One final tune up post before the MLB season gets underway on Sun. Once the season starts I plan on updating results (good and bad) and sharing my thoughts and experiences about the daily grind as much as possible, however I will be extremely busy so no promises. I'll do my best though and I'll stick with it as long as it doesn't prove to be a major distraction, and I don't think it will be. If anything I think this will probably help me stay focused.

So I had planned to share some of my bullpen research among other things in this post but Fangraphs posted a couple good articles this week with an in-depth write up for each team's pen and a handy chart:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2016-...pitchers-1-15/

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2016-...itchers-16-30/




I recommend reading the articles for DFS, full season, or even just to learn more about the league, if you're interested in that. As for the chart: Projected WAR alone isn't the ideal way to measure a bull pen, but it's close enough so long as you understand other factors that could cause a better, higher WAR pen to give up more runs than a lesser, lower WAR pen. Namely park factors.


Team Defense I'm sure there's a lot of sharps out there who don't even consider team D. At some point you're wandering out past the weeds and into meaningless noise, well I don't think Defense is that at all. I read an article a few months back about the best D (KC) saving 99 runs compared to the worst D (I think Cle or ChW). Extreme example but goes to show how important of a factor it can be. KC projects to be by far the best D again this season. Not a lot of sexy SP options in KC, maybe Ventura, so it's not really actionable from that angle. But between this D, a solid pen, and a park that suppresses HR's in a big way you've got to give any hitter heading there a pretty big downgrade from the standard projection.


Here's all 30 teams listed from best to worst by FG depth charts:

1 KC 43.3
2 CIN 23.5
3 TOR 22.5
4 TB 22.4
5 BOS 21.3
6 BAL 20.9
7 CLE 20.7
8 LAA 19.6
9 ARI 18.2
10 SF 16.6
11 NYY 12.9
12 MIA 12
13 LAD 10.3
14 CHC 8.9
15 COL 5.7
16 PIT 5.6
17STL 3.7
18 MIN 3.4
19 HOU 3.3
20 SEA 1.6
21 TEX -2.6
22 WAS -5.5
23 NYM -6.3
24 DET -7.1
25 Mil -10.7
26 ATL -11.5
27 CHW -11.6
28 PHI -11.6
29 OAK -12.4
30 SD -20.6


Opening Day Weather I took a quick look on Wed for the first time and everything looked 100% with the exception of Cle which looked slightly iffy. Well forecasts can and will change from hour to hour (reminding me how dumb it is to be checking this far out) and they've changed a lot from Wed afternoon to Thur night.

I'll be keeping an eye on Cincinnati all weekend as I'll have a lot of Reds exposure:



Pretty ugly looking in Cleveland:



If this NYY forecast looks like this on Sun night I'd just write the game off:




That's it for now, I'll be back Sun when there's some actual baseball (thank god)

and we're off.. I ended up making over 100 lineups for this dumb 3 game slate, mind numbing. But baseball's back and I'm excite so needless to say I'll be playing the 2 game 4pm slate Hopefully they'll post a Sun night/Mon slate as that could be an actual +EV opportunity.

Looking ahead to the real opening day tomorrow weather looks to be an issue, esp NY:

GL on the real opening day tomorrow

Thanks, you 2.

Doubt this holds but it's nice to make a little noise day 1:

cool thread, will defs be following

Granderson 9th inning single knocked me out of a 2 way tie for first:



Day 1 Results

buyins $492, payout $1,159= +$667




I'll try to post this shot every night but I need to catch it between the last game finishing and FD paying out. I don't think there's as simple of a way to show daily results after they pay. Also, it wont always be perfect. Like tomorrow there's a 1pm-10pm slate, a 4pm only slate, and a 7-10pm slate, so the 4 only slate will pay out before the 1pm and 7pm slate are anywhere near being done. I'll do the best I can

Hou@NYY already PPD, wouldn't be surprised if Bal follows suit. Cle and more importantly Cin both look good to go now.

Adding these at 4pm and 7pm to my all day action, and that will probably be it for today.

Interesting first few hours today after lock. Possibly three postponed games, Bumgartner flu etc.

do you focus mainly on GPPs or do you also play cash?

Yeah, gruesome. I'm pretty careful with weather and any little pitching injury concern (like swapping out my Bum shares for Max with the flu news today, and not playing any Harvey last night). I don't think I took a zero all last year. Well, I'm working on 2 cold outs and a food poisoning before most of my players take the field for game 1 this year so maybe 15-20% of my all day teams are dead. No hitters rained out though so it's probably a wash.

Everest- Yeah, GPP only as of now. I knew today would have been a great day to play cash but I decided to just stick with the plan.

Crushed hard at the 4pm only slate, the all day looks to be another matter but lots of baseball left to be played!

Just started getting into DFS in February and looking forward to baseball and figuring out stuff and the challenge since I'm more of an NFL/NBA fan but can't imagine getting through work without DFS at this point.

Great thread man, looking forward to following it

Thanks

"contrarian stack"







Now lets see if they hold.....

They held. Turned out to be a pretty damned good day despite kinda sucking in the all day, where most of my money was invested. Here's the all day slate + the 7pm:




so with that and the 4pm slate I posted earlier:

Day 2

Buyins $1808, Payout $6329, +$4521

Season +$5188


I'm skipping the 1pm tomorrow but going hard at the 7 and 10.

Nice man, really enjoying this thread.

How many line ups do you usually fire per day and how many do you think is optimal?

Congrats on the day yesterday btw

Thanks. I make as many as I can from the time lineups start coming out (around 3pm for the 7pm main slate). At the end of last season by the time I had quit playing cash games I was pumping out 100-150 from 3pm to lock at 7pm. I don't know how many would be optimal but I'd make a lot more if I had the time. Streamlining the process is an ongoing work in progress. I've been trying to guess more (and adjust on the fly) who will be in the lu and where. Also, I'm pretty tired tonight but i'm going to force myself to play around with the early slate salaries so I have a better feel for the action when I roll out of bed.

Tonight between the 7pm and 10pm slates I played 377 contests, bout 300 unique lineups.


I haven't had a chance to dig too deeply into tonight's results but I got hammered pretty badly. Weird because I had good shares of most of the guys that went off. Way too much Wacha though, that didn't help.




Day 3

Buyins $1525, Payout $410, -$1115

Season +$4073


First of many like it this season. I dust myself off and start working on tomorrow, which looks like a potential weather ****show btw.

I would have liked to get more action down for this juicy day slate. The slam ($25 buyin) sold out quicker than I thought.




The weather tonight looks like a real cluster****, should be fun!

Damn dude, props to you. I tried DFS on baseball and sprinkled in some football, got killed in cash 50/50s. Can't even imagine the variance you go through in GPP/tournament play.

It can be frustrating for sure. Like last night I didn't feel really good after looking at box scores, but I didn't think I had anywhere near a -70% type night. Same with the early slate today. I had all the big performers, just not in the right combinations. Here's the early slate that wont grade until this game ends in Cle:



I don't have any players left so this is best case scenario, probably go down a few more $.


For tonight I took a stand on both lineups @Bal, and Wash hitters to a lesser extent. Spread the pitching around a bit but added more and more Strasburg as the weather forecast improved there. A little overweight on Madea and Nicaso as well.

I ended up -$177 on the early slate.

Night slate went better despite me being all over 3 dud stacks. I had a lot more Nicaso/Madea than the pack so that and a ton of Davis/Correa/McCann/Springer bailed me out. Nothing exciting but could have been as bad or worse than last night:





Day 4

Buyins $1518, Payout $1471, $-47

Season +$4026


****ty schedule tomorrow to begin with and of course multiple weather concerns. The 7pm looks unplayable so probably just the 3:30PM slate for me, and I'm planning as if 3 of the 5 games will be rained out. I'm going to try to build 100 lineups with Wood and all CHW/OAK/LAD hitters, and 100 with the peaver and CHW/OAK/SF hitters... Pretty dumb. I would just take the day off but it's too early in the season, and I'll be done at 3:30 anyways.

Stuck to my guns on this despite the weather not looking as bad in NY and DC. I'm running out 200 lineups that look something like these:




Probably should have just taken the day off

Yup. Tried to be sneaky (like I warned about earlier in the thread) and it blew up on the launching pad. I pick my spots though and I'm pretty sure I'd do it again here. I mean 34% of the field took snowed out pitchers in a game that looked to very likely be snowed out. In the end it took a late inning Pence grand slam to save me from a likely goose egg:



Day 5

Buyins $480, Payout $75, -$405

Season +$3621


On to what is going to be a very busy Fri. I'll be playing the early only at 1, and a lot of action at 7 and 9:40. This is what I've got so far:



I'd like to play more at 1 but I don't think the 4pm lineups will be out yet, namely Coors, but I could add more. I'll probably be adding more games at 7 depending on several factors, and then the late slate which isn't posted yet.

Got a little more action down for the early slate:



I had planned on using 100% deGrom, then I saw this when I woke up today:



No thanks! So instead I spread it around a bit, mostly Salazar (with some weather issues) and Zimmermann, with lots of Mets hitters.

Early slate going decently:



Should move up a bit when Salazar gets credited the win, but there's lots of ball to play in Coors still, crazy game.

I'm pretty tired after making around 350 unique lineups today, 100 more to go: