MLB $1M Championship Series Main Event Review: Tuesday, August 30th
The Grinder review series will provide the reader with a breakdown of the exposures of “top of the leaderboard” players, the top single-entry lineup, and a comparison between all single entry lineups and professionals for large slate and massive prize pool GPPs.
Today we looked at the $1M Championship Series Main Event [$200K to 1st!] on DraftKings with a buy-in of $444.
Multi-Entry Grinders of the Game
In the relatively small and high buy-in Main Event, ChipotleAddict spread out his ownership evenly across a few main teams: BAL, CIN, CLE, DET, LAA, & WAS. One of the big reasons leading to his cash rate of 46.7% was that he absolutely crushed his pitching ownership. Max Scherzer, Collin McHugh, and Seth Lugo all had great outings (THE BAT projections: 2.17 pts/$, 3.48 pts/$, and 3.86 pts/$ respectively; Scherzer was projected as the best $10k+ pitcher).
Papagates employed a similiar strategy, but instead of owning several individual players from various other teams, he completed 2-team stacks and used a handful of singles from NYM, SEA, STL, & TB. The choice of taking Tomlin (-4.45 DK points) at such a high % over McHugh or Lugo cost him a fair bit, but he still managed to secure a 44.0% cash rate. An extended ownership in several key bats helped him get over the pitching hump and into two top-10 finishes: Eugenio Suárez (16 DK points; ‘THE BAT’ Proj: 2.12 pts/$), Steve Pearce (16 DK points; Proj: 2.32 pts/$), Mike Trout (17 DK points; Proj: 2.19 pts/$).
Without the need for max entries, shawnzhan landed a 2nd and 14th place finish with just four lineups. With not many high scoring games on the slate, shawnzhan hit on the key bats from DET/CLE. He will be wondering ‘what if’, as just nine points away from 1st place, he had Rob Segedin earn a doughnut due to a postponed game.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
Back to chalk pitching, Ajv174 ran away with 1st place by over eight points. He benefited from a small TEX team stack that had been relatively quiet as of late combined with some Angels: C.J. Cron, Kole Calhoun, Andrelton Simmons, and Mike Trout (who is always a good option). At an even $50,000 in salary, Ajv174 used every last cent (even with two bats scoring 0 and 3) to take down a payday of $200k.
Single-Entry vs. ChipotleAddict/papagates/shawnzhan
Out of 2500 entries in the Championship Series Main Event, 488 of those entries (19.5%) were entered courtesy of players using a single bullet. The table below compares the exposures of those single entries to the exposures of ChipotleAddict, papagates, shawnzhan, and 40 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ leaderboard:
