KBO DFS – Tuesday, May 12th
New series begin today Top games for offense: Doosan Bears at Lotte Giants O/U is 10, so expect some chalk here. Good ballpark historically for offense Giants lead the league in home runs with 9 so far and have scored 36 runs in 5 games. Bears not too far behind with 32 runs through 5 games. KT Wiz at NC Dinos KT Wiz carry the highest ISO in the league at 0.222 as a team Both teams slugging near .500 on the season Both Pitchers (Despaigne, Rucinski) are ‘known’ quantities, likely chalky options today. Good second tier leverage game. Other Games: Kia Tigers at Hanwha Eagles SK Wyverns at LG Twins Samsung Lions at Kiwoom Heroes PITCHING RECOMMENDATIONS Eric Jokish ($8700 – Kiwoom Heroes) Heavy home favorite today against the paltry Samsung Lions. Woo-Chan Cha ($7700 – LG Twins) Lefty arm who should avoid the long ball today and still get some decent strike-out upside vs the Wyverns. Cha is at home in a nice pitchers park and SK has a relatively decent K% for opposing P’s thus far. Aaron Brooks ($7500 – Kia Tigers) Had a pretty good start by his standards last week, walking no batters and striking out 5 over 5 2/3 IP against Kiwoom. Today he faces the Eagles who have a league low 0.101 ISO thus far despite having one of the better hitters in Preston Tucker on their side. Overall it’s a spot Brooks should be able to go deep against tonight and not give up too much damage at home. TOP STACKS Doosan Bears Jose Miguel Fernandez is the cornerstone premium hitter in this stack, which likely will have five straight lefties in it against Raul Aclantara tonight. Alcantara is just bad all around so I’d attack him with as many Bears as possible. This is a great hitters park, a high total and the Bears lock in that 9th inning road AB no matter what. Lotte Giants Other side of the chalk game today. We have to like Byung-Hun Min (OF), Dixon Machado (2B/SS) and a nice value play in Hoon Jung at $2700 (2B) who has really started the season off nicely and benefits when hitting in front of Dixon Machado. Words I never thought I would utter. NC Dinos Attack Despaigne. NC Dinos are off to a 4-1 start led by Jin-huk No and Sang-bum Na. The Dinos in their two home games over the weekend dropped 21 total runs and they seem poised to do that again against the traveling Despaigne. CHAIRMAN OF THE DONGERS CLUB Sang-bum Na (OF, $3600) – NC Dinos INJURY TO AVOID Eui Ji Yang the star catcher for the NC Dinos is banged up and likely could sit out today. Avoid him in an NC Dino stack.
KBO DFS: Sat May 9th
Saturday – 4AM EST Slate for KBO DFS WEATHER There is some rain possibly coming through for the games on Saturday, four of which are taking place outdoors. If four of the five games are cancelled then I am 99.9% certain that both FD and DK have policy on which the slate doesn’t run with just the one game. But if you are worried about rain affecting the pitchers, your game in a dome is between the Eagles and Heroes. But enough of that, let’s check in with our Korean Weather DFS touts who are claiming all the games wont play … PITCHING Since we are towards the back end of the rotations on the 5th game of the season we have a TON of min priced pitchers taking the mound today on DraftKings. This guy, however, is not one of them. As you can see this is what we call a Taylor Swift vs Kim Kardashian slate. We have two Tae’s, which mean it’s a Tay-Tay slate and we have not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE. Yes, FIVE KIM’s…. So because I don’t feel like googling Taylor Swift, we are going to do a breakdown on a Kim you might not have ever heard of … Kim DeJesus I had never heard of her actually, but when I saw the picture I realized that her name is actually Kim DeJesus Christ…… She is an actress, known for Dhoom 3 (2013), Sullivan & Son (2012) and Happy Ending (2014). But better yet, for those of you who CORRECTY GUESSED that she is married to former Major Leaguer – David DeJesus then you win a prize! Also, how could someone so shitty as David DeJesus hitched this? So yes, she starred in a movie called …. Happy Ending. OK Then. Moving along now….. Arms to Consider Tae-hoon Kim (SK Wyverns – $6,500) … He appears to be one of the better pitchers on the slate as he has a nice 27% K rate against BOTH RHB and LHB from the past couple of seasons. The 29 year old overall has the best numbers on the slate for pitching but also faces a Lotte Giants team who is playing VERY well to start the season and is full of RH bats in their main lineup. This is also a stadium that I project out to be a good hitters park so I think the $6,500 price tag is fairly accurate considering he has the metrics of someone who should be around $9k. Oh, and he is the baseball card picture above…. Tae-in Won (Samsung Lions – $6,000) … Samsung had to win eventually and they did that last night back at home. Now can we do the unthinkable and roll out a winning streak? I like the chances with Tae-in Won, someone who I admit I had never heard of before this morning, but reading up on him he’s a nice young arm with some good velocity as well. The strikeout’s will be enough against the Tigers who have a few guys north of 20% in strikeout rates. Yong chan Lee (Doosan Bears – $8,700) … Yong-Chan is the highest priced arm as you can see but going up against the Wiz in his home ballpark — which is a decent spot for pitchers — is a valid reason to consider paying up for the veteran. That is essentially all the nice reasons I can think of to play him, but don’t worry…. Should be fine. HITTING Doosan Bears … The Bears have a decent lineup so far against RHP with a heavy set of lefty bats projected at the top of the lineup. They’re definitely priced up based on a good start to the season offensively but the focal points are Jae Il Oh (.307 AVG, 14 HR vs RHP) and Jose Miguel Fernandez (.353 AVG, 13 HR vs RHP) in the 2-3 holes if they are there. From a value perspective you could consider Joo Hwan Choi ($2800) as he has a very low strikeout rate compared to the others and offers a little value in the middle of the lineup should he start there. SK Wyverns … The team I wanted to follow the most coming into this season get to go into the best stadium for offense rated by yours truly (unofficially of course). Expect them to be popular given they are strong road favorites here as well. Against LHP Jeong Choi destroys, as he is known as probably the best 3B in the KBO and has been appropriately high owned through the first few games. This is a spot where he should definitely come through as Won sam Jang gives up .246 ISO to opposing RH bats. He’s very good aginst lefties but no so much the RH bats. The Wyverns likely will have 4 of their 5 key bats in the middle as righties today. After Choi, Jamie Romak and Jong Wook Ko are my favorite bats. I don’t think Won sam Jang will pitch deep so the lefties can be used safely here as well. Others: Dinos Lefties POSITIONAL ONE OFFS Catcher: Se Hyuk Park (Bears), Kang Nam Yoo (Twins) First Base: Jae Il Oh (Bears) Second Base: Jose Fernandez (Bears), Min Woo Park (Dinos) Third Base: Jeong Choi (Wyverns), Jin hyk No (Dinos) Shortstop: Su Suk Ha (Eagles), Dixon Machado (Giants), Jae Ho Kim (Bears) Outfield: Jong Wook Ko (Wyverns), Dong Min Han (Wyverns), Jamie Romak (Wyverns), Sung bum Na (Dinos), Jae Hwan Kim (Bears) DONGERS CLUB CHAIRMAN: Dong Min Han – OF – Wyverns He has been white hot starting the season with 3 HR through 4 games including a double dong game back in the 2nd game of the season and one last night. A lot of folks may overlook him going up against a lefty today but we expect Won sam Jang to leave the game quickly
KBO DFS – Wed May 6th
Alright folks, we broke the seal on this KBO DFS experience and I am right in my comfort zone with a negative from a pitcher and a sneaky homer stack that paid off from the Giants with the nWo trio of “Ah Seop Dixon Dae-Ho” an official Dongers Club play that had 2 HR out of it. Personally I fell short in the $180 tournament I played as Hyun Jon Yang really Hunged On my Yang with a -2.85 beat down for 10k+. So much for that failure. But some positive results with known quantities such as Hyun Soo Kim and Dixon Machado having great first nights. The one very pleasing thing was that Warwick Saupold did what I expected he should do and at his cheap price that was quite the steal on DK. The biggest downsides to this? The time of day and of course — LINEUP INFORMATION! It was past midnight last night and I eventually zonked out right before getting confirmation one way or the other about the Chairman 1B play of the day not playing. Information with the KBO is gonna be hard to come by and we have to accept that is the major risk here. Another reason to avoid doing one lineup into the multi-entry spots where you can off-set the risk by doing multi lineups. I am okay with that risk but the other wild card here is that now we shift into the 5:30 AM EST start times. If that was 6:30 then I think we’d see a MAJOR boost out of this sport, but 5:30 means getting up at 5 am or do what I plan on doing and drink a ton before you go to bed and hope to wake up at 4am to have to pee. Some finds so far from last night include a recommendation to follow @dfskbo who was all over the lineups last night coming out. Not sure who that is or if they’ll continue with it, but all I keep hearing is that “we are in this together” so yes, we can share some information around with everyone else as we all learn about KBO news updates together. Random Player of the Day Why is he the player of the day? Well, upon building out depth charts and learning the rosters hist name obviously jumped out to me. I can’t not look at it and see it pronounced as “Oh… You Suck!”. Imagine the tough career path that this guy has. He’s living out the dream of playing professinal Baseball and doing it only for roughly 38k per year. A true dedication indeed. Upon doing some research on him I found that there was also an Oh Yun-suk, who is a different person that played for the 2004 South Korean Olympics team. But back to THIS Oh YOON-suk, he is a first baseman for the Lotte Giants and wears #4 (as you can see above) and attended Kyunggi High School which is the oldest modern high school in Korea, located in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. A few facts about his high school because it’s far more interesting than his professional baseball career It is an an all-boys school that has a counterpart all Girls school which is Kyunggi Girls’ High School. As mentioned it’s the oldest modern high school in Korea and was established by edict of the Emperor Gojong in April of 1899! Emperor Gojong reigned over Korea from October 13th of 1897 to July 19th 1907. He was the next to last of the Joseon dynasty monarchs, which ended in 1910 Back to the high school, it has had some notable alumni — including nobody that I have ever fucking heard of… So in short… Oh Yoon-Suk is a very appropriate name for this guy. His Dongers Club Nickname from this point forward shall be …. Tommy Joseph! Today’s Games Favorites are in BOLD. Away Starting Pitcher Home Starting Pitcher HAN Eagles Joon Seop Im (4000) – LHP SK Wyverns Ricardo Pinto (4000) LOT Giants Jun won Seo (5100) KT Wiz Will Cuevas (7300) NC Dinos Mike Wright (7700) SAM Lions Ben Lively (6300) DOO Bears Young Ha Lee (8900) LG Twins Eun Bom Song (4000) KIW Heroes Eric Jokisch (8500) – LHP KIA Tigers Aaron Brooks (7200) Three Totals of 9.5 today: Bears/Twins, Eagles/Wyverns and Giants/Wiz Pitching Notables Nine of the pitchers going today played in the KBO last season. The one exception is Ben Lively! Yes, happy Ben (no relation to Blake) Lively day. Lively has spent time in the MLB with the Phillies and Royals mostly as a starter at the big league level and is not exactly an electric arm we should rush to roster today — or ever. William Cuevas is another known name with lots of MiLB experience and some big league time as well with the Red Sox and Tigers. Most of his big league time was as a September call up in 2018 so I put a lot more faith into his 2019 KBO numbers which were decent as he pitched the whole year (13-10, 184 IP, 135 K and a 3.62 ERA / 1.17 WHIP). He had four starts against Lotte in 2019 with two really good ones and one horrific game where he went 4 2/3, allowed 11 ER on 15 hits. Yes, that is being read correctly. The Giants have added Dixon Machado as well this year, so I’m not loving Cuevas today. You will notice that DraftKings has Min Woo Lee listed as a RP. That’s because he has been a reliever appearing in 66 career games in the KBO with only 10 total starts (6 of them last season towards the end of the year). He appears to be good to throw 90+ pitches but draws an extremely tough match-up against the Hereos today. UPDATE — We also have a couple replacement/spot starters in E. Song and R. Pinto at min price filling in. I
Dongers Club: Friday GIFtastic – Let’s just talk sports?
