Rise & Grind: Thursday, May 14th
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
Lineup Page Updates – The best lineup page in the industry got a little better yesterday. With filters for salary, BvP, splits, inside edge ratings, and Vegas odds, the lineup page was already a one-stop shop. Now it is even better. A link has been added to each team that will take you to Notorious’ thoughts in the Grind Down. I’m sure you already have the lineup page bookmarked, but at this point why not make it your homepage? Go ahead and do that now. I will wait. Click on internet options, general, then copy and paste the address and click apply. That’s going to save so many clicks. Speaking of clicks, why don’t you click on over to our Facebook page and enter the contest to win a $109 FABC qualifier ticket or RG T-shirt. While you are there, could you be a good Facebook friend and check on the Farmville crops? It’s the least you could do after we just made the lineup page even better for you.
Qualifier Roundup – If you enjoy sweating along with other Grinders, hopefully you didn’t miss out on the FanDuel WFBC sweats last night. On Tuesday, CheeseIsGood and biggameaims tied in the $50 WFBC qualifier. According to the rules, that meant a H2H tiebreaker where the winner walks away with a $48K seat and the loser gets $2.5K. The contest link is here. Cheese and Bigga had five of nine players in common, so we knew this would be tight right from the start. After the SF/HOU game ended, CIG was holding a one-point lead with Pujols and Aybar still playing. Cheese needed either of those players to get a hit to guarantee he couldn’t back into a tie or lose. Aybar delivered in the fifth with a double that more or less locked the contest up. Aybar and Pujols later added some insurance points that made the final score look more lopsided than it was. Don’t let the final score fool you – this was a great sweat.
The live final sweats weren’t over though. Gcnmoo and dinkpiece were in a tight battle in last night’s $100 WFBC qualifier. The same Aybar double that lifted CIG to victory also put dinkpiece in contention for a WFBC seat. At the end of the 9th in COL/LA, Gcnmoo held a one-point lead over dinkpiece. Each of them had one Angel on their roster. Dink had Aybar and gcnmoo had Calhoun. In the 10th, Aybar singled to left giving dink a 0.75 point lead. Things weren’t finished though, as the Angels failed to score. Dink needed to sweat the upcoming Calhoun at bat. In the bottom of the 11th, Calhoun singled to right, which regained the lead for gcnmoo and ultimately sealed the contest. Hopefully, some of you had your own sweats to follow, but if not, living vicariously through others is always pretty entertaining.
GPP Roundup – Even though winning live final qualifiers is exciting, nothing beats locking up some cold hard cash. I already detailed gcnmoo’s sweat above in the qualifier section. He also had that team in several GPPs. He placed second (x4) in the Monster and locked up four top ten spots in the Slam. Over on DraftKings, meddy1523 became the next KOTH challenger, TonyDunstWPT (yes, the poker player) won the Gold Glove, and took second in the Perfect Game. He narrowly edged out TeeJayorTJ in both contests. In smaller stakes, finsince82 took down the Payoff Pitch. For the rest of yesterday’s links, check out this forum thread.
NBA Playoffs – There were two playoff games last night, but only the first offered much excitement. Paul Pierce already defeated the Hawks once this series on a buzzer beater. When asked whether he called “bank” on his game-winner that bounced in off the backboard, Pierce responded, “No, I called game.” Last night, with 8.1 seconds left, Pierce knocked down a three-pointer to give the Wizards a 81-80 lead. Pierce then turned to the Hawks bench and yelled, “Series.” Al Horford had a different plan in mind though, as he responded with a clutch two-point shot that gave the Hawks the win.
MLB Roundup – Corey KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKluber (yes, there are 18 Ks in there) owned the night, fanning 18 Cardinals. It sadly mattered very little for DFS since the Indians felt the need to start their game at 6:05 ET. DFS players who wanted to enjoy Kluber’s domination had to play either the early only set that locked at 3:35, or play the 6:10 lock that didn’t offer any significant GPPs. What a waste of an epic performance. If you get time today, send some hate the Indians way for starting their game an hour too early. In other news, Mike Trout is pretty good at baseball. If you played Mike Trout last night, you didn’t get any extra points for this, but it was still fun to watch. Those two defensive plays are actually the reason for extra innings in LA, which gave dinkpiece false hope in his WFBC sweat. Dink, if you are reading this, blame Mike Trout for your pain.
Dong Report – With a slightly less than full slate, only 21 dongs were hit yesterday. No one hit double dongs, but five separate pitchers did allow two dongs. They were Cosart, Hudson, Nelson, Stults, and Ventura. The longest dong of the night went to Prince Fielder at 449 feet and the shortest belonged to Rey Navarro at 351 feet.
On The Menu
NBA Tonight – As the conference semifinals wind down, we are about to see the end of single-day NBA contests. Starting with the conference finals next week, the NBA slates will become multi-day only. Hopefully you hardcore NBA Grinders have started learning MLB. If not, I don’t want to ruin your day just yet. There is still NBA action to be had. The Bulls/Cavs and Clippers/Rockets square off tonight for Game 6 of their respective series. As always, Notorious will have his thoughts in the NBA Grind Down. Give it a read and build go build a team that at least 50 other people will have in the same GPP.
MLB Today – Today is Thursday, which offers our usual weekly split slate. There are five early games and six late games. Content is already rolling in, so keep your finger on the refresh button all day long. Before you read others’ content, you will want to have an idea which player might have some extra motivation today.
Here are the official #NarrativeStreet picks for today’s MLB slate. We kick things off with a #FriendsAndFamily game for Nolan Arenado. Nolan is from Orange County and had around 70 friends at the game last night. At least some of them probably stayed for tonight’s game right? In the early slate, fire up Christian Colon for a #BirthdayGame and do the same for Efren Navarro in the late slate. Last but not least, fire up the Rangers as our #BVPStackOfTheDay. Fielder, Andrus, Beltre and Choo own Jeremy Guthrie according to the Daily Batter Hub.
Bottom Line – If you aren’t chasing tickets, you are missing some of the softest contests in DFS. Grinder lilprog started an interesting discussion on the effect of tickets on bankroll management. In his thread, he points out that his ROI in satellites is not in line with his other contests. I have also noticed this effect in my satellite results. With several million dollar tournaments coming up, you need to allocate a portion of your daily play to earning tickets. If the $27 and higher tickets are out of your reach, DraftKings is running a $3 contest this month called Swing For the Fences, that will award $100K to first. Go chase some $3 tickets in the $0.25 satellites. You won’t regret it.