The Dongers Club – Wed, May 8th
Eight game main slates tonight on both sites. The Cubs game got moved up to 7:35 so it should play despite bad weather rolling in tonight. Colorado doesn’t look as optimistic for their game today and is once again an auto-fade for me. WEATHER: Miami at Chicago – Rainy but should play. Winds cross/slightly out to left at 15 mph. Wouldn’t trust the SP’s here much. San Fran at Colorado – Rainy and very cold. IF this game plays then take a shot at a SP game stack on DK. Trust me here. I doubt it plays. A lot of Pitchers on FanDuel are overpriced for what you think ok them. Don’t let that bother you, it’s everyone like that today…. Chris Sale (DK: $10,400) … Much better DK play for roster construction purposes. This is a 7 inning, 9 strikeout 0 ER allowed type game from Sale tonight. One where his price is appropriate on FanDuel for what he will give you but if you can hit on a cheaper option you can get away without having him. Shorter slate so there’s options for hitters to configure with him tonight. That said, I’m gonna try to get him on my main. Kyle Gibson (DK: $7,700) … There’s a few bad offenses tonight that can be picked on with mediocre arms. Such as the Tigers with Skaggs and the Blue Jays with Gibson. I’m leaning Gibson mostly because I have more confidence that he will win vs Toronto than Skaggs will vs the Tigers, but pairing them together on DK in mid range is a viable pivot if you do not have Sale. I would have sale though because I think Gibson and Skaggs end up both in that 15 point range. Michael Foltynewicz (FD: $7,800, DK: $9,000) … This is a spot where Folty is gonna come in around 5% owned after a rough start at home against San Diego last week in a warm day game. The Braves righty is making just his third start of the season and he went 78 and 82 pitches in his first two. These are all historical informational numbers that folks will use to try and justify not using him today, but we are in the business of giving predictive numbers and thus when you read a projection or recommendation that is entirely based upon the past you should caution if they are only looking at short term history or long term history. And with the long term on Folty he’s capable of being stretched out closer to 100 pitches today and my gut says he duels with Kershaw tonight and beats him 3-1. DraftKings SP Combinations Finding two pitchers today on DK that are going to get you the ideal PT/$ and not break the bank is extremely challenging in my mind. There’s a ton of guys who are gonna be used as SP2’s at first glance who in my mind will come in around 13-15 total fantasy points. That list includes Kyle Gibson, Tyler Skaggs, Brad Peacock, Kyle Hendricks…. So rather than just take one of the JAGs I’d prefer to go ahead and pay up for those points. The goal here after all is to find the most points possible and I never ever want to hear the phrase “So I can pay up for bats” ever again. It has become my new “Implied Run Totals”. It’s an idiotic statement. FADE Brett Anderson … Simply put he won’t get the strikeouts you need to win tonight. Do not touch em. MINNESOTA – Kep, Polanco, Rosario Lefties against Trent Thornton and then everyone against the Blue Jays bullpen. The lefties is obviously Kepler, Polanco and Rosario. The Twins remain a great road team because they have guys 7-8-9 who always seem to come through so you would be sharp to make one of them your 4th Twin if you are going that heavy with them. For me, Kepler-Polanco-Rosario is my core. VALUE BOSTON – Nunez, JBJ, Leon I know that JBJ isn’t hitting but the Red Sox 7-8-9 players give you nice value today along with either Devers or Benintendi. SNEAKY OAKLAND – Chapman, Grossman/Davis, Olson Welcome back to Oakland Sonny Gray. Now get your ass kicked. This heavily is dependent upon Khris Davis being back in the lineup today, but I like Chapman, Davis, Olson all to get on Sonny. Not using Sonny back in Oakland vs his former team. Noooo thank ya. FADE Houston and Kansas City … I noted to myself on Monday night that I need to start taking a stand every night on both a Pitcher and a Hitter and say No to them. It helps to narrow the field down and reduce any tinkering. The top two teams in the league in WRC+ from their 1-4 batting order are the Astros and the Royals. But with the roof likely closed here tonight and recency bias looking at two high scoring games this to me is a spot where the game will be back down to earth enough to not have to force it into play today. Bottom line is these guys are extremely expensive as they should be and I’m banking on neither team scoring 7-8 runs with 4 homers or even … 2 grand slams! CATCHERS This is a dumpster fire spot tonight. The Twins have all the catchers we would want to consider today but ideally we take the cheapest punt on the board and move on. Sandy Leon Martin Maldanado Tyler Flowers FIRST BASE As you can see below, this slate really starts to lack in the hitting dept when you rule out Coors and the game in Houston. Miguel Cabrera CJ Cron Kendrys Morales SECOND BASE There’s nothing here. I re-peat. Nothing. Take a chance on someone at this spot if you’d like today. Jonathan Schoop Eduardo Nunez THIRD BASE Holy Rafael Devers. All the Rafael Devers please. Rafael Devers Eugenio Suarez
The Dongers Club – Tue, May 7th
A heads up. This article is being done on Monday night and I will be completely tied up and not able to make any updates on Tuesday. There’s even a good chance I don’t really have a lineup or much at stake tonight. That is not to say that anything written here is free from critique if it does not go well, I am just being transparent if you go looking for me in any contests today. FantasyBum is doing a more detailed article than normal as he is on for Tuesday’s and you of course have The Cycle from Chris Rose. WEATHER Coors Field looks Messy. It’s below 60. It’s a fade spot. Who’s Pitching against those crappy Blue Jays? Jose Berrios … Done and done. Only 10,400 on DK? Not much analysis needed here. Toronto is atrocious right now as we saw they couldnt do crap on Martin Perez and Berrios is a really good pitcher as long as his curve is on. Who’s the decent heavy favorite that folks might get scared off of because of weather and last night? Collin McHugh … McHugh will not make the same mistakes that Cole made last night. Who is nobody gonna trust because he is an underdog? Max Fried … Tough spot on the road for the young lefty but the Dodgers remain a below avg team against lefties. His $8800 price is tough to fit with Berrios, who I love and would anticipate is chalky, but Fried will get run support tonight and can get 6+ strikeouts as well. Honestly I’d lean him more on FD though if you go Berrios as SP1. Who’s a below avg bad SP2 that is facing an equally dangerous and bad chalk SP2 that we can pivot off of? Tyler Mahle … Rob will roll over laughing at me for going here, but he knows I was someone optimistic on Mahle as a young arm. That said, you haven’t really seen me push this kid a ton because he is well, he is horrible against lefties. Oakland has no lefties, so I can take a risk on Mahle here who gets more strikeouts than Mike Fiers on the other side. Early glance here tells me Fiers will be a somewhat chalky SP2 option at $6800. Flip to Mahle for leverage off Fiers if that’s how your construction outlines. Houston and Boston are the top 2 teams today in terms of Top & Bottom of lineup production to put up big numbers. I like some mid range sneaky teams as well and you’ll have a hard time going 3 Sox + 3 Stros today, so pick the one offs and work out from there. I have Houston ahead of Boston. MINNESOTA TWINS … No… I’m not copy and pasting from last night. But we saw them explode on Toronto as I expected and would go back to that same well here tonight. Eddie Rosario is showing some signs of breaking out of a bad slump. Jonathan Schoop knows Sanchez and Toronto and is a must in a Twins stack today. CJ Cron was a major let down last night but I’d trust him again and Jorge Polanco remains the glue here. BOSTON RED SOX … Don’t be that guy (or girl). Don’t be that person who says “Boston sucks” and “F Boston” and “Im not going back there”… Gimme a break. Means (lefties in Camden??? yes? maybe??? COULD MY LONGSHOT 2019 THEORY BE FORMING??? ….. thats a topic for another day). Go back to Boston today folks. Beni and JBJ specifically SNEAKY SPOTS ATLANTA BRAVES … Freeman, Acuna, Donaldson. TEXAS LEFTIES IN PNC … Nomar, Gallo and Andrus (R) Random Thoughts Bryce Harper homers finally Anthony Rendon if he is back homers Home run calls using DK Pricing Over 5k: Joey Gallo Over 4K: Freddie Freeman, Bryce Harper Under 4K: Jackie Bradley Jr
The Dongers Club – Mon, May 6th
Couple brief updates Joe West is the HP ump in LA. Less than ideal for Walker B, which downgrades him a bit. He’s still my guy for better or worse on FanDuel but w/ Pearce, Nunez value and chalk there you can easily fit deGrom and even Cole if you want and still get guys like Correa and JD in your lineup. Chacin definitely the biggest boost on the slate. Vlad G. Jr. Dont overlook him with Blue Jays exposure Bets below BETS Orioles ML Blue Jays ML Royals/Astros OVER Today in the MLB DFS Dongers Club we seek Pitchers who wont suck + the combination of hitters who will do well. Novel concept I know, but we try to put a weekend of frustration behind us with too many rough patches and ride into a new set of games starting tonight with a nine game slate. FanDuel and DraftKings have ommitted one of my favorite plays of the slate as the Mariners travel into New York to take on the Yankees. There are two games at six o’clock that for DFS purposes are pretty useless to us, but I wanted to share some notes on them. The White Sox visit Cleveland where LiC is in full swing. But Bauer on the hill should negate that and cruise to the win over Ivan Nova. The Yankees host, King Felix and the Seattle Mariners into Yankee Stadium. What do we do when King Felix visits Yankee Stadium? We play King Felix. But as luck would have it, we can’t do that in 2019 in what is likely his final appearance in Yankee Stadium. Okay – Now on with the real games…. WEATHER Wrigleyville is yucky but playable. Impact here is decision on using Cole Hamels or Sandy Alcantara. Game likely plays but its yucky. All three of these guys are in the same pt/$ tier for me today. I have them ranked in order of how I feel they score total raw points but all three are options on both sites with deGrom being the preferred DK play and Walker being the preferred FD play. Cole is in no mans land as far as I am concerned but will not burn you. Jacob deGrom (DK: $10,200, FD: $11,100) … Much more of a smart play on DraftKings based on what he does to the rest of the salary construction than his 11k price on FanDuel. Even if deGrom was in peak deGrom mode this year 11k going into a San Diego team playing decent right now is dicey on a 1 pitcher site. But Jake has great history pitching in PETCO park with 5 of his last 6 starts here going atleast 7 innings and striking out a minimum of 8 batters each time. He must love the San Diego weather or women, or both. Either way, he and the Mets have a tough match-up against Chris Paddack which could limit his chances of getting the win but I don’t expect anything short of another 7 inning 8 k performance from Jake tonight and thus he’ll hit his target mark. Gerrit Cole (DK: $10,700, FD: $11,500) … Cole and deGrom are really close for me today. But Cole should be higher owned and dare I say he’s facing a couple sneaky spots in guys like Hunter Dozier and the Royals speed guys who can run on Cole. With him and deGrom being so close and the ownership sliding over to Cole heavily I like the idea of pivoting to deGrom vs San Diego and Paddack. Cole will win tonight for sure and probably get to 9-10 strikeouts with ease, but I like the Royals to get a couple runs off him which could prove to be the difference. Walker Buehler (DK: $9,400, FD: $8,700) … Walker is my FanDuel pivot off deGrom and Cole. Just my personal desire to use a RHP against the Braves flying west leaving Miami. Freeman in L.A. is always dangerous and Acuna off a day off would be someone to consider if fading Buehler, but Walker at home getting into his groove now after not really pitching in Spring Training is the only FanDuel arm that I like off the studs above. DK SP2 VALUE OPTIONS Jhoulys Chacin (DK: $6,900) … I’m actually expecting Chacin to be a trendy pick today. The Nationals lineup will be perceived to be pretty thin again and Chacin has been a consistent 2.5x guy when he is pitching at home. His issues are normally with left handed bats and Soto/Adams are both out for Washington which really brings us down to Eaton as the only lefty damage spot. Chacin at $6900 on DK is a good SP2 play…. Heck, he was a really good play — and then we got this news below: Update — The Nationals didn’t leave Philadelphia until this morning. They were stuck on a plane sitting on the tarmac from about 8pm last night until 3am this morning. Fun times indeed. Then they went back to their Philly hotel for a few hours sleep before coming back to the airport to fly out to Milwaukee and landing around 1pm today. Chacin’s ownership is gonna sky rocket and for good reason. Sandy Alcantara (DK: $6,300) … This is a near opener price for someone pitching in bad hitting conditions and what should play as a pitchers park tonight in Wrigley. Sandy draws a Cubs team he got through 6 innings against last month and the Cubs coming off their division rival series and a Sunday night game is a spot I would look to pick on today. Sandy has enough pitches to keep himself in games and should use his slider enough to generate some strikeouts tonight and at $5600 simply getting to the 5th inning with < 2 ER allowed and 4-5 strikeouts is a $ play on a night when folks will be scrambling to find a value arm to
Dongers Club Members Meeting – May
I wanted to take some time to cover a few items that I felt needed their own article to discuss with you all. So pull up a chair and check your Membership cards at the table as we gather around for a May 6th Dongers Club Monthly Meeting. Items on the Agenda for this Months Meeting Include: Re-Certifying your MLB DFS Lineup Construction Process A preview of the weeks slate ahead An announcement Airing of the Grievances Agenda Item #1: MLB DFS Lineup Construction – Re-Ceritifcation This is honestly the main topic that I wanted to bring up and it applies to most of you out there as well as me personally. And that is a focus on making sure that we are re-evaluating the process we use to construct a MLB DFS lineup each and every day that we play. When I say the lineup construction, I specifically am referring to the actual players we put into your lineup, hitting save and then letting it play out for that afternoon, evening or whatever slate we are on. There’s other things that go into playing MLB DFS which are not part of this re-certification but they are still extremely important and they include Contest Selection Research Best Practices Selecting Trusted Advisors Each one of the items above needs to be fine tuned as well to ensure that they have consistent and reliable methods to enable success in any DFS sport but they are not the focal point of this article specifically, but I will touch on them briefly as a refresher. Contest Selection speaks to making sure that you are entering contests that align with your goals and expectations. Your expectation should be that you can achieve your goals with the approach you are using but also be realistic. If you expect to win on a weekly basis in MLB DFS and you are only playing 1-3 lineups a night then you should be on 3 entry max or less tournaments or just playing a main lineup in cash and tournaments. If your expectation is to win once a month and you are playing 20-30 lineups a day then you should be playing those in the larger field tournaments and also being using an approach that is consistent and tested with multi-entry methods. Please note, I’m not that guy to help you with that and it’s a completely different mindset than what I focus on, which is gonna be 10 lineups or less per night and in most cases 1-3 main lineups to win Single Entries, 3 entry max or mid to higher $ tournaments that are less than 1k users. Research Best Practices speaks specifically to what data are you looking at, how are you analyzing the trends in MLB and how are you determining your own thoughts and picks on who you like on a given daily basis. I honestly expect everyone that is reading my article by early May has done some of their own research on their own and has a feel on a daily basis who they like and who they do not like. After all, my articles come out roughly 2-3 hours before lineup lock and there’s a good chance you’ve already glanced at the slate quickly or will do so at some point (even if its after reading my article). And whatever methods you are using and beliefs you have should hold true. Maybe you value wOBA, ISO, Batting Avg, WHIP, ERA or maybe you are into hard hit rates and more of the stat cast and expected type data, maybe you value pitch types, or maybe you simply focus on players who only hit when they eat pancakes the morning of a game — whatever it is, have something you will rely upon and trust. Selected Trusted Advisors … Basically if you are reading my article then you are valuing me as a Trusted Advisor. Can you have more than one? Yes. Should you have 5? No. You should have selected advisers that you rely upon and will consistently help you out. If someone is the master of mid range pitchers and thats what you want to use, then great — Use them. If someone nails all the mid range bats, then by all means have them as well. Just keep your circle tight and make sure that you are analyzing the analysts to determine what is good and what is bad out of their mouths. Don’t simply respond when a play goes south and say “that pick sucked”, understand why they mentioned it and determine where you want to trust them or not. Someone said to me via DM the other day .. “How much of your picks is based on data and how much is gut feel….” He asked because he didn’t always see #’s to back up the picks and wasn’t sure if that was just the writing style or if that was because it was an out of left field (perception) gut feel on a team. And when he strays from my gut feels they usually go off. The answer on this was within his own question. He was seeking if he should be trusting my pick on the San Francisco Giants that night vs the Cincinnati Reds and Sonny Gray who was being recommended in some spots. But he answered his own question by saying when he strays away from those they usually go off. He had already seen data regarding MY gut plays in this scenario to show that it was going to be a viable play. Now the real answer to his question was that it’s a mix. I do look at lots of data, I do trust lots of data and lots of my picks will have that as a foundation. But data is free and open to everyone else and data is also wrong 50% of the time believe it or not. Folks like to say that it’s 100% accurate or feel
The Dongers Club – CINCO DE MAYO
The Dongers Club previews the pitchers and offenses for targetting in your MLB DFS contests every day…
The Dongers Club – Sat, May 4th
The Dongers Club previews the pitchers and offenses for targetting in your MLB DFS contests every day…
The Dongers Club – Sat, May 4th – Early
The Dongers Club previews the pitchers and offenses for targetting in your MLB DFS contests every day…
The Dongers Club – Fri, May 3rd
The Dongers Club previews the pitchers and offenses for targetting in your MLB DFS contests every day…
The Dongers Club – Thu, May 2nd
The Dongers Club previews the pitchers and offenses for targetting in your MLB DFS contests every day…
The Dongers Club – Wed, May 1st
The Dongers Club previews the pitchers and offenses for targetting in your MLB DFS contests every day…
