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NichFields

Author: NichFields

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NichFields

FanDuel: Who’s A Good Boy? Gerrit Cole Is A Good Boy

September 8, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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We must really love baseball. Today we have an 11-game FanDuel Main Slate, but the large format contest sizes have been chopped by about 90%, I’m guessing because today is National Hug Your Hound Day and FanDuel figures people will be too busy celebrating. Maybe. Just a quick aside, while we may enjoy it, our hounds definitely do not enjoy being hugged and are likely, at the very least, confused by this action. Ask them. It’s true. Let us not hug our hounds, even on National Hug Your Hound Day, it’s a selfish expression of affection we assume they appreciate, but the benefit is wholly one-sided. Instead, try showing affection for by licking. They love it.

So, our large-format contests are not so large. What do we do? We can adjust our lineups to incorporate more safe plays, such as we would for cash contests, and fewer of the high risk, high upside plays we need to have a shot at soloing a 50k+ tournament, without reducing our expected value.

A player like Gerrit Cole, SP: $12,000, fits the bill nicely. He is very expensive, so we’d better have good reason he’ll be worth the expense. The reason he should be acceptable today is he is facing a strikeout-prone Mariners lineup, which has proven to be overmatched by Cole. The last time he faced the Mariners, back on June 30th, Cole managed 58 points from 10 strikeouts over 7 innings. This performance seems like the average outcome we should expect today, which is right in the range of value we are seeking.

Still reading? Wow. You deserve a treat! Stay here and read on for some winning DFS picks.

Enjoy your Sunday!

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: Just Do It. Start Justin Verlander.

September 1, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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We have eight games to consider today when playing the FanDuel Main Slate. When looking over the options it seems we can find all kinds of creative ways to avoid paying up and starting Justin Verlander, SP: $11,900. Darvish is pitching with the wind blowing in to a fairly beat up Brewers team. Corbin is facing the terrible Marlins lineup. Morton is pitching at home. But there are times when overthinking the best option is detrimental, and this is likely one of those times. We just need to not over think it, and do the obvious. Start Justin Verlander.

Verlander faces a strikeout-prone Blue Jays team. That point potential is too much to resist. What we do need to be concerned with is the park factor and Verlander’s season long struggle with the long ball. If things click today, he’ll put up 60. If not, rostering him could look like a very bad idea because of just one or two mistake pitches. It is risky on that level, but worth the risk because of his upside.

For additional picks, keep reading the words written below.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: Yes To Nola

August 25, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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With an 11-game Main Slate on FanDuel this afternoon we should have plenty of options from which to choose, yet one play stands out above the others. His name is Aaron. Aaron Nola, SP: $10,700. King of the wild frontier. As good as he has been and can be, Nola as our top play today is far more about his opponent than him.

Nola goes for the Phillies in Miami today, against the historically bad Marlins lineup. We usually want to start any pitcher facing the Marlins because, as hitters, the Marlins are a unique combination of bad this game has not seen in a very long time. They strike often. They do not walk often. They do not hit for power. They do not like green eggs and ham. All told, they are a dream matchup for opposing pitchers. Today is no exception with a far better than average Nola on the mound. We want to take full advantage of this ideal matchup.

I will personally have Nola in about half of my lineups, knowing full well it means giving up exposure to the more expensive stacks today. I’ll take my chances.

May the winds blow your hit balls out and keep your pitched balls in. Best of luck today, and keep reading below for additional picks of the day.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

Your Padres’ Red Sox

August 18, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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We have for us today a 9-game Main Slate on FanDuel, and it’s a bit of a mess on the starting pitching front. We have serviceable starting pitchers with great match-ups who we know* are not throwing over 60 pitches in Eovaldi and Richards (*we do not know, but, you know). We have very good starting pitchers with okay match-ups, only they’re pitching in unfavorable conditions in Wheeler and Flaherty. And we have pitchers with favorable opposing starting pitching, who we’d otherwise love to roster, except Fried is facing the Dodgers and Clevinger the Yankees; both very tough match-ups.

So, what to do? We spread our risk, identify the risk areas to avoid – hello Richards and Eovaldi, identify value when it shows up – hello Chris Owings starting for Boston today, and we embrace the unknown.

Read on for additional written words, and best of luck today. May all your lineups be winners.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: Heavens Help Us

August 11, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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When making sense of this gigantic 11-game FanDuel Main Slate, let’s look to the heavens, as both the Angels and Astros offer great value potential today via stacks.

Our featured stacks are all road teams hitting in more friendly environments than they usually enjoy at home. Situations like this tend to provide an easier path to value because players are priced based on past performance. So, if past performance took place in, on average, less friendly hitting conditions, any time you get players moving into more favorable hitting conditions than average – whatever those conditions may be – you can expect better than average performance, and, therefore, better than average value. Ipso facto quota.

It is these little things that separate us from the herd of DFSers playing the hot hitter or pitcher, regardless of considerations such as park factors, weather, and ADI.

Read on for the juicy details, and best of luck today, you crazy DFSers.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: Just In: Just Justin

August 4, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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Justin Verlander, SP: $12,000, is locked in. He is so locked in he is our super-duper, locked and loaded, slam dunk, touchdown goal of the week. He transcends sports. He will win you a NASCAR tournament. He will make your burrito taste better and your skies less cloudy. That’s how good he is right now.

Not that Justin Verlander needs factors in his favor to dominate – so don’t mistake the intention here, no disrespect, ever – but there are reasons to believe he could treat this Mariner lineup like a little league B-lineup. Worse than the no-hit performance they’re coming off yesterday. They might quit baseball after this, and here’s why:

• Park factor: Minute Maid Park is usually neutral, but today is the most pitcher-friendly park on the slate for a right-handed pitcher.
• Weather: There is no rain risk, as they have a roof, but air density still affects the travel of the baseball, and today the conditions in Houston are the best of the slate for pitching. Higher air density provides more resistance to a baseball traveling through the air, which increases spin rate and movement (at the expense of a little velocity, yes, but it’s worth the tradeoff), and decreases the distance a batted ball travels. It’s science.
• Visual Memory Index: This is a Razzball Premium feature that measures the change in conditions from one game to the next. The exact same pitch will move differently depending on the density of the air in which it is thrown. How much differently is what VMI aims to quantify for us. Negative numbers are worse for hitting and better for pitching, and just the opposite for positive numbers. Today, the Mariners have the most negative VMI number of the slate, so we should expect their hitters to require the greatest adjustment compared to recent conditions. Uphill battle against Verlander.
• Strikeouts: The Mariners strike out a lot, more than any other team in baseball.
• Caveats: The way this could go wrong is pretty clear. The Mariners are top 5 in the league in team ISO and team walk rate, and Justin Verlander gives up the majority of his runs allowed through home runs, and also walks about 2 hitters per 9 innings pitched. If things fall apart, this is the likeliest reason why.

Enough said. Play him in a crazy percent of your lineups today and enjoy.

And guess what? There’s more! Read on for our top picks of the day. Have a great one!

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: Bright Sunshiny Day

July 28, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel | 1 Comment

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What a great day for baseball today. There might not be a single cloud in anyone’s sky. Nothing at all to worry about except hot temperatures – don those shades and smack on the spf – and winds blowing out.

Fire up a grill, crack open a beverage, and enjoy the day today DFSers! and read on for our top FanDuel picks of the day.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: Snell That Armenteros

July 21, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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We have ten games on the FanDuel Main Slate today, so plenty of great options. The biggest concern for today is the weather in several locations, which will require monitoring up until lock. On days like today, the best thing to do is look for ways to maximize value.  To do that, we’ll first take a look at Rogelio Armenteros ($5,600). Armenteros has a deflated salary due to his role with the Astros in his previous appearances, where he was pitching out of the bullpen. He is fully stretched out, though, with a recent appearance for Round Rock where he threw 95 pitches, so we should not expect too short of a leash today. Let’s take advantage of the low salary and make Armenteros our featured start.

Read on for our picks, and enjoy the day!

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: “For Good Luck, Buy Ton A Cobbie Birdie” -Grom

July 14, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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Today is the first day of the rest of our lives, so let’s play some DFS.

We have seven games on the FanDuel Main Slate today, with Jacob deGrom, Shane Bieber, and Masahiro Tanaka leading the way as our top pitching options. The weather looks perfect where these games will be played, so fire up the grill, crack open a beverage, and let’s get to it.

Read on for our picks, and enjoy the day t0day, DFSers.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: Midwestern BBQ Stacks, Use Cole For Scherzer

June 30, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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Welcome to the final day of June 2019, FanDuel DFSers. It’s going to be a beautiful one. Let’s get some meat over evenly heated coals, crack a beverage, and enjoy the day. Barbecue is a process, but the payoff is well worth it, very similar to DFS. The more time we take, the better the rewards. So let’s get to it.

We have a 9-game FanDuel Main Slate today, and not one game has much risk of postponement. There might not be a single cloud in the sky; it’s going to be that great. So, who should we start on such a perfect day? Let’s continue to play with fire and start flamethrowers Gerrit Cole ($11,200) and Max Scherzer ($12,500) in the majority of our lineups. Not only do they lead their respective leagues in strikeouts, both have very favorable match-ups this afternoon. We should expect nothing short of dominating performances, making them very likely to return value even with their expensive salaries. Sometimes it’s best to just keep things simple and not over complicate it. Meat and fire. Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer. Lock them in, and let’s figure out the rest of our lineups from here.

Read past the break for suggestions on how to fill them out with some good ol’ Midwestern stacks.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: Jacob Of The Thunder, Justin Of The Pasture

June 23, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel |

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We have a DFS battle of two pitching deities on today’s 9 game FanDuel Main Slate, between Jacob deGrom and Justin Verlander. It’s such a tossup we need to look to their name origins for meaning. This will surely help us make a decision. We find deGrom is Flemish, and means ‘thunder’ in many Slavic languages; and we find Verlander is also Flemish, and likely means ‘dweller by the pasture land’. deGrom could also (absolutely not) refer to Grom Gelato, which seems very likely (no). So, we have thunder and gelato vs. pasture dweller. That’s still a tough decision. Maybe we’ll look at horoscopes. Or maybe we just need to get both pitchers in lineups today.

Here’s what we see:

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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NichFields

FanDuel: The Right Bauer

June 16, 2019 | 2019 Fantasy Baseball, DFS, Fanduel | 1 Comment

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Happy Father’s Day, everyone! Or, if we prefer, Happy Fudge Day, or Turkey Lover’s Day. There is something for everyone today. Unless we don’t like fathers, fudge, or turkey…might be best to sleep in, then. But not too late! We don’t want to miss this 11-game FanDuel Main Slate. We have a right Bauer to play! Euchre fans? Anyone?

If we don’t yet know how to play euchre, we owe it to the fathers in our lives to learn it. They will love it. We’ll love it, too, but they will especially love it. Here is a tutorial.

In the card game “euchre” the jack of whichever suit is declared trump is known as the right bower, and is the highest card in the game that hand. Similarly, and this is not a stretch at all, we have the right circumstances today for Trevor Bauer to be the best option of our DFS slate. So let’s run with this analogy and lead with the Right Bauer.

Trevor Bauer, SP: $11,300, is worth the cost of ownership against the Tigers. Though this game may see an initial weather delay, the likelihood of an in-game delay messing up our SP workload is small enough to risk. He faced the Tigers in Detroit earlier this season, but the conditions were miserable, so we have a handy excuse when considering his sub par performance. We should expect a much better outcome today. The Tigers are the awkward teen of the MLB, they strike out a ton and hardly ever score. Dad joke, eye-roll. But really, they are a great matchup to throw SP against. We should be confident with our play here.

So, we have lead with the right Bauer and taken the first trick. What are our next best plays? Read on to find out.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

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