MLB $500K Mega 8's Encore Review: Tuesday, May 9th
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 DraftKings GPPs.
This week, we looked at the $500K Mega 8’s Encore [$100K to 1st!] on DraftKings with a buy-in of $888 and maximum entry limit of 18 lineups per person.
Multi-Entry Grinders of the Game
DraftCheat rolled out Matt Andriese and Charlie Morton in all 18 lineups as they each had a home game against an opponent projected to score 3.5 and 3.6 runs respectively. His batting order heavily favored a number of Washington bats, stacking Daniel Murphy, Trea Turner, and Bryce Harper in a number of lineups. As both Bryce Harper and Trea Turner both underperformed, DraftCheat whiffed on all but one lineup. However, with a few outstanding low-owned plays (Yonder Alonso for 32 points at 8.8% ownership; Ben Gamel for 37 points at 4.0% ownership), that single lineup shot up the leader-boards and landed him 4th place for $20k.
Papagates concentrated on the ever popular and solid Max Scherzer, while taking another high-strikeout pitcher in Robbie Ray in a tougher match-up at home. He countered this with a near equal ownership in Justin Verlander, who had a number of solid outings with a two blowups mixed in. Instead of saving salary on pitching and opting for higher-tier batting matchups, the expensive pitching options forced Papgates to focus on more middle of the road offenses. He stacked Milwaukee liberally and sprinkled in individual studs and a number of Detroit Tigers. While most of his Brewers wallowed in mediocrity, Keon Broxton made up the slack with 42 points off a home run, triple, stolen base, etc. Papa finished with a cash rate of 77.8% and took down five of the top-10 finishes.
Tommyg1979 took a spread out approach with only four lineups in which he fared great in two and absolutely tanked two others (164.3, 163.35, 82.5, 71.3 point totals). Outside of Ariel Miranda, he hit on overall pitching, while his Boston and Tampa Bay 5-man stacks panned out. He took down both the 15th and 17th place finishes.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
Cjbeast1 came home with 3rd place by making value on cheap pitching and paying up on the bats to hit it home. He didn’t specifically on one team, but mixed in singles with a 2-man Nationals and 2-man Red Sox stack. He didn’t require those low-owned plays like papagates, but hovered around the 8% mark for a a number of players and just made the right picks. He was able to clear $25k on the single lineup.
Single-Entry vs. DraftCheat/Papagates/Tommyg1979
Out of 625 entries in play, 30.1% of those entries were entered courtesy of players using a single bullet. The table below compares the exposures of those single entries to the above multi-entry grinders and 70 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ leaderboard:
