What a different season, and a move from Baltimore to southern California has worked for Dylan Bundy, $9,700. Traded for not-a-whole-lot in December, the Angels move for him didn’t even register a blip. But the Angels presumably looked at Bundy’s arsenal, saw one pitch in particular that has been difficult to hit, realized that ‘difficult to hit’ is a good quality for a pitch to have, saw he threw it about 20 percent in Baltimore, thought, “what if…” then said, in their best Boomhauer voice, “Throw that one pitch of yours more.” Dylan Bundy stared blankly. Apparently Max Stassi understood, because he started throwing down three fingers more often, Bundy is throwing his slider more often, and hitters have been hitting his pitches less often. It’s that simple sometimes. Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. Let’s take this lesson to heart, and also do more of what works and less of what doesn’t in our DFS lineups. Read on to find out how.
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First, we need to diversify our starting pitching. Even though Dylan Bundy is now a must-start future Hall of Famer, we need other options in case the unthinkable happens and he isn’t quite his newly dominant self.
Max Scherzer, P: $10,700 – A great option for GPP in his first start back from a tweaked hamstring. The silver lining of taking on the risk here is an injury concern generally leads to lower ownership, so you won’t have to go crazy with your Scherzer lineups to have leverage on the field. The opponent being the Mets offers the right level of risk/reward to feel confident playing Scherzer here, knowing this could end up a dud if his hamstring issue resurfaces.
Next, we identify our primary stack. Stacking hitters works because production out of any individual player generally yields more opportunity for production from the other players. Today we want to target the team playing in Colorado. Shocking, I know:
Arizona Diamondbacks – largely because they happen to be the team playing at Coors field. Below is the order we’d prefer them based on value:
Ketel Marte, 2B: $4,000
Starling Marte, OF: $3,800
Carson Kelly, C/1B: $2,500
Eduardo Escobar, 3B: $3,700
Christian Walker, C/1B: $3,500
Nick Ahmed, SS: $3,000
Finally, we want to identify the best values among players we can afford. If we’re playing cash we want to play the more obvious choices with a preference of steady production over all or nothing; if GPP we want to use these roster spots to differentiate our lineups a bit and take on a little more risk:
Gleyber Torres, SS: $2,700 – Torres has started slow this season, but has shown some signs of life of late, and the Yankees have the highest implied run total of the slate, so we’d like to get a piece of that action.
Aaron Hicks, OF: $2,600 – Same as Torres above. We like the Yankees as a secondary stack opiton today.
There are a handful of extreme value plays today to fill out your rosters. Don’t expect the world, but when they produce for you they’ll give your lineups an edge on the field:
Jordan Luplow, OF: $2,100
Mike Brosseau, 2B: $2,300
Mike Ford, C/1B: $2,300
Adam Duvall, OF: $2,300
I’m Only Happy When It Rains
As I think Bob Marley sang, “No worry, all dry.”
Doing Lines In Vegas
Let’s hit the over 11 in Colorado at -118. Many books have already moved this to 11.5 at -115 or -120, so find it where it’s cheapest.
