Rise & Grind: Friday, April 24th
Welcome to the RotoGrinders cup o’morning joe. Start your day off right here, as we sort through yesterday’s happenings and take a peek at the upcoming DFS day.
In Case You Missed It
DraftKings Fantasy Baseball World Championship – Yesterday was a huge day on the industry news front. While the actual announcement isn’t a surprise, we finally know the details of the DraftKings Fantasy Baseball World Championship. The FBWC will run on August 15th in Las Vegas. Sixty qualifiers will compete for their share of $3 Million in prizes including $1 Million to first place. Players who qualify for the event receive a four-day trip to Las Vegas that will include access to Golf, ATV racing, and other VIP events. Qualifiers start tonight with a $1000 entry but others will run throughout the summer at $33, $300, and $1000. You can also play in satellites to these contests for as little as $0.25.
Mayweather vs. Pacquiao – Possibly the most anticipated match in boxing history will take place next Saturday. Floyd Mayweather will fight Manny Pacquiao at the MGM in Las Vegas. If you want to attend this event tickets are selling for over $6000. If that’s a little out of your price range, try winning one on FanDuel for only $2. FanDuel signed an advertising deal to have its name on the belt line of Mayweather’s trunks during the fight. The deal includes branding throughout the weekend as well as six tickets to the event which are valued at $10,000 each. FanDuel will be running contests over the next three days to award those trips to DFS players. The first qualifier is in the lobby right now at the $2 price point.
Vroom Vroom – With the recent additions of MMA and Soccer, the only major sport not offered by DraftKings is NASCAR. It appears that will change very soon. The DraftKings lobby now includes a drop-down for “NAS” and the rules section includes NASCAR. More details will be coming over the next few weeks. There is some speculation that contests might be available for Talladega. I’m not 100% sure what DFS NASCAR research will include, but I have already started my twitter list. I’m now following Did Danica Crash? and you should as well for live updates as soon as Danica Patrick crashes each week.
InsideEdge Filter – I know, I know, so much industry news today. This is the last item, I promise. If you want to win some of the millions mentioned above this is probably the most important item in today’s column. RotoGrinders already had the best lineup page in the industry but it got a little better this week. You have always been able to filter players by position and salary for the site of your choice. Now you can take it a step further and filter by InsideEdge rating. If you aren’t familiar with InsideEdge, they are the site that provides the premium Batter vs. Pitcher Type tool in the Daily Research tab. InsideEdge also provides a rating between one and five stars for each player. As an example of what I’m talking about, open yesterday’s lineup page in a new tab. You see the button at the top right labeled Filters? Click on that, and then click on the 5-star logo in the filters section. You will notice all players without a 5-star rating are faded out. You can click on any player for a quick blurb from Inside Edge. (Please note that the link above is yesterday’s lineup page. On that page players are still rated properly for yesterday but their blurb has been updated for today.) Yesterday, Giancarlo Stanton had a five star rating based on his matchup with McGowan. If you click on his name, you get today’s blurb which is again a 5-star matchup. The note reads, “Matchup vs. Jordan Zimmermann: Stanton is slugging .654 against Zimmermann in their last 31 head-to-head PA’s.” This feature is available to both paid and free members. Check it out today and let Riley know in this thread if you have any questions.
The Royal Treatment – With most of Chicago fixated on the Bulls and Blackhawks playoff games, the White Sox and Royals game was relegated to third-fiddle status. Even though it wasn’t a playoff game this contest provided plenty of excitement. If you read the Rise and Grind on Monday, you already know baseball has lots of unwritten rules and that none of them make any sense. You also know that Yordano Ventura can be a bit of a hothead. Last night, tensions began to rise when Chris Sale hit Lorenzo Cain in the fourth inning and Mike Moustakas in the fifth. Those tensions simmered until the seventh inning when they finally exploded. Adam Eaton hit a comebacker right at Yordano Ventura and the two exchanged words as the benches cleared. When all was said and done, Sale, Samardzija, Eaton, Cain and Ventura were ejected. For those keeping score, this is the fourth start for Ventura and he has left early in each one. Twice he left because of injury, and twice because of ejection. Needless to say, any time you select Yordano, “it’s an adVentura.” See what I did there? Whatever, tough crowd.
The Dong Report – After plenty of round-trippers on Wednesday, last not did not have many to offer. There were only twelve dongs hit including both the day and night games. Manny Machado hit two of them, or as it is known here, he double-donged. Josh Donaldson had the longest dong and it was a monster at 469 feet. The shortest dong belonged two Stanton at 369 feet but the distance doesn’t really do it justice. You needed to see that one live to appreciate it. On the other end of the spectrum, the most generous pitchers were Homer Bailey and Josh Vogelsong who each allowed two dongs.
The Golden Boy – If you didn’t watch the NBA playoffs last night, you missed out on two exciting games plus Cleveland and Boston (it was ok to miss that one). The Bulls defeated the Bucks 113-106 in double overtime while the Warriors defeated the Pelicans 123-119 in single overtime. At one point, the Warriors were down 20 points in the 4th. They rallied and Steph Curry tied the game on a three-pointer that is a strong candidate for play of the year. Once you are finished here, jump over to ESPN and watch it. You won’t be disappointed.
On The Menu
NBA Tonight – The first round of the playoffs continues tonight with three games. DFS players also have the option to play the two-day set and include tomorrow’s games as well. As always you can expect the NBA Grind Down later today but in the meantime you should read about noted Connect Four champion Rajon Rondo If you don’t have time to head down the rabbit hole I just linked, I can provide the cliff notes here. Rajon Rondo is the most competitive guy you will ever meet. In his spare time, he visits sick children at hospitals and smokes them at Connect Four while telling them “no mercy”. He even beat Coach Carlisle once (maybe that’s why Carlisle is mad at him). When asked about it Carlisle said, “He got all excited afterward. I told him to learn how to make a shot.” I was all excited to find the narrative angle here and then it was suddenly announced that Rondo is out for the year with a back injury. That announcement came yesterday but now sources are saying Rondo will play tonight. My guess is that Rondo and Carlisle are playing a winner takes all connect four match this afternoon. Winner gets to coach tonight, loser goes home. Stay tuned folks.
NHL Tonight – The NHL Playoffs also continue round one tonight. There are three games on the ice. Two of the games are elimination games as Pittsburgh and Ottowa are both down 3-1. While it isn’t life-changing money, there are some decent sized GPPs on both FanDuel and DraftKings for the taking.
MLB Tonight – With fifteen games on the schedule tonight offers another super-sized slate. As always you can expect the MLB Grind Down, Starting Pitcher Report, Advanced Stats, Hitter Breakdown, GPP Plays, the Six-Pack and more. The advice you really need though is which players might have a little extra motivation tonight. On the #BirthdayGame front, Steven Souza, Wellington Castillo, and Carlos Beltran chose this day to be born. You can give all of them a slight bump tonight. On the #revenge front, Aaron Harang returns to Atlanta. Other notable narratives include the Giants’ bats being cursed by the first game at Coors and of course we can’t forget about trouble brewing between the White Sox and Royals. On a semi-serious note, be careful with that game, if the umpire warns both teams before the game the starting pitchers may not be able to pitch inside or could possibly get ejected. Be sure to tune into GrindersLive tonight for an actual expert opinion on that.
The Bottom Line – MMA doesn’t always get the attention it deserves from Grinders. The sport still continues to grow and there plenty of good advice on this site if you would like to learn. An example of that is bbbomb’s Beat Down. There is an extra-special reason to try out UFC this weekend though. DraftKings is running a VIP Experience Qualifier this weekend. For only $27 you can win a trip to Vegas for UFC 187 and a meet and greet with Dana White. These VIP Experience qualifiers always seem to overlay. Give bbbomb’s picks a read and show UFC some love this weekend. You could end up winning an awesome weekend in Vegas. With that, it is time to bid goodbye for the weekend. Good luck out there this weekend Grinders. Let’s go win some cash and trip packages!