Welcome to the Shark Autopsy Report MLB Edition! Over the course of the remainder of the MLB season this article will deconstruct winning FanDuel lineups of contests where the dark waters of GPP contests are ripe with sharks. Navigating these waters where the sharks smell blood in the water is not easy, but the DFSArmy have you covered, providing you with the essential daily tools to help our VIPs turn into sharks! The article will be released twice weekly, with each day’s article looking at either single entry or multi-entry GPP contests. Each contest requires a different lineup construction.
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Welcome back DFSArmy Grinders, hope you all had a joyful, safe and relaxing Fourth of July. For those that played DFS MLB on Fourth of July, I hope your lineups did you well! Congratulations goes out to DFSArmy member Smartpick52 who took down first place in FanDuel WNBA contest and $500, way to make that money Smartpick52!
FanDuel’s $60K Tuesday MLB Squeeze Contest
FanDuel’s $60K Tuesday MLB Squeeze Contest is a $4 per entry multi entry GPP tournament where 17,857 entrants competed for the chance to win the top prize of $5,000. The winning lineup was that of Petteytheft89, a high and low entry stakes GPP master! In fact if you were to look at the RotoGrinders top overall players in DFS, Petteytheft89 is the 12th ranked player overall and the 4th ranked Tournament Player of the Year player in DFS. Petteytheft89 is consistently a top ranked DFS player in every major DFS sport he plays.
Top 10
Petteytheft89 Winning Lineup
It was the eve of Fourth of July and Fireworks were aplenty, even if Independence Day was still hours away! CWS vs. CIN, these teams found themselves in a battle of hitters might, with the game going into extras and in the top of the 12th fireworks were still on display in this game with Yoan Moncada tripling down the first base side and Yolmer Sanchez following up Moncada with what was a HR at first glimpse that was later ruled in play after review and turned into a triple of his own. But, those were small potatoes compared to the nights that Avisail Garcia and Daniel Palka had, each of them homered twice on the night!
Then in the late night games, the Dodgers kicked off their game with fireworks and continued to blast homers throughout the night with homers from Max Muncy, Chris Taylor, Joc Pederson, Yasmani Grandal and Enrique Hernandez. Muncy, Taylor, Pederson and Grandal’s homers all came off of Ivan Nova. In fact over the last 14 days on the road versus RHBs, Ivan Nova has been a Gas Can!
As indicated in the Season vs. Last 14 Days Differentials, Nova’s stats in all of the pitching categories the Shark Autopsy Report analyzes showcases he’s negatively regressed in every single category but BB/9, BB% and HC%. If you weren’t on the Dodgers hitters on Tuesday night and were wondering why I wasn’t on them prior to lock and what made them a great stack, then you need to look deeper into the statistics of the slate’s pitchers prior to making your lineups to determine which pitchers would be viable options to stack hitters against.
Dissecting Pitching
Petteytheft89’s winning lineup employed Jack Flaherty at pitcher at a 3.6% field ownership. Let’s take a look at what the DFSArmy’s coach ThunderDan (make sure to follow him @ThunderDan on twitter) had to say about Flaherty:
As a member of DFSArmy, you get access to an amazing staff of coaches, and if you read ThunderDan’s Covering ALL Bases article from Tuesday, you would have unveiled that Flaherty was a good play! Let’s take a look at how good Jack Flaherty was heading into the main slate of games:
Flaherty has had great success this season as a rookie, and over the last 14 days on the road from both sides of the plate, hitters can’t figure him out. As you can see in the differential statistics, his platoon stats against LHBs have been stellar! Flaherty has reduced his wOBA by over 225 points, ISO by over 18 points, increased his K/9 and K-Rate by 7.26 points and 28% respectively, reduced his BB/9 and BB-Rate by 1 and 1.8% respectively, even though is GB% decreased and FB% increased. But, LHBs are simply not hitting Flaherty hard over the last 14 days, as evidenced by his 40% reduction in HC%.
More of the same is evidenced for Flaherty against RHBs, but not as grand of a scale as against LHBs, with decreases in wOBA and FB% but his K% increased an astounding 19.23%!
Tip of my cap goes to Petteytheft89 for employing Flaherty at low ownership and accruing those 27 FD PTs, in route to destroying the field by 22.2 FD PTs!
Did you know snake drafts are gaining MLB popularity, too? If you enjoy the drafting process more, give PlayDraft a try and follow UW81’s posts and channel. Those games can be incredibly soft and if you dedicate time to your craft, I might be dissecting your strategies over there soon, too. Join PlayDraft today!
Putting Hitting Under Scrutiny
On Tuesday Night, Petteytheft89 didn’t really need much help from his pitching staff in route to winning the Squeeze contest by more than 22 FD PTs. It was because he got double digit FD points from every one of the hitters he employed in his winning lineup, including Palka and Garcia whom had 2 HRs on the night. The only hitters in his lineup that didn’t homer were Moncada and Davidson who were part of his CWS stack in his 4×4 stack.
CWS was a play that scared off a lot of DFS players. Davidson was owned at 1.7% of the field, Palka at 3.7%, Moncada at 12.3% and Garcia at 9% at 6.7% overall ownership amongst the field, the value returned for this stack was incredible at 12.66X! Where’s there’s fear you must strike, and strike Petteytheft89 did, employing a contrarian stack against a high-owned pitcher that was 18.7% owned amongst the field. Plays like these win GPPs! DeSclafani was high owned because there was a game in Coors on the main slate that was “A can’t miss game” according to many DFS touts. Well they were partially correct, the Rockies lit up the Giants for 8 runs, thank you to homers from Arenado and Blackmon and 7 Rockies triples!
Coming into Tuesday’s main slate, Davidson, Palka, and Garcia were really hitting their strides. On the season versus RHBs, Davidson had been stellar with a 0.488 wOBA, 0.424 ISO, 218.54 WRC+, low K-Rate of 15.8%, high BB-Rate of 10.5%, FB% of 37% and HC% of 63%. Though Davidson didn’t homer in the game on Tuesday, he was primed for one in a great matchup. Moreover, the same can be said for Garcia and Palka who in their own right had amazing season stats on the road versus RHPs! DeScalfani should have been targeted more on Tuesday night, as his reverse splits stats were atrocious over the last 14 days! Over the last 14 days versus RHBs, DeSclafani supported a 0.377 wOBA, 0.299 ISO, abysmal 8.7% K-Rate, load em’ up FB% of 47.4% and HC% of 35%. Tack on the park factor of 8th overall per DFSArmy Research Station and the heat of the night on Tuesday night, no wonder Garcia and Palka destroyed DeSclafani for 3 of their 4 HomeRuns hit on the night!
With the firestorm of the 4-man CWS stack as part of Petteytheft89’s winning lineup, he tacked on an additional 136.4 FD PTs from his Dodgers part of the stack, for a value of 10.57X at 5.5% field ownership!
Over the last 14 days at home versus RHPs, Pederson has seen a jump in his hitting peripheral stats. His wOBA has climbed to 88 points, ISO by 71 points, WRC+ by 58.9 points, K-Rate decreased 0.9%, BB-Rate increased by 7.8%, GB% decreased by 6.7%, FB% and HC% increased by 11.3% and 17% respectively.
Max Muncy has been tearing the cover off of the baseball lately and Tuesday night was no exception. Over the last 14 days at home versus RHP, Muncy’s wOBA has increased 174 points, WRC+ by 115.77, K-Rate decreased by 3.2%, BB-Rate increased by 16.4%, and HC% increased by 34.7%.
MLB can be a very frustrating sport in DFS with the extremes in variance, a hitter might be in a prime spot with amazing platoon splits or reverse splits against a gas can pitcher with woeful platoon or reverse splits and go 0’fer. Even the best in the sport go 0’fer on most nights, it’s the way of the sport. But, you need to be able to determine your process and keep the process consistent daily. When you veer away from that process you tend to produce, over the long haul, inadequate to poor performances and your bankroll is affected in the same token. Just Keep Grinding and working on your process and good things will come!
DFSArmy’s MLB coaches and staff works diligently each day on helping improve their members process, and in the same breathe refining their own processes to each daily slate. The DFS landscape is every changing and being a part of a great DFS community helps you to better manage your DFS game and become a better player!
To put a bow on this for you and conclude this installment of the Shark Autopsy Report, there are so many statistics in MLB that it can be overwhelming as a DFS player. Know that you don’t need every single statistic there is to determine whether or not a player is a good play. Determine which stats within the Research Station provide you with the best information to make optimal decisions, read the DFSArmy coach’s MLB articles (Dong Detector, CeeGee’s Stacks, Chop’s Chin Music, Painting the Black with MDell, Walsh’s Wingmen, ThunderDan’s Dr. StrangeChalk, ThunderDan’s Weekend Covering All The Bases, Jaguar Lou’s GPP Jamboree and the Donut Shop by DFSnDonuts), utilize the DFSArmy’s evolutionary taking the industry by storm Domination Station Optimizer and we will help you become a better DFS Player!