Holy fucks sake can we get some Sports going already. I’ve gone anywhere from Memorial Day to June 15th as my official prediction when the MLB season starts and I made the Memorial Day call back on March 12th, so I am going back to that now. Get the trains going and prepare for some Baseball around Memorial Day — which ironically is the time when most DFS touts start to pivot over to NFL. Speaking of DFS touts, they’re all being dropped like flies. I am thankful to have the audience that I have (which, lets be honest, you are reading a random article in search for entertainment or MLB simulation picks, nobody is counting right now) to talk some Sports with you all and while others are losing interest or trying to move into other area’s, I am still passionate as ever to provide some entertaining content and quality advice. This specific article though, well, it’s just a Friday filler for what should have been a nice Baseball Slate. FanDuel has split things into two slates to keep the interest as best they can, so we have an afternoon slate today and then the 7PM’ish slate as well. They also had my pitcher leave after 4 outs last Monday. I saw Giolito was 20% owned, so what the hell was up with that? Just a nice kick in the nuts to remind us of what MLB DFS is like? SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!!!! The Editors of the Daily Ambush and the Dongers Club (hey, that’s 2 of my personalities) will be combining to bring you the first ever NFL First Round Draft Recap the Friday after the first round of the NFL draft. And since it is a Friday, that means it’s essentially an article full of GIFs talking about the teams draft picks. It could get very very very interesting if the Falcons do in fact trade up again to select some piece of garbage. Oh the 28-3 gif’s….. MLB FRIDAY EARLY SLATE PICKS PITCHERS RANKED lol…. You know how this works, we don’t do rankings on the simulation friday slates. We do GIF’s on the matchups. Marlins (Urena) vs Phillies (Nola) At first I was thinking Nola for sure, then I realized it’s Urena vs Philly …. Cubs (Chatwood) vs Nationals (Sanchez) Imagine thinking the Cubs are good and therefore you should stack them versus the legend of Anibal Sanchez Reds (The Italian Legend, Anthony DeSclafani) vs Yankees (Jordan Not an Italian Montgomery) In fact, Jordan Montgomery is nicknamed Gumby. None of this has anything to do with my thoughts on the game, but I suddenly want to eat Italian. Unfortunately I’ve locked in on the GIFtastic theme here (figure it out clueless person) and well, this will have to do. This guy is a legend. Cleveland Indians (Mike Clevinger) vs Boston Red Sox (Eduardo Rodriguez) Does E-Rod pitch every slate or do the Red Sox just not have more than 1 pitcher on the FanDuel player pool? Very confused here…. Toronto Blue Jays (Trent LOOOOOOL Thornton) vs Tampa Bay Rays (Ryan Yarbrough) Hang on. Is it really Yarbrough or is he coming in after an opener? Also…. Well…. Austin fucking Meadows PPL. Milwaukee Brewers (Josh Lindblom is 7900….. Uh, ok FanDuel) vs New York Mets (Michael Wacha is only 6800) Wacha Day Game Folks vs Ryan Braun on a Friday. ONLY RYAN F’N BRAUN ONCE AGAIN GETS THE SHAFT FROM FANDUEL SUPPORT DOT COM Early Slate Chairman: Jose Ramirez – Indians MLB FRIDAY MAIN SLATE PICKS San Francisco Giants (Andrew Suarez) vs Atlanta Braves (Michael ‘Dirk’ Foltynewitzki ‘Diggler’) Freeman vs Belt … ROUND 1…. FIGHT! Baltimore Orioles (Asher Wojciechewblotarski) vs Kansas City Royals (Mike Montgomery) Holy shit we got a double Montgomery slate and we got the Orioles vs Royals as well. My Friday night is gonna be off the charts! Detroit Tigers (Daniel Norris) vs Minnesota Twins (Jhoulys Chacin) Texas Rangers (Jordan Lyles) vs Chicago White Sox (Dylan Cease) Don’t roster either guy LA Angels (Patrick Sandoval) vs Houston Astros (Jose Urquidy) Anyone ever wonder why the Astros got rid of J.D. Martinez??? St. Louis Cardinals (Miles Mikolas) vs Colorado Rockies (Anthony ……. slow clapping begins… 80’s music beat thumps… oh no, he’s breaking out into song again or doing a live Church Scene ….. There’s a pitcher that’s gonna get slammed….. In Coors Field. Sen-Sen-Senzasuckio Now he doesn’t even know he’s pitching. But I think he’ll get hammered just the same. Sen-Sen-Senzasuckio I… Hear Goldy coming. I’ll play him. I’m cashing that dime…. I feel so good, if I just say the wooooooooooooooooooooord. Sen-Sen-Senzasuckio *** Horns sing *** *** Horns sing *** *** Horns sing *** Play Goldy. TYVM Seattle Mariners (Marco Gonzales) vs Sean Manaea (Oakland Athletics) Oakland stack baby! Pittsburgh Pirates (Mitch Keller) vs LA Dodgers (Julio Urias) Just to give the finger to the LA Mayor I want to stack Pirates, but friends dont let friends stack Pirates, ok? I LET MY DOG PICK THE MAIN SLATE CHAIRMAN … He picked … Mike Zunino Chairman – Paul Goldschmidt
SIM Dongers Club – April 6th
Ask and ye shall receive. I have heard some positive feedback thus far and because I enjoy writing about any form of Baseball I’ll keep up with some brief articles on the simulated contests — even though they are FREE and most will mock them (including me). I am really interested in doing some type of $ contests for the sim games. Not every day and I won’t be writing an article every day during the sim process but who knows maybe we can get something going where we have a 20 man $5 entry with top 3 prizes paid out? If you want to be included in the side pool then click this link to sign-up for me so I know. I hope to get something going by Wednesday of this week – if not sooner. TODAYS SLATES One thing that was going to be of interest to me in Baseball this year for DFS was how the DFS sites handle the increase in more 6pm EST start times. We have two today along with two afternoon games and they naturally put all four together on an early slate. That said, if this was a paid contest I bet we would have three total slates. For the Early 2 PM Contests, the four games feature one solid SP match-up between Clevinger (CLE) and Berrios (MIN) in Target Field, or the simulated version of target field at least. Which to me, should still be a good RH park for someone like Franmil Reyes, but lots of switch hitters on both sides here and it’s not a fantastic spot for either SP in my mind — but Clevinger should see a good K game and he would be the choice of the two. My SP: Jordan Montgomery (NYY) – Should only go 5 IP even simulated, but process of elimination he edges everyone else. Marco Gonzales would have been a nice DK SP2 if we had such a thing. Favorite Bats: Indians (Lindor, Santana, Ramirez, Franmil), Reds (Moustakas), Brewers (Braun/Grandal), with a little Kepler (MIN) sprinkled in for good measure. MAIN SLATE PITCHING Aaron Nola (PHI) … Top SP on the board. Would have never played him in real life today though but simulation he’s the play. Chris Paddack (SD) … The Padres have been good between FanDuel and Strat-o-Matic simulations so far. So all the sims like their data obviously and I think most will lean Soroka over Paddack which is a mistake because Soroka shouldn’t strike many out. STACKS Not an obvious slate for hitting, so we should see some one offs do well again, but these are the best teams to do damage IMO Tampa … Good park shift and E-Fraud — Renfroe the main play with Meadows Oakland … Will get overlooked but how do we not pick on Julio the first chance we get? Olson / Chapman Kansas City … Fulmer probably has some pretty bad metrics in the simulation having missed all of last year and being rough before that. His good days are many moons ago and the Royals top of the lineup will do well. Mondesi/Whit/Soler/Dozier DONGERS CLUB Jorge Soler – OF – Royals – Chairman Hunter Renfroe – OF – Rays Kyle Schwarber – OF – Cubs Matt Olson – 1B – Athletics Gain Lux – 2B – Dodgers Matt Chapman – 3B – Athletics Bo Bichette – SS – Blue Jays J.T. Realmuto – C – Phillies
DIM Dongers Club – April 5th
Man, why you gotta tease me like this Fanduel? A full 15 game slate on Sunday just like the old times. We dont get those anymore because more slates = more rake. But when the contests are free, rake doesn’t matter. So for those who wanna earn some nickles and dimes on this fine Sunday, here’s some quick picks. And before you mock em. I’ve had a pretty good success rate on finding these one off HR even in the simulation. PITCHERS Zac Gallen – ARI Anthony DeSclafani – CIN TEAMS TO FOCUS ON Braves – Freeman, Acuna, Albies Atlanta wins the slate. Feasting on Urena and what should be another bad year for the Marlins bullpen Phillies – Harper, Realmuto Pick on Eric Lauer and Phillies at home are in a good ballpark to do damage. Like this game all around for offense in the simulation. Padres Hard to see Coors not going off with Jeff Hoffman on the mound in a day game. Load up on the Pads Astros Again, the simulation knows nothing about sign stealing CHAIRMAN OF THE DONGERS CLUB Freddie Freeman – 1B – Atlanta Braves
SIM Dongers Club – April 3rd
Supply and Demand Folks. the amount of a commodity, product, or service available and the desire of buyers for it, considered as factors regulating its price Listen, it’s not like we have 1,000 people asking for me to write an article on the MLB Simulation Contests on FanDuel but the Chairman — Hunter Dozier — did hit a 3% home run on the first day I did an article. So just sit back and go open a beer. It is Friday after all (I think?) and we have a Baseball DFS slate to break down here whether it’s for money or not, we have entertainment awards to go after. So press play on one of the Official Sound Tracks for The Dongers Club, let it play and enjoy the article. So like I said, what else are you going to do on this Friday besides sweat a slate that begins at 1PM and won’t end until close to 11:30 PM. How amazing is that? FanDuel is giving us an ALL DAY MAIN SLATE! Simulation life isn’t that bad after all because we’re one day into this stuff and Matt Adams does not appear to be on the simulation active roster, which is just fantastic news for all of us. More fantastic news for us, this slate has Coors Field on it — ok, that’s not the fantastic part. But this means we do get Nolan Arenado and I can just hope that the Simulated version of the GOAT is as Angry as the real version is. TODAYS SLATE … GIFtastic Breakdown WEATHER It appears the simulation does not give two shits about the weather. Unfortunately this means that the unemployment rate just went up as about 5 more DFS Weather Touts have filed unemployment. Luckily they can now go tout their models for push-up contests. Cleveland Indians (Carrasco) vs Detroit Tigers (Nova) I know this game is in Detroit but it just dawned on me that Ivan Nova should face the Indians in Cleveland this year and that brings me more joy than you can possibly imagine. Arizona Diamondbacks (Luke Weaver) vs Chicago Cubs (Kyle Hendricks) What in the world is this garbage? Just give me all the fantasy writer of the year awards right now folks. Im breaking down a Luke Weaver vs Kyle Hendricks Friday afternoon simulation game. Again, we need to get confirmation on the weather for the simulation but Im gonna have to assume that it’s all zero? Who the hell is on the Diamondbacks anymore? Ohhh, wait a minute. Is that Starling Marte in Wrigley Field or are you happy to see me? San Diego Padres (Joey Lucchesi) vs Colorado Rockies (Kyle Freeland) In the simulation that we are living in they had snow today in Denver and it will be 45 tomorrow. So when this game finishes 3-1 then we know the weather is imported into the simulations and we can re-hire all those DFS Weather touts. Hot take: This game won’t end 3-1. Los Angeles Dodgers (Buehler) vs San Francisco (who gives a shit, we’re playing Walker Buehler on a Friday) oh shit it’s Jeff Samardzija in a day game Miami Marlins (Jordan Yamamoto) vs Atlanta Braves (Cole Hamels) Alright, now this is a weird one because I wrote up Hamels as being a flop this season and he’s obviously hurt in real life. Marlins should be a sneaky team in these type of spots this year and they’re dirt cheap with everyone being 3k or less. Villar-Anderson-Dickerson-Aguilar-Alfaro is better than you think. These aren’t your 2018 or 2019 Marlins folks. Tampa Bay Rays (Blake Snell) vs Texas Rangers (Lance Lynn) Commence Texas Rangers new stadium is a PITCHERS PARK. But these donkeys probably pulled the data from last years stadium instead. We have a glitch in the Matrix! Either way, gotta like the data on Blake Snell in this spot as he should strike out 10 guys. Houston Astros (Lance McCullers Jr) vs Los Angeles Angels (Dylan Bundy) The simulation does not know about the sign stealing. MY SIMULATION PICKS Sweet Jesus I still cannot believe I am typing those words. Ya’ll better have fun with this shit before I go insane.. Oh that reminds me. I am working on putting together something cool starting next Monday. I’m gonna basically let things digest through the weekend and if I still think it’s a viable plan then we’ll move forward with it. But basically it would involve everyone throwing in an entry into a World Cup style tournament where you have to post your lineup and then I’ll calculate the results based off the FanDuel simulation each day. So all you have to do is degen some money on a simulation and copy/type your lineup into something I setup to make it easy to do and then I’ll calculate it (or get a team to help me do it). If that sounds cool and I still remember this four days from now (whenever that really is, what day is it???) then we’ll move forward. PITCHING The theme for PITCHING today comes from an all time classic — Goodfellas. With the GIF below each pitcher adequately describing them… Walker Buehler … A simulation sure as hell wont stop me from using Buehler. Blake Snell … 10 strikeouts vs Texas is not a stretch, he’s ready to piss on them. Luke Weaver … Yes, I think he’s gonna do well vs the Cubs — dont like it? STACKS And today’s stack theme GIFs will be from the movie Stripes SAN DIEGO PADRES Absolutely we’re gonna donkey Fernando Tatis, Manny Machado and Sir Thomas Pham in Coors Field LA DODGERS Just go ahead and play Corey Seager and Joc Pederson — and then look the other way HOUSTON ASTROS Go ahead and be afraid to play the Houston Astros on the road because of the sign stealing shit. Yordan Alvarez
The Dongers Club – ’20 Preview: Rookie (Pitching) Frauds
The title of this preview is a little misleading but that’s because I didn’t wanna have a long title that says “99% of DFS recommendations related to rookie pitchers that you have never heard of are complete fraud recommendations by
The Dongers Club – ’20 Preview: Top 10 Busts
We now move into the real 2020 Preview Articles and first up I’m going to go through 10 things that I am very cautious of in the 2020 MLB season. You can use this for seasonal drafts but also as
The Dongers Club – ’20 Preview: First Pitch
We begin the 2020 Dongers Club Season by taking time to announce the lessons learned, strategy changes and overall plans that I have for the upcoming MLB DFS season based upon a long few months in the off-season to digest 2019 and other prior seasons. To me, no other major sport has gone through more changes the last few years than Baseball and one can anticipate the sport to continue to evolve under the unfortunate direction of Rob Manfred. We’ve seen the well documented shift towards launch angles & exit velocity with an increased emphasis in upside for at bats at the risk of the formerly perceived negative downside of striking out. We’ve seen some teams adopt a unique approach to handling starting pitching with the use of openers or just generally mediocre arms who are only going to go 4 maybe 5 innings at best before turning over to a setup bullpen from the middle on out. And probably most disturbing last season we saw more teams completely going as bad as they can in an effort to gut payroll, rebuild for the future and just not even bother trying to compete while other teams become more ‘super’ teams. It should be well known if you pay attention to anything I say that I’ve never been a fan of Rob Manfred, but to me there’s a clear and obvious direction that MLB should head in terms of it’s competitive balance/scheduling/league structure and it has nothing to do with salary caps or finances. The league is proposing going to a 6 team playoff format in both leagues while also allowing a team to select their opponent. It’s mostly stupid but actually the idea of changing the playoff format isn’t all that bad. You see, one thing that has changed over the years in Baseball is teams now actually understand that sometimes they have no shot at the beginning of the season as the gap between the haves with free-agency money and the have-nots grows. So if they are in a division with too many hurdles to compete in the short term then just go out and be bad all together from the get go. This season we can already rule out the Orioles, Royals, Tigers, Mariners, Marlins, Pirates and Giants from contention. It’s nowhere near as bad as last year where those same teams plus the Blue Jays, White Sox, Rangers, Reds among others went into the season with zero chance at competing. My proposal is as follows. Expand from 30 Major League teams to 32 teams. Re-Align to Eight divisions of Four (Similar to the NFL) Expand the playoffs to Six teams in each league (Similar to the current NFL) The expansion aspect is the easy part. Las Vegas and Montreal make perfect spots with Nashville as a distant third city to add a MLB team. Las Vegas is a hot bed for Baseball talent and is proving to be a fine pro sports town. Montreal is just ripping the bandaid off and going back to a city that lost a team prior assuming they offer up a stadium. Nashville would be the leverage in case Montreal cannot get it done. So we then go to four team divisions AL East: Boston, New York, Baltimore, Toronto AL North: Minnesota, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit AL South: Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Texas, Houston AL West: Seattle, Anaheim, Oakland, Las Vegas NL East: Philadelphia, Montreal, New York, Washington NL North: Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Chicago NL South: St. Louis, Atlanta, Florida, Colorado NL West: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Arizona The American League re-alignment is the easy part but the National League has an obvious issue between the North and South where you lose the Cardinals/Cubs rivalry and also pairing Colorado in the same division as Miami is … well, weird. So this is a spot where expanding to Nashville would make a little more geographical sense as they’d slide into the south with Washington and St. Louis/Colorado would both go into the North (or just call it the midwest) while Pittsburgh slides into the East with Cincinnati, Philadelphia and the NY Mets. Either way you get the general idea. Then the four division winners plus two wild card teams make the playoffs. By doing this you create an easier path for every team to make the playoffs because each team only has to be better than three teams to earn that automatic berth. I would make the first round a three game series where ALL three games are at the home team’s stadium. Keep in mind this is two division winners vs the two wild card teams. Unfair? Deal with it. You want to get an easy path then go win your damn division. Second round would be a five game series 2-2-1 and the Championship rounds would remain best of seven format. There’s a few other details in regards to balanced schedule and interleague play but I’ll spare you those details and just tell you that the schedule would be reduced to 156 games. The argument against this has always been from purists who said it would ruin the statistical integrity of the game. Exactly. That’s already been done. So there Mr. Commissioner. There’s your resolution to your beyond stupid proposal…. THE 2020 DONGERS CLUB Now onto my thoughts for the upcoming DFS season and what changes you will definitely see form the Dongers Club. Until of course I decide to change my mind by April 23rd or some random date like that. I played too much last year and the year before and the year before. By too much I mean too many slates and ultimately I was letting the pride that I had in writing analysis for as many slates as possible interfere with sanity of when I should and should not be doing an article. A lot of this stemmed from me watching or hearing about other “analysts” in the industry who right around mid-March would