The Salazar win and the right guys hitting late in Coors made for a decent early slate:










Most of my lineups bombed but the few I circled climbed high enough up the ladder to make a little money despite not having enough Coors shares.

+$375 early.

Uneventful night slate. I took a peek at results around 9 and I had a $25 buyin well ITM with a dud pitcher, Brock Holt and Chris Davis, who both had monster games. 6 west coast players, including a 4 man d-back stack, or about 4 players more than most... didn't cash, lol.





Day 6

Buyins $1813, Payouts $2042, +$229

Season +$3850


Both slates look really juicy on Sat, I plan on hitting it hard, this for starters:

Today was another weather guessing nightmare, all week has been really. It should be an edge, god knows there's been scores of crippled and dead lineups in play, but for now it just makes it all the more frustrating to be spinning my wheels (since opening day at least). Up 13 big ones in the early only today:










+$13


The night slate didn't go as well. I had a lot of SD stacks (like everyone else) just not the right combos to go with them. I had ton of exposure to the Hou lineup, including Rasmus, and Rasmus/Kemp combos, even some Rasmus/Kemp/Jay OF's:



That was good for a whooping $11 profit. I also had a lot of that Goldschmidt zero, along with Correa and Cruz.


my night:





Day 7

Buyins $1820, Payouts $1285, -$535

Season +$3315



Back on that horse tomorrow. Sun is usually a lower volume day for me what with all the guessing about who's playing at 4pm. I do really like the slate otherwise though, would be high volume if it started on a Tue at 7pm instead of a Sun @1.

Keep it up!! Love this thread.

More of the same today. King Felix dealing and a late inning 3 run bomb from Matt Carpenter saved me from what would have been a damn near -100% day. I missed on pretty much everything else so I'll gladly take my lumps and move on. As 1PM lock approached I was pretty happy with what I had come up with so I strongly considered adding $500 or so in volume, glad I didn't.




Day 8

Buyins $730, Payout $445, -$285

Season +$3030


I like both slates tomorrow and there's only a couple minor weather concerns for the first time this season so I might get after it a bit.

Apparently I'm up for the day after 3 hours of sleep, so I thought I'd post a little about my ever changing process.


The biggest hurdle to overcome when trying to build multiple MLB DFS teams several hours in advance is that managers don't post the official lineups until around 2-5 hours before first pitch (usually closer to 2 hours for day games, that's why I really hate Sun MLB DFS, or any day slate really). Most of the regulars and esp stars play most of the time, but sometimes they're a little banged up and we don't know about it, or they just need a breather. For example Det got rained out last night and is facing a lefty today. No one is hurting afaik, the season just started so we're not exactly in the dog days where guys need a blow from time to time. Point being this is a pretty easy lineup to anticipate, none of the starting 8 should have any reason not to be in there today:



But still, you'd be surprised. If this were July after a long road trip in hot weather the skipper might think any one of these guys could use 2 days off in a row, or anything really.


Then you have lineups that are more in flux, and players with much less defined roles than 1-8 in Det. So like if Hazelbaker is at all for real STL has 4 guys for 3 spots, and he's hit well enough the first week to be considered for real, at least for now. Grichuk's been the odd man out after a couple bad games (lol meaningless sample, terrible mngr) but he's got too much raw power to sit everyday. It's really impossible to know who sits. Even if Grichuk is 80-90+% to sit that's enough to cause problems when making lineups this far out.


Side note about this STL example, Holliday can also play first allowing all 4 of these guys to play. OTOH both 1stbasemen are lefty hitters and there's an R on the bump so that seems unlikely, also, Moss can play the OF so really 2 of these OF's could end up on the pine to get the extra lefty in. Pretty convoluted for DFS guesscasting and real baseball, really all 4 of these OF's should be playing everyday (until Hazelbaker falls off) and against an R both Adams and Moss as well, so 6 guys for 4 spots today. I need to pick my spots when selecting players/team stacks this far in advance, and obv STL is not a spot as of now.


What I have been having success with is selecting players in more stable roles or at least more obvious situations. Today I'm going to push it and start making lineups now. I'll avoid the most obvious Det and Bos stacks before lineups come out because they're the earliest games and they'll post first. Instead I'll try to build around 100 teams based on my next stacks. Not a lot of options out there but I don't hate Min:



or even the lowly Phillies:



Phi opens up a lot of cap space stacking 1-4, 2-5, or a ton of cap 1-5 skipping Franco, but that's a whole other topic.


Watch the Min lineup post 10 mins before lock w/o Dozier and Park, EoE, End of Experiment.


If anyone is wondering what the point of this is it's mostly just to get more volume in. also, more time to think/less clicking during crunch time when there's a lot more info available. Like by knocking these lineups out between 730-10am I'll have plenty of time to try to nail that perfect Det/Bos mishmash. If one or more of my early lineup players is sitting (and it's pretty likely) I'll adjust, even if it's 2 or 3 guys it's still quicker than making 100 new lineups from scratch. I don't know if anyone will find this interesting or the least bit helpful but it made me think about things, and that's the main point of this thread.

First instinct for me today when I saw the slate was a MIN stack...I don't play anywhere near your level of volume, but it seems like a viable option today.

Enjoying the thread a ton - good luck!

Yeah, Quintana isn't bad at all, I usually go after weaker pitchers but there weren't many options and the MU looked decent on paper.

Before I get to results (which were terrible, again) I want to touch on my post from earlier. The experiment worked better than expected as I was able to knock out 160 unique lineups before the first official lineup was posted around 10:15. That's usually when I'd start building, so instead of trying to do 150+ in less than 3 hours I already had 160 done and took my time getting to 250. Now every single player that I had used, from the 3 lineups I posted and otherwise actually played, that wont always be the case. I'd say rarely the case. But still, I feel I'm really on to something now. Tonight was more of the same. Even though it seemed like several lineups were coming out later than expected I was easily able to build 250 teams with plenty of time left at the buzzer. If anyone was wondering Matheny went with all 4 STL OF's leaving 2 lefty first basemen on the bench vs. a righty, nuts. Like I said, 6 guys for 4 spots. I'm sure that situation will work itself out soon enough.



Whoa, that Cruz HR just moved me from down $500 to up $2700, lemme see...



Just a matter of how much this Tropeano win is gonna cost me now.. Hopefully not much

...........too be continued.........

So I'm going to continue with this while I sweat out the 9th in both west coast games.

So anyways if you've read the boxscores today you know my Min and Phi stacks were trash, and they were. I had more exposure to Det and Bos lineups as well, along with quite a bit of STL. Not the right combos anywhere though, and a lot of just plain ugly scores with lineups full of dead weight.







-$275


Ouch, I guess Tropeano was more popular than I thought:





Ended up being the same ****ty night I thought i was having all along, lol. That's why I don't usually follow the in game ups and downs.


Day 9

Buyins $1874, Patouts $1266, -$608

Season +$2422


Skipping the little 2 game day slate tomorrow, grinding hard at 7.

Posey not being in the lineup tonight presented a bit of a challenge for my prebuild strategy. It took me about 20 minutes to edit him out. In most cases I'd just bite the bullet and switch out to a less than perfect play via global swap to save time, but Posey @Coors was $1500 more than the next catcher so I made the changes 1 by 1. Still worked out pretty well though as all the early lineups built allowed me to take the time to do the edits in the first place.


I feel pretty good about tonight. These lineups, and the 100 or so I built just like them are my favorites of the season.






Go Hou!

Another ugly night. Everything seems magnified this early in the season so it's very frustrating. Then again I'm still up due to a nice opening day and one bad week is nothing. My lawnmower remains in the atmosphere, for now.
















Day 10

Buyins $1205, Payout $630, -$575

Season +$1847


I'm not interested in Wed's day slate, so back at it at 7pm.

