Rise & Grind: Monday, June 8th
Welcome to the RotoGrinders cup o’morning joe. Start your day off right here, as we sort through the weekend’s happenings and take a peek at the upcoming DFS day.
In Case You Missed It
Belmont Stakes – Having won both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, American Pharaoh had a chance to make history Saturday at the Belmont Stakes. As it turned out, Pharaoh ran up front the entire race and pulled away on the final straightaway. DraftKings was there as Pharaoh crossed the finish line. Heck, who am I kidding? DraftKings was everywhere at the Belmont Stakes. Even in the post-race interview with Bob Baffert, you may recognize someone in the background of this video. The person holding the phone with a DK logo is former RG employee Ethan Haskell. Who’s that guy smiling and nodding behind Baffert? Well, that’s none other than Jonathan Bales, who is a DK pro and also guest writer here at RotoGrinders. Overall it was an excellent weekend to watch Pharoah make history, and DraftKings definitely got their money worth out of their sponsorship deal.
Build Better Lineups – Have you ever started a forum thread here on RotoGrinders complaining about why you can’t win at DFS? If you have, I can guarantee at least one person has responded with, “Why don’t you just build better lineups?” or something similar. In my opinion, it is pretty good advice. In fact, the same advice is starting to pop up other places. For example, a DFS player by the name of Steve decided to tweet Justin Thomas over the weekend to express his displeasure with Justin missing the cut. Justin had some strong advice for our friend Steve: you should’ve have picked better. There you have it folks, when the guy you selected tells you he was a dumb choice, you know you have to build better lineups.
King James and Friends – If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me re-tweet a status on Friday. It said, “The Cavs are down to basically LeBron plus the Knicks.” If you think about it, there is a lot of truth in that tweet. The Cavs are relying on a team that includes JR Smith, Iman Shumpert, and Timofey Mozgov, who are all former Knicks. Many have asked whether LeBron could win a championship with a lottery team around him. Last night, LeBron and the New York Knick castoffs managed to steal one from Golden State. The Cavs led most of the game until the fourth quarter when JR Smith tried to give the game away. Smith gave two boneheaded fouls in the fourth which surely aided the Warriors 11-point comeback. Sadly, we can’t label Smith as the bonehead of the night though. As I mentioned, this game went to overtime. If the Warriors had just scored two more points they could have won this game. If only they had an opportunity at the end of the third for an easy dunk. Oh wait, they did have that opportunity, and Marreese Speights missed it. At least he hustled back on defense and almost got a steal, well, sort of.
Big Winners – The story of the weekend was big events as both the Playboy Baseball Championship (PBC) and King of Boston (KOB) were held this weekend. In the PFBC, Jeff Mans and the guys from FantasyAlarm pulled off the win and took home the $100K paycheck. Over in the KOB, PetrGibbons claimed first place and $50,000. He wasn’t finished though, as he also won a WSOP main event package and an FWBC ticket. That’s roughly a $150,000 weekend. There were several other big winners over the weekend but they are far too numerous to name. If you are interested in taking a look for yourself, here are links for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
On The Menu
MLB Tournaments – With a larger than normal Monday slate, the Big Two have bumped up guarantees tonight. FanDuel is running a $150K Grand Slam, a $100K Rally, a $50K Squeeze, a $140K Monster, and a WFBC qualifier ($500). Over on DraftKings, the Summer Games continue as DraftKings has posted GPPs at $3, $9,$27, $300 and a FBWC qualifier. You can also join numerous satellites for tickets to the millionaire maker or future Summer Games events.
MLB Content – With eight games on the schedule, you can expect the usual articles and videos. Those will include Starting Pitcher Advanced Stats, MLB Grind Down, Six-Pack and more. If you are looking for some of the board picks, I suggest the following #NarrativeStreet plays; we don’t have any other than BvP plays. Freddie Freeman and Alex Rios get the BvP nod based on Top BvP Spilts from the Daily Batter Hub. Also, if you want another numbers based play, Chris Sale always gets amped up for the Astros. In three career starts versus Houston Sale notched, 14, 12, and 7 Ks.
Bottom Line – A few months back, one of the posters in the forums ran an NBA head-to-head contest. Grinder blitzology would like to run the same thing in MLB. If you are interested in joining, head to this forum thread and reserve yourself a space. It will be either a $5 or $10 buying and the rest of the details are still being worked out. Either way it should be fun.