Hey all, @Choppodong here and the easiest way to get this out to you guys was via article rather than slack notes. But, we had a hell of a good gpp last night with all the big guns turning out. I hope you had the chance to play, and I hope you had fun no matter how poorly your lineup performed. (I finished in 145th of 150 with a huge score of 57 on Fanduel. So, most of you opened a can of whoopass on me.)
Quick news note – I am not doing Shark Autopsy articles. I am doing this one to show what I noticed in our SWAG GPP. Stay tuned to our content pages as math whiz, Burns, takes the Autopsy concept and runs with it in the near future. Also, stay tuned as new coach/contributor, JaguarLou, starts dissecting GPP slates for you and teaches you how to weave in and out of the crowds, take stands, and win more of them.
Plenty of our other coaches are jamming out quality content write now, many in a unique fashion as we strive to get away from the repetitive “player picks” articles you find everywhere in the industry. We also plan to lock much more of our material up for our valued VIPs. Understand, we have the best contributors, most accessible coaches, and state of the art tools for you to use. We have tutorials on almost everything and slack channels for you to ask questions in as they arise. We are not a community without our membership, and we are always listening to your feedback and evolving to bring you exactly what you want.
Congrats to @arky the Sharky!
First, we are going to look at the winner, @arky. You know him, you love him, he kicked your ass and didn’t even stay up to watch. Wow…..that’s arrogance for you. I mean I’m a douche, but wow.
That said, it’s awesome to win the grand prize amongst our guys, and it’s better when Geek tosses some swag on the pile. Wear the shirt and hat with pride, my man. You earned it. But. how?……….
You hear our coaches, and me specifically, tell you that MLB requires stacking. I will sing loud and proud that in a highly correlated sport, you need to double dip those points when you can. However, you also hear me tell you that in smaller contests (ours was essentially a 150man league) that you can get away with safer, cash builds that don’t stack much….if at all. @arky proves that is true.
@arky only 2-stacked twice. Everything else was a one-off (or stand alone) player. While those one-offs need to be gems (like min-priced Gorkys Hernandez going for 20+, or Whit Merrifield swiping 3 bags last night for 36 points, or the PapaSlam from the Choo Choo train for 41 points), you can afford to spread out some IF you really nut the solo plays like @arky did here. That’s rare. But, so is winning a larger league/gpp without stacking.
I think we overblow the stacking vs non-stacking, cash vs gpp, chalk vs low ownership concepts as we teach people to play MLB and DFS in general. That doesn’t downplay the concepts. It simply, hopefully, makes you realize that these concepts might provide an edge to you, but they are not infallible. The winning lineup is unique and captures the best players under the salary cap for the day. Period………..end of story. @arky shows us that very well. TIP 1- STACKING ISNT ALWAYS NECESSARY.
What a Joker..
Next up, @jokerwins picked up a Benjamin for his troubles and rolled nearly all the way to the top with a traditional 4-3-1 stack using rather chalky plays. So, to go back to the chalk vs low owned debate……….it’s also a little overblown in these smaller contests. You don’t need to take the risk you think you do in gpps under 2000 people. You can win with chalk. You just have to be unique about it…..and @jokerwins was.
At 30%, deGrom was one of, if not THE, chalkiest pitchers in our contest…….and likely the slate. Upside, safety, matchup, deGrom had all of that and his fastball working for him last night. Personally, I try to tell our VIPs all the time to avoid getting cute with pitching. Take what you know will lock up the points and differentiate with your bats. Subpar pitching often leads to subpar lineups (as you will see below with my own stellar performance).
CWS and TEX were both in highly stackable spots last night because the pitchers they faced were rated very low on our Research Station’s DFSA Grades (I’m linking you to the tutorial if you haven’t seen it yet…….it’s must watch). While around 15% ownership isn’t exactly chalky, it’s also not exactly low-owned, either…..a clear sign, with the pitcher, that @jokerwins was NOT concerned with finding the low-owned gem. He simply kept it simple, stacked for correlated points, went with what he knew was likely to succeed………..and damned near kicked all our asses with it. Well, he did kick all but one of ours. Tip 2- DONT OVERTHINK OWNERSHIP IN SMALLER GPPS.
Can I Get a whOT whOT?!
In 3rd place, we have @ototi21 with a fine lineup, too. Stacked again, just with different teams. We laughed yesterday when a strategy of using Mookie Betts as a one-off and stacking other teams was mentioned. I loved the “4-3 Mookie” term was sort of coined. This one is close, so I’ll call it the Mookie33 being he used 3 Blue Jays, 3 Rangers (key stack of the night, with Choo) and Mookie as a one-off with Schoop as another one-off.
I must say you guys are collectively building VERY sound lineups for MLB. Please don’t beat yourselves up when they falter. I’ll show mine at the end and where my head was going. Shit happens. And, it can happen many, many nights in a row…….or over a long stretch. TIP 3- DONT BEAT YOURSELF UP. ITS BASEBALL AND ITS VOLATILE.
Staff Falters in Front of VIPs
So, I went looking for at least a little “staff pride” and couldn’t really find it. @UW81 should be “buenosaurus” and took 4th down, but the rest of us missed the cash completely. What a showing! But, like I said in Tip 3, baseball is volatile. If we ran this contest 10 more times, the staff would show better. Not because we are baseball geniuses (you guys are pretty good too, after all), but because these outcomes would shift around again and again and again all with different results.
The above lineup is Geek’s. Now, I’ll let him off the hook a bit because he admittedly doesn’t play MLB and doesn’t even particularly like the sport. He didn’t stack, and it looks like a lineup the Domination Station would spit out by default (outside of taking Ivan Nova as it’s lead pitcher in the “optimal lineup.”). Why is that important?
Domination Station when run alone, should be giving you lineups like this. It should be leaning away from stacking some, spreading out around the league, and cherry-picking the best value from the best matchups. That is how you win cash, and that is what the default DS lineups are built to do for you. Look at his floor! 135 is going to do well most nights. It got him top half here with no issues. However, if you want to use DS for GPPs, you need to stack some, tweak the projections, use the like/love/adore features and get DS pulling different combos of names to the top. Again, the RS and DS tutorials are linked in this article for you to watch and infuse into your process. TIP 4- DEFAULT DOMINATION STATION LINEUPS LEAN TOWARDS CASH. TWEAK THEM FOR YOUR GPPS.
Where Some Others Finished…
DFSUpNorth – 68th………….and he’s a golf guy.
Burns – 75th…………………….and he has forgotten more about math than my family combined will ever know.
Al Walsh – 95th………………..way to rep the Top100 and keep it proud, my man.
Fighton – 97th………………….a sports betting guru (by the way, check out the #sports-book channel to learn our nation’s new legalized pasttime…..well, besides getting high on the Devil’s Lettuce.)
CeeGee – 98th………………….stellar stacks bro.
Boomersdaddy – 99th………..come out from behind DS once in awhile, you’re getting rusty.
Ram8727 -100th……………….i see where the glut of staff fell. Way to rep ourselves with pride.
*I may be missing a few, but don’t know all their Fanduel names.
And, Then There Was Me…….
Yes, a whopping 57 points. What a showing for the ChalkEater. But, I want to show you in relation to Tip 3 and Tip 4 just where this was going. The logic was sound; it just didn’t pan out. (Of course the logic was sound. Do you think I’d openly call myself a dumbass?)
The Yankees had the highest implied total on the slate. I knew with you guys all looking at deGroms and Mortons and no super cheap pitching on the slate that you guys wouldn’t be able to afford ALL the big Yanks. Even if you could, you’d likely be heading to some BOS or other teams with pricey players. I did feel that the Yankees would be more popular in their spot, but knew if my priority was stacking all 3 right out of the gate, I’d have a unique lineup. Even if someone else stacked all three, it wouldn’t be many of us and I’d get around that with my other bats.
I chose OAK next because they have been scoring runs all season, Lowrie has been as consistent as they come, Olson was in a smash spot, and Joyce has been hot and cheap. I also saw some coaches talking people off OAK as the day wore on and just chuckled knowing their ownership was likely dropping. (Turns out the coaches might have been right on that one….lol. So, TIP 5- LISTEN TO YOUR COACHES!!)
Anyway, this really forced my hand with pitching. I usually start with pitching, but knew I couldn’t get the top matchups and needed to take a risk. While I preach not to get cute with pitching, I knew Pomeranz was a bit risky. However, I wrote him up in Chin Music as an “ok” play with the -150 from Vegas, a decent KScore, and attacking Baltimore, who has been strikeout prone on the year. Meh…I took a shot. I needed about 25 from him and that Yankees stack to go off and I’m right there. Sure, it looks bad in 146th place. But, it’s honestly not that far from contending.
Once again, it’s easy to beat ourselves up over these things and think we suck. We don’t. And, in fact, we often aren’t very far off being really good. Most of you are in that boat and don’t even see it. I’m here to remind you that baseball is a volatile game, you are closer than you think, your coaches have bad nights, too, and it’s more fun talking and teaching this community than you all know. So, TIP 6- THANK YOU FOR LETTING US BE YOUR COACHES AND THANK YOU FOR LEARNING AND GROWING AS A COMMUNITY. YOU GUYS MAKE WHAT WE DO VERY REWARDING AND THAT’S ALL BECAUSE OF YOU.
Let’s do this again sometime. I’ll get my people in touch with your people soon.
– Chop