Breaking Down Maxdalury's Dominance in the DK MEGA Payoff Pitch
As maxdalury likes to say, I had a hunch my 721st team would be my best. Maxdalury and his 888 lineups absolutely dominated last night’s DraftKings $1 Million MEGA Payoff Pitch, taking home five of the top 10 spots and 29 of the top 100 spots, including the $100,000 first place prize. He took home more than $221,000 in prizes making him not only the highest paid fantasy MLB player on the evening, but the highest paid player in the baseball world, finishing ahead of Clayton Kershaw, who earns $190,000 per game.
Let’s take a look at how he did it.
First, maxdalury took a major stand on pitchers. He chose Kershaw (37.35 points) in 884 of his 888 lineups and paired him with Matt Shoemaker (24.75 points) in 859 of those 884 lineups.
Next, maxdalury doubled down on the Toronto Blue Jays’ bats. He had at least one Blue Jay in 505 of his 888 lineups and had 165 Blue Jays stacks (4+ hitters). Below is the breakdown of Blue Jays hitters in maxdalury’s lineups:
| Player | Points | maxdalury | Field |
|---|---|---|---|
| Josh Donaldson | 48 | 28.2% | 24.3% |
| Jose Bautista | 25 | 27.5% | 9.7% |
| Danny Valencia | 0 | 23.0% | 20.7% |
| Jose Reyes | 7 | 15.8% | 10.9% |
| Steve Tolleson | 7 | 14.6% | 3.5% |
| Edwin Encarnacion | 0 | 9.0% | 11.1% |
| Chris Colabello | 5 | 8.7% | 25.0% |
| Josh Thole | 19 | 7.1% | 2.2% |
| Kevin Pillar | 0 | 5.0% | 1.4% |
Finally, he filled out his lineups with top hitters:
| Player | Points | maxdalury | Field |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prince Fielder | 26 | 12.4% | 4.7% |
| Ryan Raburn | 21 | 64.2% | 10.2% |
| Denard Span | 17 | 23.9% | 4.9% |
| Joey Butler | 17 | 9.6% | 10.2% |
Many of you are thinking to yourself “I could do that if I had the bankroll.” Here are some stats highlighting maxdalury’s epic night:
• Maxdalury cashed 51% of his lineups. Of the 21 users who entered 100+ lineups, only one (AshyL4rry – 54%) had a higher percentage of lineups finish in the money.
• Only three of those 21 users turned a profit. The average user with 100+ entries lost $1,200, and two users lost more than $10,000.
• 10 of those 21 users didn’t have a single lineup finish in the top 1,000.
Now let’s take a look at the rest of the field:
| # of Entries | # of Users | % of Users | % of Lineups Cashed | Best Finish | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7,267 | 64.5% | 22.5% | 7 | -26% |
| 2 | 1,622 | 14.4% | 23.5% | 49 | -31% |
| 3 | 691 | 6.1% | 25.2% | 36 | -22% |
| 4 | 431 | 3.8% | 25.7% | 12 | -18% |
| 5 | 238 | 2.1% | 25.0% | 131 | -28% |
| 6-10 | 547 | 4.9% | 25.5% | 5 | -9% |
| 11-25 | 318 | 2.8% | 25.9% | 2 | 33% |
| 26-50 | 99 | 0.9% | 23.8% | 29 | -27% |
| 51-99 | 26 | 0.2% | 25.3% | 42 | -22% |
| 100+ | 21 | 0.2% | 25.7% | 1 | 117% |
The majority of users entered one or two lineups. The single-entry hero last night was jaebberwock, who finished seventh for $7,500 with a lineup of Kershaw, deGrom, Gonzalez, Reyes, Raburn, Montero, Walker, Venable, Donaldson and Butler.
There has been some discussion about how mass multi-entry and stacking affects the cash line in GPPs. The table below shows last night’s Payoff Pitch had the lowest cash line compared to the other big GPPs and 50/50s.
| Tournament | Buy-In | Cash Line |
|---|---|---|
| 50/50 | $300 | 147.25 |
| Gold Glove | $1,060 | 145.15 |
| 50/50 | $5 | 142.10 |
| 50/50 | $10 | 141.10 |
| 50/50 | $50 | 140.65 |
| Perfect Game | $300 | 140.15 |
| 50/50 | $100 | 139.45 |
| 50/50 | $25 | 135.25 |
| Moonshot | $3 | 132.90 |
| Payoff Pitch | $27 | 131.45 |
The $1 Million MEGA Payoff Pitch attracted approximately 11,300 users. To put that in perspective, the millionaire series DK ran for NFL attracted 30,000-35,000 users per week, and the PGA millionaire game for the Masters last month attracted nearly 50,000 users.
So what’s the takeaway from all this? Maxdalury is an absolute beast at mass multi-entry tournaments. With all the discussion about multi-entry and stacking, he said it best in a tweet earlier today: “Was just one of those days where all my core went off.”