Rise & Grind: Friday, July 3rd
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
FanDuel Lineup Indicator – It has finally happened! FanDuel has announced some sweeping changes to their draft screen. If you open up FanDuel this evening, you will notice players’ lineup is now displayed next to their name. This is very much a welcome change as building last second or multiple lineups now becomes much simpler. FanDuel didn’t stop there though; they also made some other improvements. When you get down to the last player or two, FanDuel will highlight a player’s salary in red if selecting that player would put you over the salary cap. Last but not least, FanDuel has built in a fail-safe on the lineup screen. If you build a partial lineup and accidentally close the contest, your lineup will be saved and pop-up in the next contest you try to enter. This is great for if your computer crashes or even if you want to build multiple teams around the same core. For building around a core of four players, enter those four in a lineup and then click on the lobby to leave the contest. In the lobby hold down the ctrl key and click on a few different contests. This will open a new tab for each contest that will already have your core players pre-loaded. Just fill in the rest and submit. You are welcome! Now you can multi-entry like a pro and even become so fast at it that people will accuse you of using a script. Feel free to give it a try in tonight’s $3 Fantasy Baseball Bracket Qualifier.
Bracket Qualifiers – Speaking of Bracket Qualifiers, both FanDuel and DraftKings are running Bracket Qualifiers right now. The aforementioned FanDuel version is in the qualifying stage. When qualifying is complete on July 28th, 64 players will compete for their share of $328,000 with a top prize of $60,000 being handed out. You can read more about it here. Not to be outdone, DraftKIngs is also running their version of a bracket contest known as the King’s Cup. This contest allowed for 24 direct buy-ins and the remaining eight will be at-large bids. Once the field is set, competition begins July 17th with a World Cup style competition. There will be a group stage where each team in the group of four plays head-to-head. The winner of each group will advance to a single-elimination knockout stage. Competition will continue until someone takes home the top prize of $50,000. You can read more about the King’s Cup here.
Tiger Woods is Back! – Have you checked the standings in the Greenbrier Classic yet? A familiar name is tied for 17th at -4. Yes, that is Tiger Woods. I was a little shocked to see Tiger playing like Tiger again, so I did some research to determine if we are likely to see the dominant version of Tiger Woods. A few months back, Tiger Woods broke up with Lindsey Vonn after three years together. At the time, many speculated that he must have cheated on her. After all, Tiger was cheating on Elin Nordegren often during his marriage.While I don’t condone cheating, Tiger was playing his most dominant golf during those years. I’ve contented for a while that we need the womanizing Tiger back. Well, this week rumors surfaced that Woods cheated with (NSFW) Amanda Dufner. Hopefully, you understand what NFSW means. That was “Not Safe For Work” – if you clicked on the link though, I’m not sorry. Amanda is beautiful, and this confirms my suspicions that Tiger is indeed back. There is just one problem though. Amanda Dufner used to be married to Jason Dufner, who is also a professional golfer. Keep an eye on this situation going forward. A Woods/Dufner match play group would be a #NarrativeStreet treasure trove. It would be “Mr. Steal Your Girl” versus possibly the greatest #Revenge play ever. If you get a chance, try to watch some of Tiger’s round today and decide for yourself if he has his swagger back. He tees off at 1:10 PM ET.
NBA Free Agency – 2015 has been a good year to be an NBA free agent. Big names like Wes Matthews ($64M), Greg Monroe ($50M), Draymond Green ($85M), Tyson Chandler ($52M), and Iman Shumpert ($40M) cashed in huge. Wait a minute, Iman Shumpert got $40M? How much does league MVP Stephen Curry make? Let’s see, it appears he signed a deal in 2012 for four years at $44M. This makes complete sense, Iman Shumpert now makes slightly less than the league MVP. So far the only free agent not to land a massive contract is J.R. Smith. With Smith, the reason could possibly be his approach. He’s been using his patented, You trying to get the pipe? line on league executives but to no avail. While free agency is exciting, some of these contracts will no doubt cripple the future of some teams (looking at you Cavs). If you are searching for the silver lining, it is that if they wanted, the NBA free agents could bail out Greece if they wanted to.
Big Winners – NBA free agency offered its share of winners and losers but so did DFS. Tommyg1979 took down the FD WFBC qualifier, rholley78 won the DK Payoff Pitch, emsbro won the Perfect Game, giannagino won the Moonshot, hoffytime won the Payoff Pitch (early), fbbbeast won the Perfect game (early), eck2b won the Gold Glove, and bcalicore took down the King of the Hill Qualifier. He will take on rayofhope, who defeated himself last night in the KOTH H2H. For the rest of yesterday’s links, check this thread.
On The Menu
MLB Action – With 13 games starting at 7:05 ET or later, we have another super-sized slate. The folks here at RotoGrinders have you covered. DB730 already has the Daily Fantasy Fix podcast posted. Later today you can expect the MLB Grind Down, Six-Pack, Advanced Pitching Stats, and Starting Pitcher Breakdown. If you are an incentives member, JMToWin already has his MLB Edge posted as well. Once you’e had your fill of content for the day, you can kick back this afternoon and catch 3.5 hours of GrindersLive. It kicks off at 3:30 ET with Hoop and DraftCheat followed by Gabey, Pepsi, and Zach Miner at 4:30, then Dean and Al at 5:30 and EMac at 6:30.
MLB GPPs – With a super-sized slate, you already know the GPPs will be super-sized as well. FanDuel is offering a $150K Grand Slam, $250K Monster, $100K Rally, $60K Squeeze, and $35K Slugger. They also have a WFBC Qualifier, Boston Qualifier, and three bracket qualifiers at $3, $10, and $25. If DraftKings is more your style, they have a $250K Perfect Game, $150K Payoff Pitch, $110K Moonshot, and $45K Gold Glove. Those contests are in addition to a FBWC qualifier at $1000 a King’s Cup Qualifier at $5, and numerous ticket qualifiers to future events. On the smaller sites, FantasyAces is running a FABC qualifier and FantasyFeud is running a MLB Championship Qualifier. There will also be plenty of overlay on Feud and Aces along with the rest of the smaller sites such as Victiv.
#NarrativeStreet – If you are hoping to take down some of the big GPPs I just mentioned, you will need to find a way to differentiate your lineup. Here are some #NarratieStreet plays who may have a little extra motivation. Tonight will be a #MilestoneWatch kind of night. Chase Headley needs two hits to reach 1,000, Aaron Hill needs one HR to reach 150, David DeJesus and David Murphy each need one HR to reach 100, and Clayton Kershaw needs two strikeouts to move into 170th place all time. Okay, the Kershaw one was a stretch; you don’t need a narrative to play Kershaw against the Mets. Last but not least we check in with the #BvPPlayOfTheDay. Plenty of players have good numbers in the Daily Batter Hub but one really stands out. Joe Mauer has three dongs in 26 at-bats against Jeremy Guhrie. Those dongs go along with his six singles and eight walks. Mauer should either be on base or hit a dong if BvP can be trusted.
Bottom Line – It’s is Fourth of July weekend. Hopefully you can take a few minutes to enjoy the fireworks this weekend. There should even be some DFS fireworks tonight with Kyle Kendrick and John Danks on the bump. Last but not least, this Sunday is Stephen Strasburg #BobblheadDay. If somehow the Nats pitch him Sunday instead of tomorrow, you need to fire up Stras with confidence. That’s it for now. Let’s get out there and win some money!