Rise & Grind: Friday, May 1st
Welcome to the RotoGrinders cup o’morning joe. Start your day off right here, as we sort through the yesterday’s happenings and take a peek at the upcoming DFS day.
In Case You Missed It
Run For the Roses – The most exciting weekend is sports kicks off tomorrow. Within 48 hours, sports fans can watch The Kentucky Derby, Mayweather/Pacquiao, The NFL Draft, Game 7 of Spurs/Clippers, Four Playoff Hockey Games, Talladega, and the normal amount of MLB games. In short, grab your remote, toss some meats on the grill, crack open a cold one and enjoy. We won’t see another weekend with this many marquee events the rest of this year. If you want to wager some of your money on these events RotoGrinders has a sweet promotion for you. Try our Derby Jackpot this weekend. If you make a deposit through the RotoGrinders link you get two free $10 wagers and an entry in a $200 cash drawing. I took a quick peek at the debry odds for you. The chalk pick is American Pharoah at 5-2, but around here we love a long shot. I’m throwing my support behind El Kabeir at 30-1. P.S. I just saw that El Kabeir is now a race-time decision with a bruised foot. I guess horse racing is just like every DFS sport.
Fight of the Century – If you don’t share my affinity for betting longshots, you can bet your hard earned money on something a little safer. Floyd Mayweather will put his undefeated record on the line against Manny Pacquiao at the MGM in Las Vegas. If you want to watch this fight, but weren’t lucky enough to win the trip packages from FanDuel or DraftKings, you can still catch the Pay-Per-View. If you are planning to save money and watch at a bar, make sure to call ahead. Fewer than 7% of Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants will show the fight due to a $5,100 pricetag. Many of the restaurants that are showing it will have a $20 cover charge.
NFL Draft – Hopefully, you locked in your entry to the FanDuel draft contest last night. In case you are wondering, the results are posted in this Google doc. Sadly, your humble columnist bought into the Eagles trade hype and guessed with the 50% who thought the second pick would be traded. Thankfully, common sense reigned, so us Eagles fan can go back to discussing our three-headed monster at QB known as Bradford-Sanchez-Tebow. As far as the rest of the draft, you can get #HotTakes on this draft all over Twitter. I’m more interested in the stories than the analytics though. For example, I think it’s fascinating that Jameis Winston can now afford to pay for his crab legs and Shane Ray can put his marijuana problems behind him by going to a state where possession is legal. These are the kind of stories that make following the NFL so great.
Come Sale Away With Me – If you weren’t busy watching the draft last night, you were probably on Twitter live-tilting Chris Sale. On the surface, the Twins .275 wOBA versus right-handers and 23% K rate seemed like a matchup made in heaven. The result was anything but heavenly though. Sale lasted just three innings, allowing eight earned runs, and scored one less FanDuel point than I did. To help begin the healing process, let’s do something fun. If you have a team that scored in the negatives on FanDuel, tweet a screenshot to @RotoGrinders with hashtag #ThatShipSaled and I will see if I can arrange something for the worst team. Maybe we have a RotoGrinders t-shirt with a bunch of holes in it laying around. Note: this needs to be your team, don’t just go to the bottom of a GPP and screenshot someone else’s team.
Dong Report – If you were hoping to get some dongs to make up for picking Sale, things didn’t go well there either. There were a total of eight dongs hit yesterday but three of those were in the early games. The longest dong belonged to Eric Hosmer at 432 feet, while the shortest belonged to Brian Dozier at 384 feet.
On The Menu
NBA/NHL Tonight – I’m lumping these two together because there isn’t much to say. The NBA offers a split-slate with just one game tonight and the NHL is offering a two-game slate. Besides the Grind Down, there will not be any content on the front page for either of these sports, as most RG experts are focused on MLB tonight. You can always join the strategy discussion in the forums though. Here is a link to the NBA Strategy Thread.
MLB Tonight – There are 15 MLB games tonight with all but one starting at 7:05 EST or later. That means another super-sized Friday across the industry. Besides the normal GPPs, FanDuel, DraftKings, and FantasyAces are all running live event qualifiers. A couple of other sites have contests worth checking out. Victiv is running a rake-free MLB contest that awards entry to their upcoming PGA contest as well as cash. FantasyFeud has also been consistently overlaying their big GPPs. There is lots of money to be made all across the industry not just on the big sites.
If you want a piece of that money, RotoGrinders stands ready to help. You can expect the full assortment of MLB content, including Advanced Pitching Stats, the MLB Grind Down, GPP Plays, Six-Pack and so much more. If you don’t have time to get through all those articles, that’s okay, just catch one of the live shows on GrindersLive. Things kick off at 3:30 EST with CSURam88 and DraftCheat, They will be followed by Gabey and Pepsi7 at 4:30 and then Al_Smizzle and EMac at 5:30. You can also catch DB730 and Dean on Sirius/XM.
#NarratveStreet – While you wait for the expert picks to start rolling in, we might as well take a stroll down Narrative Street. These are the picks that might offer a little extra motivation tonight. If you are playing the all-day slate, check the lineup for Scooter Gennett. If he’s in, fire him up for a #BirthdayGame. In the Red Sox/Yankees game, we have a Jocoby Ellsbury #RevengeGame and also an Alex Rodriguez #MilestoneWatch. Also on the #Milestone front, Evan Longoria needs just three hits to get to 1,000. You can lock that in.
Bottom Line – First off, you may have noticed there was not a big winners section today. I did browse through the links but I didn’t see anything of note. Feel free to take a look for yourself, and I apologize if I missed anyone. To make it up to you guys, here is an awesome forum thread to start your weekend off right. Our hero VinnyT87, leads us on a journey that begins as he loses his job but wins a small GPP. Instead of taking the money out, Vinny sets out on a journey in high stakes DFS. Along the way, Vinny hits a few scores, grabs some chicken nuggets, and even applies for a job at DraftKings. While the approach isn’t for everyone, I can’t knock the results. With that Grinders, it’s time to get the weekend started. As always, I will see you next Monday when we recap this weekend. Good luck!