Rise & Grind: Thursday, June 11th
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
FantasyAces Merger – This news is a few days old, but just in case you missed it, FantasyAces agreed to merge with DraftTeam. This move will allow FantasyAces to absorb DraftTeam’s user base when the deal is completed in late August. This also means that FantasyAces is the first publicly traded stand-alone DFS company. (DraftDay is publicly traded under MGT but DFS is only a portion of what MGT does). Congratulations to the guys at FantasyAces on the big news and continued growth.
Auto-Linked Player Names – Riley and the guys on the RotoGrinders development team are constantly working to improve the site. Sometimes the changes are small but still very exciting. As of yesterday, player profiles pages will now be automatically linked in articles, blogs, and the forums. For example, if you are discussing Matt Harvey in the forums, just typing his name will automatically link to his player page. For some it may induce vomiting if they click on the link and notice Harvey’s game log from last night. You can’t say you weren’t warned though; InsideEdge had Harvey rated at two stars yesterday. Go ahead and click on his name and read the note.
The Growth of DFS – If you found your way into the DFS community over the last year or two, you may not even realize that million dollar prize pools weren’t always a thing. This past NBA season, both FanDuel and DraftKings were running $200K GPPs at the $25 and $27 price points. Contests that large in previous seasons only came around once a month at best. To help everyone visualize the growth of DFS, Jonan and the RG marketing team have posted a pretty cool infographic at this link. As an example of what the graphic shows, FanDuel reported 3,158 paid/active members in 1Q 2011. If you fast forward to 4Q 2014, just three years later, the paid/active number becomes 1,012,265. There are several other examples of the explosive growth of DFS in the graphic. Give it a click when you get a second and prepare to be amazed.
Stanley Cup Finals – The Stanley Cup Finals between Chicago and Tampa Bay continued last night. If you haven’t had a chance to watch, this has been an exciting series that is now tied 2-2. Last night, Brandon Saad’s goal six minutes into the third period turned out to be the difference maker. The Lightning certainly had their chances to win the game, including this shot. Ultimately, the Lightning didn’t get the job done, so we now have a three-game series going forward. If you are interested in watching, but don’t already have a rooting interest, I suggest picking a side based on which fan base is less obnoxious. On one side, we have the Blackhawks’ fans that are known for cheering during the national anthem. On the other side, the Lightning will only sell playoff tickets to Florida residents and have banned opposing team apparel in certain sections of the arena. Even though restricting apparel and tickets is a pansy way to ensure home-ice advantage, cheering during the national anthem is more obnoxious. I’m taking the Lightning in seven games. That seventh game will be interesting though. We will see if Blackhawks fans can successfully invade Amalie Arena and cheer over the national anthem while not being allowed to wear Blackhawks jerseys.
NBA Finals – There is no DFS angle here, but Game 4 of the NBA Finals is tonight. When Kyrie Irving went down with an injury during overtime of Game 1, hope looked dim for Cleveland. The Cavaliers went on to lose that game and many including myself wrote the Cavaliers off. We even made jokes like, “The Cavs are just LeBron James plus the Knicks.” Surely, LeBron couldn’t win a seven-game series against the league MVP who also plays on the league’s best regular season team. Then it happened; LeBron put the Cavs on his back while Steph Curry seemingly morphed into 1994 John Starks. The Finals version of Steph Curry has been nothing like the regular season Steph Curry. Yesterday I was pondering what could be wrong with Curry when it suddenly hit me. Steph Curry had an amazing regular season and then has mostly disappeared in the playoffs. Where have we seen this before? Ahhh, it all makes sense now.
MLB Recap – It was a dark night in DFS if you rostered The Dark Knight. Matt Harvey allowed three dongs to the Giants en route to scoring one FanDuel point and negative one DraftKings point. The only way to describe the rage that ensued throughout the DFS community is this Torii Hunter GIF. That’s Torii staging a protest at home plate after getting tossed. After looking at tonight’s pitching slate, combined with last night’s, I pretty much feel the same way Torii does. Luckily, the bat boy had Torii covered. When he is done there, maybe the bat boy can pick up the pieces of Matt Harvey and my cash games. Last night wasn’t all bad news though. There were a few bright spots. Paul Goldschmidt was worth his salary in gold, scoring 29 DraftKings points, and the Cubs stack went off for 12 runs. Hopefully, you managed to get on the right side of those performances. If not, you can join me in channeling our inner Bill Belichick. No I don’t mean let’s deflate the balls; let’s move on to tonight. That’s what Bill would do.
On The Menu
MLB Tonight – If you thought pitching went poorly last night, tonight doesn’t offer much of a reprieve. There are nine games on the schedule, split as three early and six late. The late slate is highlighted by amazing options such as Tsuyoshi Wada and, well actually that’s pretty much it. Okay, I’m sort of kidding about that. There are a few other choices but I will leave the analysis to the experts such as Notorious. Check back later today for all of Notorious’ thoughts in the MLB Grind Down.
#NarrativeStreet – With the ugly options at starting pitcher, we are going to need to make up points somewhere tonight. I recommend taking a look at the narratives surrounding certain players to identify those with a little extra motivation. For example, if he is in the lineup, Brock Holt gets a boost as today is a #BirthdayGame. Also in the early set, Prince Fielder is on a #MilestoneWatch as he needs two dongs to get to 300. If you fade him and lose because of his double-dong, don’t say I didn’t warn you. On the #Revenge front, the Padres have robbed us of a Double-Upton #RevengeGame as neither Melvin or Justin are in the lineup. I wouldn’t count out the idea of a pinch-hit dong for one or both of them though.
Bottom Line – If you play on DraftKings and haven’t downloaded the latest update to the DK app, you are missing out. Jordan Mendell and the app team are doing some amazing work. The latest version of the app includes lineup indicators, depth charts, apple watch integration, and a little trophy that pops up when you win. That isn’t all though. The app is now integrated with MLB At Bat. This means that Siri can announce when your player is at bat or scores. For more details, check out Jordan’s timeline and why not toss him a follow while you are there?
That’s it for today Grinders. I hope you enjoyed the column and as always, see you tomorrow!