Another frustrating night. The first box score I looked at was by far my most important player tonight, Carrasco, he does this;





and I still manage this:





I had a lot of Eickhoff too, who was even better (though surprisingly very highly owned with so many good, affordable pitchers going tonight.).


I faded Story for Correa, including in my many Col stacks, and that was it. I like what I was going for but in retrospect I probably could have used him 5 times and Correa 45 instead of 0/50. That would have still been a fade and I probably win at least a few hundred tonight instead of losing again.



Day 11

Buyins $1382, Payout $932, -$450

Season +$1397


I'm playing both slates tomorrow (1pm early only and main 7pm). The early only should be real interesting as it could lock before Coors lineups come out, and Stras may or may not attempt to pitch with the flu, lol.

I don't know anything about baseball, and to be honest very little about US fantasy sports, but I'm loving this thread and definitely subbed!

Cool, I'm glad you find it interesting. I'm sure a lot of people have popped in here and wondered what the hell is going on


Another shabby day in the books. After looking at early only box's I would have sworn I was up, maybe a lot, butnahh:




I used a lot of pitchers, my highest owned dominated:



My second highest owned pitcher crushed him, with the kind of gem you need to take down GPP's (w/o 10 homers at least):



Unfortunately my 3rd or 4th most used pitcher was like 35 mother ****ing % owned (meaning my 15% share of him was more like a -20% share) and he had what could end up being the game of the year, almost for sure point per $:




Tonight was ho hum, went back to the costly Hou well yet again thinking they might be able to get at Ian God Damn Kennedy, nope. They're killing me!






Day 12

Buyins $1140, Payout $383, -$757

Season +$640



I'm getting after it tomorrow:





I'm sure it looks a lot like chasing but that's not it at all. I've been playing under my roll waiting for games to get bigger and they finally have, at least for 1 night. On that note it looks like I'll be adding Draft Kings back to the mix. I had hoped to just stick to Fanduel but the $5 and $25 have been smaller than I had thought, esp the $5. I'll give it another week or so to see if they adjust (selling everything out early, like always).

Joined the forum after lurking this thread and taking in notes lol. Real cool forum and im thankful for the advice bro, im here to learn as much as possible. More into basketball but I've been dying to learn MLB.

@drumgangdotcom on twitter. Produced some music for some cool people

Solid but disappointing night. After checking box's I knew I had a couple live stacks for a change (Bal 5-8 hitters 5 HR's, Mets 3-6 4 HR's), along with lots of random homers and all the best pitching. I also knew it would be a high scoring night overall so not sure what to expect.

Here's my best crack at a big score, missed it by that much..



At any rate it feels good to be back in the black. I was actually a little nervous tonight, early season jitters or something.






Day 13

Buyins $3112, Payout $3835, +$723

Season +$1363


Another split slate tomorrow. I'll be playing both but I'm ready for all these day slates to die down a bit. Sun and 1 or 2 other day slates is fine, 5 a week is wearing me out. At least the weather looks perfect.

Another gross day. When the pitchers you roll with get pounded, and the 2 or 3 most popular guys you don't use beat them handily you expect these kinds of results. That's not really what's happening here so I can't explain it, other than GPP's can be fickle.

Day Slate:










Night time hot garbage:





Day 14

Buyins $1429, Payout $521, -$908

Season +$455


4pm Sun slate looks unplayable, so I'll be done at 1pm. After that it's zero beer thirty and some fishing down at the pond. 80 and sunny, bam!

Another small loser in the books. Take away opening day and it's been a miserable start to the season, but these things happen. More important than short term results I'm very happy with improvements to my process and I feel I'm playing well. The variance in GPP's sucks until the few times it doesn't, maybe 5-10 big days over the course of the season. I just hope to break even the other 170 days.




Day 15

Buyins $615, Payout $349, -$266

Season +$189 lol


No day slates Mon-Wed so I get to sleep in, get some work done outside, and focus on the main slates.

Interesting night. I had planned not to follow goings on tonight and instead chill out and watch some stuff backing up on the DVR. Curiosity got the best of me around 10 and I checked box scores. I used all Fernandez (70%) and Thor (30%) and they had both twirled gems, check. Hitting? Sucks again, not check. Took a quick peek at results, down about 60% as per usual, vomit. Tried to go back to my night but I'm finally starting to tilt a bit, felt a headache coming on so I just went to bed. Woke up at 2:30 and went right for the late game box score and then results. Surprisingly ARI @SF was still going, 7-7 heading into the top of the 11th. I had some action in this game but not enough to sway things much unless Peralta, who I used a lot had a monster game. Good game, not close to monster. Check results:



Whoa, I guess the Lamb/Castillo homers did help some. Hold 1 time!!!!

butnah, not quite:



The Segura single, RBI, run moved me from sole possession of first to a 4 way tie:




Still, I'm not complaining. I went from going to bed pissed off that I had lost again to my best night in 2 weeks.



Day 16

Buyins $862, Payout $2467, +$1605

Season +$1794 Really thought I was going neg tonight, here's to not flirting with it again.

I touched on targeting bad and/or fatigued bullpens in the pre-season. I can't sleep so I'm going to delve a little deeper here with a real example that hits all the markers.

Up until a couple days ago I haven't thought about BP's for a few reasons:

It's so early in the season that fatigue isn't much of an issue yet and the injuries haven't started to pile up.

The biggest thing I focused on in the preseason was scheduling, there's a lot of quirks. Every team plays 162 games in 181 days from April 4th to Oct 2nd, some have 5 days off in April, some 2. Some teams have 6 days off May-June, some 3. Long story short what I'm looking for is long stretches w/o a day off, or better yet long stretch w/o a day off, day off, another long stretch. There aren't many of these in April, the real grind of the season starts in May for most teams.


So like I said I wasn't paying much attention, until this box score jumped out at me Sat night:



Rough game for both pens, esp Ari as the starter only recorded 5 outs. Not good in a 14 inning game, lots of innings and pitches. Also, I highlighted De La Rosa as he's a starter, so they ran out of relievers, lol.


So next I check upcoming schedules, SD had the 18th off and I believe next Mon as well, so mostly a non-factor there. They didn't get taxed as badly as Ari anyway. Ari schedule, bingo! They play April 12-May 18 with 1 day off (May 2) 36 games in 37 days. You don't really want to start that off with 12 innings and 188 pitches from your bull pen.





They started April 12-15 just fine 9.2 innings, then the Sat massacre above, Sun was chill 2.1 innings, 2 from a guy (Marshall) that didn't pitch Sat, so I'm guessing they made a roster move to bring up a fresh arm. At this point they're worth keeping an eye on, but pretty refreshed after everyone gets a day off. Then tonight happened:




Another 6.2 innings and 118 pitches, brutal on the heels of Sat's fiasco, esp considering they don't have a day off until May 2 (that they get to spend flying across the country to Miami) and then 16 more games w/o a day off.


This is a bad bull pen to begin with as well. Fangraphs had them ranked 24th/30 by projected WAR in the pre-season. So they're on fumes, play 29 games in the next 30 days, and they aren't very good to begin with.



Why does it matter?

1- A fatigued pitcher is more prone to wildness and serving up fat pitches.

2- When a reliever is unavailable (like Hudson, and maybe Wagner/Delgado should be tonight) a lesser reliever is used in his spot

3- When it gets to the point of being forced to make roster moves you're generally calling up weaker pitchers.

4- When the situation gets as bad as it is for Ari a starter could not only be asked to go that extra inning, but be asked to take one for the team. If Ray starts off the game tonight by giving up 2 rocket singles, a walk, and then a 500 foot grand slam you wont see any stirring in the pen.

5- Better yet a weak mop up man is often asked to take one for the team and they just let him get killed out there.





Hopefully someone finds that useful, or at least worth reading. I think I can maybe sleep now, so there's that. Final note- I'll be following this Ari situation closely over the next few days. They really need their starters to go deep in these 3 games @SF before heading home. I'll probably be targeting Ari a little more than normal at any rate but if they get taxed again in SF I'll be loading up on Pirates this weekend for sure.

Even as a non-baseball fan that was a good read. I never realised how congested the schedule was for the players. Burnout must be sky high for a pitcher surely? I would think the high stress motion of pitching would put a lot of strain on the arm/shoulder/back? Do they compensate by rotating through a number of pitchers or are they expected to be playing day in day out?

Starting pitchers are on a set routine, there's 5 per team so they start every 5th game, about 30-32 starts a year. They're on pitch counts and monitored very well (some would say babied). Relief pitching is a different beast. The manager calls out to the pen for you to get loose, you get loose. if a guy that should be used 10 innings a month is asked to throw 17, he throws 17. And yes, the pitching motion is very unnatural, injuries galore. Relief pitchers and starters

Boring night but I feel like things are getting back to normal as I'm pretty sure the Mets hit more homers than all the players on the 12 teams I stacked combined. Despite that and big shares of Wood/Velasquez/Liriano, who all got bombed, I was able to keep the loss small just based on having about 3X more Strasberg than the field. Looking at box scores I assumed -$1K as that's how nights like this have gone so far this season, so a pleasant surprise.




Day 17

Buyins $1438, Payout $1188, -$250

Season +$1355


I'm not playing the Wed day slate, main only. Looking ahead to Thur there's 2 nice slates but I think ESPN has the rain or thunderstorm icon on every single game, sheesh. I haven't looked at any real forecasts yet but I'll plan on playing both slates unless it looks like a total wash Wed night, if so I'll just take the day off and not worry about it.


Ari pen stuff-

Here's the moves Ari was forced to make even before Mon's game just based on the 1 nightmare game Sat:






Of course this means they had to send 3 big leaguers down to the farm. Pretty standard move actually but not 3 at a time, esp this early in the year. Bradley already got sent back down, and the other 2 have been busy eating innings while the real big leaguers sit and rest at AAA.

Not too bad tonight. I'm sure they would have loved to get 7 out of Ray but he got in a bit of trouble in the 6th and had to throw some high stress pitches.

Literally the day after I posted this, DFS was banned in my state. But assuming the governor signs the bill into law, it should be legal again very shortly.

So I am going to get caught up on the advice in this thread and start DFSing again.

I'm guessing Mississippi based on the timing? Nice to see them and Tenn both pass pro-DFS laws on the same day, assuming the Gov's sign of course.


After checking box scores I thought I had a big night, maybe really big if I had the right combos with 1 of my many Mil stacks:




HA! Worst day of the season.


Day 18

Buyins $1480, Payout $261, -$1219

Season +$146


Tomorrow does look rainy, but not rainy enough for me to skip either slate unfortunately, so I'll be back at it bright and early.


Ari pen got another little break today:




Still worth keeping an eye on.

Used Kershaw in 238 of 238 unique lineups for the early, he cruised. There were 3 other top tier options: One kinda sucked, the other got blown up, the other got blown up worse. and I'm only able to manage this:




+$123 Frustrating. Had I gone something like 40% Kershaw, 30% Max, 20% Cueto, 10% Price, which would gave been totally reasonable, I'd have had another -70% session.


Solid night tonight besides one problem, not one Cub. They did this:



Including a no hitter from Arrieta.


I haven't looked at results or even % owned at all so no idea how I did. Waiting for this last game that's in the bottom of the 9th. Lets just say I'm guessing Not good:



Seems about right.


Day 19

Buyins $1419, Payout $854, -$565

Season -$419


The Ari pen situation could have really blown up today as Miller was only able to record 6 outs this time, but Wagner, who was called up Mon and had already eaten several innings this week really saved them. For that I'm guessing he gets sent back down tomorrow.





Big night tomorrow with some bigger guarantees