Bet you are pretty happy with the Velasquez pick

I mean, he's given up three hits, so could have been better.

Apparently I'm a savant today. **awaits cold, harsh reality tomorrow**

Velásquez was on fiyahhhhhhhhhhhhhh today.

I have 88.8 points in my two cash games between him + Garcia for StL. Unreal.

He was extremely impressive...that deal they made to get him from HOU seems to be good to be true so far.

I think I got 87pts on FD from him.

Can't comment on actual lineup because I don't play anymore and don't know DK salaries but as far as some of your other comments:

1. BvP - The biggest debate in MLB DFS. I think it's stupid to use in 99% of cases, but that's just me. Any sample size that is "large enough" (which is none) has probably occurred over a decade, such that many of the ABs are irrelevant because the players have changed substantially.

2. Recent form - Also dangerous because swongs happen. But it also kinda depends on what you're looking at. If you see a mediocre pitcher who has thrown 2 straight shutouts do you just throw him in? How are you actually evaluating pitchers? Hitters?

3. "Too risky" - Nothing is too risky for a GPP

The bolded is the most important part of MLB DFS. There are a lot of terrible players out there who will auto-roster any scrub hitter who happened to run into a HR two games in a row because "he's hot" and his salary is low.

Can you shed some insight on evaluation process then, prip?

I'm not just blindly clicking, but I am putting stock in BvP and maybe not digging as deep as I possibly could.

It's a case by case thing, but I guess with hitters I'm mostly looking at some non-weighted combination of spring and early season results and tempering them with velocity and luck data. With pitchers, I'm mostly focused on K%/BB% as a barometer for whether results are legit and then looking for value based on that. oversimplifying Velasquez as an extreme example, he scored 9 Ks in 6 IP in his first start after a 24/20 ratio in spring. That apparent sustainability seemed undervalued, especialy against a weaker offense like San Diego's. I can't say I'm getting too much more complex than that right now.

I know there are a lot of pros specializing in GPP and multi-entry is a part of that, but does this mean the generally correct strategy is to enter a huge number of stacks and hope for one team to put 16 on the board?

Obviously happy for any tactical thoughts. Anything to help the learning curve. TIA

Sure. I think the best way is probably through example, so let's look at a player. Throw out a batter you rostered today and some brief reasoning for rostering them. Preferably not a known stud.

Stacking is pretty much the default GPP strategy and it is probably your best bet if you're trying to take down life-changing money. That being said, if you're looking to build a bankroll, I'm not convinced it's the best. Now, some people will argue with me here and ask why you're even playing GPPs if you aren't going for 1st place. Why not just play cash games if you wanna build a bankroll? GPPs are so top heavy with payouts that it doesn't make sense.

Well, a by-product of the stacking phenomenon is a lot of dead lineups. When you stack you're usually making several "bad" plays with the hope that those people get in on the action and correlative scoring and yada yada. But more often than not, that doesn't happen. Bad hitters don't score well and most teams don't put up double digit runs. So while a stack is likely to take down a tournament because ateam went off, there are going to be a lot of bad lineups because most teams didn't.

So how do you take advantage of that? Enter generally solid lineups that utilize the best plays of the night and don't worry about stacking. Throw together a few combinations, take some chances on some fringe pitchers, whatever. But if your lineup is solid up and down you're in a good spot to take advantage of all of the dead money in GPPs. Will you take it down? probably not. Will your core group of guys occasionally all go off and net you a couple solid scores? Yup. Now that doesn't mean that you should purposefully avoid stacking. If Kyle Kendrick is on the mound by all means stack against him. I'm just saying that there is more than one way to think about GPPs.

I'll caveat that by saying that when I played it was on a smaller site, FantasyFeud, because the big guys all banned WA state. GPPs were much smaller there than they are on DK and FD. So maybe there are so many people stacking on DK/FD that every paid spot in a GPP will be a stack of the one or two teams that went off. Just consider alternatives if you don't seem to be having any success. There is a lot of common thought in the DFS world that people blindly follow and that's not how you become a profitable player.

lol tough to explain today as here was my cash game roster on Yahoo. Goal was to roster the big bats for Colorado. Arguably should have targeted Giants as well.

SP - Velasquez ($39)
SP - Garcia ($42)

-- Strat here was to roster two value pitchers that could possibly get through some innings and have a good chance to win (Yahoo = 8pts for a win). Good moneylines on both and PHI was playing SD, which is a putrid offense thus far outside of their series at Coors.

C - Maldonado ($7) (punt to allow me to stack Coors game)
1B - Paulsen
2B - Owings (since pivoted to Hernandez for LAD after he was scratched)
3B - Carpenter (seemed very high floor today vs. a pitcher that was regarded as the worst of the day)
SS - Story (Coors stack)
OF - Moss (maybe not a good value play here, but he had decent matchup vs. RHP)
OF - Gonzalez (Coors stack)
OF - Parra (Coors stack)

**** BvP!

All the random BS bvp hit, the rotowire generator spit out a better lineup than I made.

Had a chance for some big loot on Wednesday and Thursday but came up just short.

Moved some of my roll over to FD for access to the RotoGrinders suite ($300 for free) and their sign-up bonus.

Have been digging some of the overlay on the early slates at FD this week, plus excited they are making changes to the scoring finally.

Felix scratched, fyi. Iwakuma is pitching in his place.

It's pretty amazing that FD managed to break the GOAT dfs game twice in the same season.

Harper, Miggy and Upton are sitting.

I'm new to FD. Scoring was a lot better in 2015?

It wasn't broken. A fundamental tenet of game design is if the game isn't broken, you need a really good reason to fix it because of unintended, game-breaking consequences. So they "fixed" it by multiplying everything by 3x and removing negative fractional outs for batters, the latter leading to a very substantial increase in ties. That seemed to anger the players, so now they are increasing the scoring for runs and RBIs. One effect this should have is that stacking variance will be higher, which makes it even better for tournaments (it was already good).

Going with Salazar against the Twins today.

Salazar is solid, but I'm also thinking Stroman as well.

im stacking bumgarner and syndergaard and pluggging in the best value for the hitting postions. Is that a good strategy?

I'm in a 500-person double up (DK) where 88.9% of teams have Thor on them. How often does that happen?

I don't play much on DK but with 2 pitchers and Thor being so consistent I would imagine it will happen quite a bit in cash

so around this date last mlb season, the dfs mlb thread had 1,000 posts. this is post #149. what happened? are people banned? burnt out on dfs? posting elsewhere? or just sick of talking about it?

nedward