KBO Dongers Club – May 16th
Feels very weird doing a Friday DFS article for a Saturday slate. Technically it will be Friday still anywhere west of El Paso, Texas — which by my accounts is about as far west in the Central time zone in America as you can go. Speaking of El Paso, Texas — I had to figure out who was relevant from El Paso Texas for this article. And the answer is… Well, nobody! But it is the home of former Arkansas Razorbacks head coach Nolan Richardson, the famed coach of the “40 minutes of hell” style of play he ran while there. A good coach and he coached some good teams including the 1994 championship team with Corliss Williamson on it. As far as El Paso, TX…. El Paso is a border town, sitting in the westernmost point of West Texas and straddles the Rio Grande on the U.S.-Mexico border. … Today, El Paso is known for its large military presence that is anchored by Fort Bliss, but on the flip side has an up and coming culinary scene. I know what you are thinking right now on a Friday night in May as you prepare to read an article on Korean Baseball and instead are getting an education about El Paso, Texas… WEATHER Well … Yesterday sucked. Can’t be any worse today right? All games will play PITCHING Solid first trial run using the new model to help with pitching, lets double down tonight! 1 – Kyung Eun Noh ($770 vs Hanwha Eagles) The Eagles lose Jared Hoying — their best hitter — to injury and have a lack of power in this lineup along with good strikeout upside. KEN is my top SP today. SP2 / GAME STACK OPTIONS 2 – Tae Hoon Kim ($7,200 vs NC Dinos) Has a crazy high K% historically because he is a bullpen arm but got stretched out to 6 innings vs the Giants in a 4-0 Loss where he only yielded 2 Runs and struck out 3 batters. NC has a couple swing and miss guys at the top of the order in Aaron Altherr and Sung Bum Na and I project this to be a pitchers park. 3 – Young Gyu Kim ($6200 vs SK Wyverns) Just call this the pitching game stack of the min priced Kim’s. Cheap Kim’s. …. ok, get your mind out of the gutter now. Everyone in the SK lineup has strike-out upside for Young Gyu Kim tonight — and with a 19% K rate over the last few seasons combined this other reliever should hit that min value target. TOP STACKS There is a game tonight with an Over/Under at 11.5 compared to the next highest which is 9.5. Anyone wanna guess who everyone is gonna be telling you to play after their endless amounts of KBO research? And by research I mean — ah, fuck it. I won’t go there right now Anyways. Why are they so popular? Oh, they being the KT Wiz and the Samsung Lions – and after a slow start to the season the Lions have turned it around and are now 4-6 which is far better than the KT Wiz 2-7 start. Min Kim gave up 2 HR in his first start of the season against the always popular Doosan Bears. I like him to bounce back tonight at home and the KT Wiz offense is just middle of the road and that’s not enough for me to roll with 40-50% chalk on them. Given those reasons and the fact that this is also a 4:00 AM start and … well, I wont be awake — hard pass. LG Twins Right after getting rained out I will go RIGHT back to the LG Twins tonight against Jake Brigham — who through two starts in KBO hasn’t been lights out with only going a combined 7 1/3 IP in the two games. His leash should remain shorter and the Twins offense is my focus in this game tonight. Chun Woong Lee (OF) Keun Woo Jeong (2B) Hyun Soo Kim (OF) Roberto Ramos (1B) … Let’s try this again? DOOSAN Bears Every night the Bears have turned into the DFS world’s top play, but with that 11.5 total tonight we can get the most popular stack tonight at lower ownership and opposing SP Hyun Jong Yang was horrific in his first home start of the season against Kiwoom giving up no homers but only facing 15 batters in that game…. Christ, what logic do you want here? Just play … Kun Woo Park (OF) Kyoung Min Hur (3B) Jose Miguel Fernandez (1B/2B) Kiwoom Tigers They are popping up at the top in the model positionally and I can’t say that I hate it. Nice sneaky spot tonight to gamestack the spot which was rained out last night. POSITIONAL ONE OFFS CATCHER Dong Won Park – KIW Kang Nam Yoo – LG FIRST BASE Roberto Ramos – LG Jose Miguel Fernandez – DOO ByungHo Park – KIW SECOND BASE Keon Chang Seo – KIW Keun Woo Jeong – LG THIRD BASE Suk Min Park – NCD Kyoung Min Hur – DOO SHORTSTOP Ha Seong Kim – KIW Sun Jin Oh – HAN Dixon Machado – LOT OUTFIELD Hyun Soo Kim – LG Preston Tucker – KIA Chun Woong Lee – LG Kun Woo Park – DOO Jun Woo Jeon – LOT Jamie Romak – SK Won Joon Choi – KIA — Value DONGERS CLUB Preston Tucker – OF – Kia Tigers I miss Ryan Braun Friday’s
KBO Dongers Club – May 15th
Our KBO Dashboard is up and running and yes it has some data errors and features/improvements that you can expect to be worked on through the weekend. But ultimately the idea is to give everyone a simple place to look for this sport that is carrying us until July when MLB should return. http://www.dailyambush.com/kbo-dfs-dashboard/ GAMES New series begin on Friday morning and a couple games have some Weather to monitor. Giants @ Eagles – Worst of the weather games and probably not the best today for offense. Only play here is contrarian to use SP’s. Bears @ Tigers Lions @ Wiz PITCHING Seung Won Moon – $8700 – SK Wyverns Hui Kwan Yu – $9200 – Doosan Bears STACKS Hereoes at Twins I am a very big fan of this ballpark and the Twins in general are a popular team to look at when they’re at home as they are against the Heroes tonight and through the weekend. The main guy we are attacking is Chan Heong Jeong (RHP) for LG who has really struggled to not walk batters. Heroes Stack: Keon Chang Seo (2B) Ha Seong Kim (SS) ByungHo Park (1B) Twins Hyun Soo Kim (OF) Roberto Ramos (1B) … Chalkier than Park Chung Woong Lee (LG) … Value play POSITIONAL FAVORITES CATCHER Ji Young Lee (KIW) FIRST BASE: ByungHo Park (HAN) Jose Miguel Fernandez (DOO) SECOND BASE: Sang Su Kim (SAM) Kwang Min Song (HAN) THIRD BASE: Jeong Choi (SK) Suk Min Park (NCD) SHORTSTOP: Ha Seong Kong (KIW) Jae Ho Kim (DOO) .. Value play OUTFIELD Hyun Soo Kim (LG) Jamie Romak (SK) Jung Hoo Lee (KIW) Chung Woong Lee (LG) … Value play
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
KBO DFS – May 5th
Hello…. How’s it goin? Things I did not envision myself doing in 2020 Watching Kirk Cousins beat the Saints in a playoff game Writing a KBO DFS article. Yet, here we are… What is the KBO? Korean Baseball Organization of course. The league was formed in 1982 with six franchises and now currently has ten teams. You’ll notice that most of the teams are owned by corporations (i.e. Samsung) within the KBO but they do have some kinda cool names that you can latch onto to follow along. Here’s everything you need to know about the KBO — or at least what I have learned so far … The Good It’s Baseball for crying out loud There’s a ton of impressive bat flips at times Prior to last season the league was hitter friendly with well known juiced baseballs. It remains to be seen if they keep the balls from last year which brought offense down. The Bad Everyone is named Chen, Wang, Kim or Lee it seems. The games are between 1am and 5am EST time. So here in America, we’re likely not watching a ton of the KBO live and for DFS this is our biggest challenge as we might not see lineups until very late at night. I still haven’t had a real haircut and between cutting my own hair and having my wife do it, I have quite the flow going right now The Whatever Games can end in tie’s! After 12 innings I believe the game would be called a tie. ESPN is broadcasting one game a day. Contest Selection You are on your own here, but remember the less people and the higher $ the entry the better your chances of winning. You know, like t he $180 DK contest that is only 103 people, pays out 21 spots and 5k to first…. Just saying…. May 5th Slate Technically the games are May 5th no matter what time zone you live in, so that’s what we are going with. I should also point out that it is Cinco De Mayo and we should no doubt roll out as many inappropriate narratives based upon the players name as possible. However, I’m pretty sure that all the Kangs and Chen’s and Yang’s and Baek’s are not celebrating Cinco De Mayo. But Jose Miguel Fernandez is in my book. DraftKings was first to the show, so they get the priority on the write-up in terms of pricing information (for now). I say for now because — well, picking two pitchers from 5 game slates is always dicey. Away Team Pitcher DK Price Home Team Pitcher DK Price Hanwha Eagles Warwick Saupold 6,500 SK Wyverns (-140) Nick Kingham 9,000 Lotte Giants Dan Fricken Straily 7,600 KT Wiz (-145) Odrisamer Despaigne 7,600 NC Dinos (-145) Drew Rucinski 9,100 Samsung Lions Jung-Hun Baek (LHP) 6,400 Doosan Bears (-145) Raul Alcantara 8,600 LG Twins Woo-chan Cha (LHP) 6,200 Kiwoom Heroes (-140) Jake Brigham 9,300 Kia Tigers Hyeon-jong Yang (LHP) 10,000 The Giants/Wiz game is the highest total at OU 9.5 – every other game is 8.5. As you can tell, the Odds here are pretty much random with nobody higher than -145 and nobody lower than -140 favorite. Source: William Hill Sportsbook. QUICK GAME NOTES This is just for the Opening Day, as we get into the season more and we get used to what the actual lineups look like we can project better the positional breakdowns. The below team codes in ()’s are reflected how they show on DK when selecting from the player pool. Eagles (HAN) vs Wyverns (SK) You might recognize both of these pitchers (Saupold vs Kingham) as this first game on the slate has two guys with MLB experience. Neither was very good in the Majors and both RHP struggled big time against LH hitters. Kingham most recently in 2019 had 19.1 K% against RH batters and a 16.3 K% against LH batters. He failed to keep the ball in the MLB parks as well giving up 11 HR over 55 IP and never pitched deep into games as he faced a maxium of 23 batters in one game during the entire 2019 campaign. I highly doubt we see him pitch deep in this first start either – for $9,000 and combined with the fact that he is likely popular due to name he is a clear fade on DK. As for Warwick Saupold – he’s tempting given that he did pitch in the KBO last year and routinely went 6+ innings with a high pitch count and fairly reasonable metrics. By metrics I mean basic stats as we’re really scraping to find any advanced metrics such as ISO and even handed splits — so we take what we can for now. But Saupold is someone who may not deliver a ton of strikeouts and has the worse team on his side but he’s a nice underdog to take on opening day for $6500 as an SP2. Eagles Bats: Jared Hoying (OF), Eun Wong Jung (2B/3B), Yong-Kyu Lee (OF) Wyverns Bats: Dong-Min Han (OF) Giants (LOT) vs Wiz (KTW) It’s Dan Straily against Odrisamer Despaigne pitching in Korean and guess what? Holy hell, bad Marlins pitching from two to three years ago for $5,000 Alex! Now, we do have to be a little tempered here because of the fact that they’ll be facing lesser competition over in the KBO — but let’s also not go all crazy and think this turns into a pitchers duel. Good hitters park it appears as well and we have a solid hitting target from this game in Baek-ho Kang, a young potential star who was rookie of the year in 2018 at the age of 18 and followed it up last year with increased batting AVG but a big dip in perceived power down from 29 HR in 2018 to only 13 last year. But again, the ball was doctored down for power last