damage and his curveball isn’t anywhere close to being a top pitch. Expect Pham, Myers, Tatis to get things going in 70+ degree temps.
ST LOUIS CARDINALS
Dejong – Goldschmidt – Arenado – Molina
I fucking love the Cardinals. Fucking love this spot. The Cards go into one of the better ballparks on the slate and will be near 2% owned with winds blowing out over 10 mph out to right center field. The park plays small to begin with and nothing is going to drop a bigger F-You to the haters than Nolan Arenado coming out and jacking an opposite field homer. Sure, Nolan isn’t much of a cold weather guy and it’ll be mid 40’s however he’ll get his first AB as a Cardinal with men on base and that’s danger for Castillo. The Reds seem completely lost with what their identity is and with lots of injuries already piling up I can see things going very south for a team missed their chance a year ago. Pick on Cincy early this season before everyone realizes they’re not the same dominant staff.
LA DODGERS
Pollock – Seager
Dodgers early in the season and against soft tossing righties. Well, Marquez isn’t exactly a soft tosser and he does do decent at keeping the ball down. But one thing being overlooked for the ‘Fade the Dodgers’ crowd is that Marquez in his first start won’t go deep and we’ll get a very mediocre bullpen. If Pollock gets 3+ AB he will do damage.
Favorite game stack
Rays vs Marlins
The Rays and Marlins will meet up and this was the first game I circled when I saw the Opening Day schedule — I kid you not. Great conditions given that it’s in the dome and Tyler Glasnow coming out just serving up some home run shots as he’s not quite hitting his mark here early in the year. Look for Anderson, Marte and Cooper to provide some pop against Glasnow and on the other side the Rays certainly should be able to get to Alcantar.
CATCHER
Catchers rarely do well the first two weeks of a season.
- Jorge Alfaro
- Yadier Molina
- Elias Diaz
FIRST BASE
Might be the worst this position is all season long.
- Trey Mancini – So glad he is back and he gets to beat up on Boston again, even though he’s the only person in this game I like.
- Travis Shaw
- Paul Goldschmidt
SECOND BASE
- Tommy Edman
- Mike Moustakas
- Brandon Lowe
THIRD BASE
- Nolan Arenado
- Brian Anderson
- Manny Machado
SHORTSTOP
- Paul DeJong
- Fernando Tatis Jr
- Corey Seager
OUTFIELD – Mt Rushmore
- Austin Meadows
- Wil Myers
- Sir Thomas Pham
- Mookie Betts
OUTFIELD – Tier 2
- Whit Merrifield … Congrats to everyone who took Whit Merrifield in the survivor pool of “Who is Renner gonna recommend today”. Not sure how you are going to make it the rest of the season now that you burned this easy one but there ya go. Seriously though, Whit will drive a lead off double and score.
- Starling Marte
- Christian Yelich – Everyone has forgotten the former MVP exists and I can smell a hot start from him.
OUTFIELD – Value
- Jesse Winker
- Bryan Reynolds … The Pirates are winning today! Every time the Pirates win this year everyone who considered the idea of stacking them receives the right to have a celebratory beverage for managing to not stack them even though you knew they would win! So dont stack them and enjoy the beer on Friday!
- Corey Dickerson
- Kyle Isbel … Royals prospect who gets debut with Mondesi injury. There’s a ton of cheap value on this slate overall.
Meet the new Chairman … Same as the old Chairman
- Nolan Arenado – 3B – Cardinals – Chairman of the Dongers Club
- Paul DeJong – SS – Cardinals
- Christian Yelich – OF – Brewers
- Garrett Hampson – 2B – Rockies
- Jesse Winker – OF – Reds
- Corey Dickerson – OF – Marlins
- Travis Shaw – 1B – Brewers
- Nobody – C
- BONUS ………….Brian Anderson – 3B – Marlins
FAVORITE BETS
- Marlins / Rays OVER 7.5
- Diamondbacks / Padres OVER 8.5
- Cardinals ML
- Pirates ML
- Marlins ML