MLB $700K Home Run Review: Tuesday, April 18th
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 $700K Home Run [$100K to 1st!] on DraftKings with a buy-in of $444 and maximum entry limit of 150 lineups per person.
Multi-Entry Grinders of the Game
As expected, PetrGibbons followed the trend of picking the high-upside, high-K-rate pitchers to round out his pitching ownership. As some might avoid Scherzer due to his high salary, Petr avoided some of the most expensive stacks on the slate (Orioles, Cubs) and could afford to slot him in safely. Pairing Scherzer/Yu with a healthy amount of Luis Severino saved a good chunk of salary and allowed him to still see a good amount of ownership between middle projected game totals on the night (Indians, Marlins, Mets, Giants, Rays, Blue Jays). With strategy, Petr definitely had a wide range of point totals, from a 20th place 158.95 to a 1663th place 58.65. However these bets paid off as he put another two lineups inside the top-50 and cleared the GPP average 21.4% cash rate by 14% (35% cash rate); 20 total lineups.
Windchimesrrude on the other hand faded Severino completely and went with another strikeout-heavy pitcher in Michael Fulmer (even matchup against Tampa Bay). The slumping Joe Musgrove wasn’t able to pick up much steam either against the Angels as he allowed five earned runs in five innings (five strikeouts). Even with the underwhelming performance by Musgrove, chimes was able to ride his Cincinnati Reds stack to an 11th place finish as Votto and Duvall each hit one out of the park. Chimes cashed on five of his six lineups as he hit on Rockies, Reds, and Blue Jays stacks.
Youdacao nearly had a full fade on Scherzer as he just included him on one of his 52 lineups. It didn’t hurt him as Max had an average 26.75 point night, good for 2.09x pts/k$. What did hurt him however, was Yu Darvish giving up four earned runs in five and a third innings, while just striking out four batters (60% ownership). What was even more impressive was that despite the poor Darvish outing, youdacao’s top four lineups used him and he still placed 5th, 7th, 9th, and 30th for a nice payday. Similar to chimes, youdacao featured a Cincinnati Reds stack in his top finishes, fielding the 1/2/3/4/8, 1/2/3/4/6, and 2/3/4/5/6 orders respectively.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
Cohenspicks isn’t cut from the standard mold of the typical single-entry player. He is ranked 68th place on Rotogrinders’ MLB leaderboards and 160th overall. A number of the Cleveland batters didn’t have favorable batter vs. pitcher stats against Phil Hughes and the overall neutral matchup allowed them to go relatively under-owned. Cohen matched them up with the two value pitchers on the night and was able to pull out 3rd place for $30k.
Single-Entry vs. PetrGibbons/windchimesRrude/youdacao
Out of 1751 entries in play, 24.3% 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:
