The High Stakes Scene - Favre vs. Cards Gm 1

Editor’s Note: The “High Stakes Scene” is a recurring series giving you an in-depth look into the highest stakes games in the Daily Fantasy world. Our first “High Stakes Scene” features top-ranked STLCardinals84 as he gives you in-depth analysis into his head-to-head matches vs. BrettFavre444. Full details on their match can be read here. We hope you enjoy the near real-time insight below.

Some of the guys here at Rotogrinders tossed around the idea of doing an article series on high stakes action, and I was willing to go along with the idea if the right piece came about. Low and behold, I noticed that our old DFS friend BrettFavre444 was back in action on DraftStreet. If you check out his Twitter page, you can see that he’s back and brash as ever. My interest piqued and I challenged him to a high stakes best of seven series on DraftStreet. The winner will walk away with a rake-free $5,000 in profit thanks to the good guys over there at DraftStreet, and it will be a fun seven game series with me doing a piece on each game of the contest. Let’s check out how Game One fared.

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The Short Attention Span Version:

I was able to take down the contest by a score of 59-50 and had a relatively comfortable lead most of the evening in the neighborhood of 12-15 points. A late slump by my hitters gave Favre a chance, but his pitchers in the late games weren’t enough to overcome the deficit.

Breaking Down My Lineup:

1) The Tigers hitters were originally priced as though Chris Sale was going to be pitching for the White Sox. The removal of Sale and insertion of fringe-prospect lefty Charlie Leesman was a prime thing to take advantage of on DS tonight. If you did not play four Tigers bats, you made a colossal mistake. Therefore, I plugged in Cabrera, Kinsler, Hunter, and Martinez, guys who manned the 2-5 spots in the lineup tonight.

2) Next, I filled in a couple of Giants – banking on a bounceback at Coors Field against Morales. Posey was a must against the lefty, and Morse got the nod batting cleanup tonight.

3) I then took two value hitters in Seager and Everth Cabrera with plus matchups and left the final hitter slot open for now.

4) I generally like to take one decent SP, one middle SP, and one low-end SP on DS for cash games. However, I didn’t care for any of the non-elite options tonight, so I did something I almost never do: took two elite SP’s and a reliever. Enter Price, Verlander, and an irrelevant Addison Reed.

5) I had just enough salary to plug in the red-hot Ryan Braun going up against homer-prone Ian Kennedy for my final hitter spot.

Breaking Down Favre’s Lineup:

1) He took just two Tigers (Miggy and a punt in Castellanos) and I feel like this is where I have an advantage on him in MLB. Through several previous games with him, I knew he would likely not pick up on the pricing being based on Chris Sale starting. This was an extreme lapse in judgment from a high volume player, and is a significant argument as to two things: the skill aspect of DFS and also the razor-thin margins that separate a decent player from an elite one. The Tiger miss was his biggest mistake of the night.

2) He rolled with DeJesus and Joyce against Kyle Gibson. I like the play on paper but was scared off of it myself as Gibson has had a roaring start to the season.

3) He also took two Giants in Posey and Pence, along with Chris Davis against Dickey. I liked all three of those plays and had them in varying spots tonight myself.

4) Favre went with my general strategy of one elite starter and two value options, taking Ryu, Volquez, and Milone.

How The Game Played Out:

1) The Tigers hitters were golden. Kinsler’s huge game gave me a massive boost and an early lead in the contest.

2) Favre still had a chance as the rest of my hitters didn’t perform well. In fact, if you remove the four Tigers the rest of my bats had a combined -0.25 points (and you don’t lose points for every out on DS, just for K’s and GIDP’s). Good games from the two Rays gave Favre a huge edge in the hitting scores, and these were by far his best plays of the night.

3) If you just consider the bats, I as down 11 points with just 2 starting pitchers compared to his 3. This is where my peg of the pitchers tonight was spot on. I said I wasn’t comfortable with any of the value options, so I varied up my strategy. Favre’s pitchers were all mediocre at best and none of them topped six fantasy points. Even though I used a reliever who didn’t even pitch, Price and Verlander were amazing. Price’s complete game victory provided me with more points than Favre’s entire pitching staff, and a solid game from Verlander was icing on the cake. Varying from my normal pitching strategy worked like a charm, and I think there’s solid evidence this year to merit taking a reliever on DraftStreet as they have tightened up the pitcher pricing a lot this season.

FINAL SCORECARDS 59, FAVRE 49.25. CARDS LEADS SERIES 1-0.

NEXT GAME – Wednesday, April 24th

About the Author

stlcardinals84
Justin Van Zuiden (stlcardinals84)

Justin Van Zuiden (aka stlcardinals84) is a longtime RotoGrinders contributor and show host. He’s appeared in numerous Live Finals, has logged countless 6-figure wins in a host of different sports (including 5 in PGA), and is a former DFS Writer of the Year Nominee by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association. You can find Justin’s ‘Covering The Bases’ series on weekends during the MLB season. He is also a main contributor of sports betting picks at our sister site, ScoresAndOdds, and is a co-host on the RotoGrinders Game Night show on SiriusXM. Follow Justin on Twitter – @stlcardinals84