Rise & Grind: Wednesday, June 17th
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
The Cardinal Way – Over the past 10-15 seasons, the St. Louis Cardinals have been one of the most consistent teams in baseball. The Cardinals have always billed this success as the result of smart and selfless play. Yesterday, the New York Times dropped a bombshell on the idea that the Cardinals are a model franchise. The FBI is reportedly investigating the Cardinals for hacking into the Houston Astros scouting database. The Cardinals allegedly used the passwords of former employee and current Astros GM Jeff Lunhow to gain access to proprietary information. This included scouting grades, trade discussions, and other information. If these allegations are true, it certainly brings into questions the Patriots’ Cardinals’ recent success. When issues like this arise, it is important to take the pulse of the fans regarding a proper punishment. Personally, I have advocated for an outside-the-box punishment where the Cardinals are forced to take on Albert Pujols’s contract that will still be paying him $30M in 2021. Maybe that’s not fair, so I took a quick look at Twitter for some of your ideas. Most of you suggested a loss of draft picks or fines. I suppose that could work, but then I ran across Brandon McCarthy’s suggestion. In keeping with baseball tradition, the proper resolution here is for an Astros executive to walk into the Cardinals front office and hit their best executive with a fastball. That’s how all wrongs are avenged in baseball.
Win a trip to Yankees Stadium – Enough about cheating and hacking, how about some good news? Would you like to win a trip to Yankees Stadium? If so, join our Grinders-Only Freeroll on FantasyHub. The details are simple; click on the link I just provided and create a FantasyHub account. You will also need to make a deposit, but at that point you will be given the opportunity to play in the Grinders Freeroll on Friday. The top four finishers will win a ticket and travel package to see the Yankees play the Rays.
DraftKings Millionaire Maker – Speaking of tickets and winning, DraftKings is hosting another PGA Millionaire Maker this week. If you have a ticket and want to play in this event, you better redeem it soon. As of this writing, the Millionaire Maker is about 75% full, and DraftKings is projecting it to fill sometime this evening. If you don’t have a ticket, you can always buy in directly for $20. This is also a great opportunity to mention that here at RotoGrinders we have the 2014 FSWA PGA Writer of the Year offering advice. If you have incentives, you need to give Gibbathy and Notorious’ expert picks a read. If you don’t, this would be a great week to do a free trial or even sign up for a month of picks. For $25 you can get the PGA picks, plus you also get access to all of our MLB content as well.
NBA Finals – We closed the book on NBA DFS over a month ago, but we can now officially close the book on the 2015 NBA season. The Golden State Warriors defeated LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers 105-97 to win the NBA Finals. The Warriors did it by going small with Draymond Green at center and using Andre Iguodala to guard LeBron. Iguodala was able to contain James for the most part and was voted Finals MVP for his efforts. Yes, you read that correctly, Andre Iguodala, the guy who didn’t even start Game 1, is your Finals MVP. I’m not even sure I actually believe what I just typed. This seems like an elaborate prank being pulled off by the same people who have voted in eight Royals as MLB All-Star starters.
MLB Recap – How about that Orioles stack? The Baltimore Orioles got to starter Jerome Williams early yesterday, as they scored six runs off four hits and two walks before Williams was pulled with two outs. The guy who replaced him wasn’t exactly good, as Dustin McGowan proceeded to allow seven runs off five homers in only three innings off work. Finally, in the seventh inning, the Phillies decided no one on their pitching staff was capable of stopping the Orioles. That is when they brought in their secret weapon. Outfielder Jeff Francoeur came on to pitch the seventh and promptly retired the side in order. He also recorded more strikeouts than starter Jerome Williams. After everything was said and done, the Phillies staff allowed 19 runs on eight homers. If you didn’t have a piece of the O’s offense, last night wasn’t good for you, unless of course you had the right pieces of the Marlins and Nationals offenses who scored 12 runs and 16 runs respectively. Needless to say, last night was one of the highest scoring nights all season.
Chasing Qualifiers -After a huge night on Monday, DraftCheat was hoping to carry his hot streak over to last night. Towards the end of the night, DraftCheat (chripe01 on FD) sat tied with cuddy120 for first in the $50 WFBC Qualifier. DC and Cuddy actually had the same team, so the best case scenario was a win and then a playoff today. They also had Aybar and Trout in the final game (Diamondbacks at Angels), so victory seemed imminent. Albert Pujols had other plans in mind though, as he belted a home run in the sixth which secured first place and the victory for spicoli11. Once again, DraftCheat ended up as the bridesmaid, but this time he gets to share the honor with cuddy120.
Over on DraftKings, the FBWC Qualifier was a battle of Orioles stacks. TommyG1979, one of the most vocal opponents of stacks, was looking pretty good towards the end of the night until his Orioles stack was blocked by another Orioles stack. Tommy didn’t end up winning the qualifier but he did win the King Of The Hill Qualifier, which is surely a nice consolation. For the full list of yesterday’s links, click here.
On The Menu
MLB tonight – There are fifteen games on the schedule tonight and the action starts at 7:05 ET. Slates like this lead to lots of lineup differentiation. This ultimately leads to larger than normal GPPs. Both DraftKings and FanDuel have bumped up the guarantees tonight. It should be an interesting GPP night, as there are six ace-level starters, several gas cans to stack against, and a game at beloved Coors Field. You will want to keep your finger on the refresh button all day long as content begins to flow in. That content will include the MLB Grind Down, Six-Pack, Advanced Pitcher Stats, and Starting Pitcher Breakdown. Once you have finished taking in all that content, be sure to come back at 3:30 ET for GrindersLive. CSURam88 and Hoop2410 kick things off, followed by CrazyGabey and BoggsLite at 4:30, and then Dean78904 and Al_Smizzle at 5:30. If that’s not enough for you, EMac will jump on at 6:30 ET and get Kevin Roth’s weather thoughts and take your questions right up to lock.
Narrative Street – With fifteen games on the slate, there are bound to be plenty of good options just based on statistics. Sure, you could use those picks, but everyone else will have them to. A good way to find some off the board picks is to look at the narratives surrounding them. Here are tonight’s #NarrativeStreet picks that may have a little extra motivation. Today we will kick things off with some #MilestoneWatch picks. Alex Rodriguez still needs five hits to get to 3,000. He could possibly get all five tonight against Jose Urena. The home run #MileStoneWatch choices are still the same as yesterday as well. Fielder needs two in order to get to 300, Aaron Hill needs two in order to reach 300, and David DeJesus and Chase Headley each need one to get to 100. On the #RevengeGame front, the options are mostly the same as yesterday as well. Look to Jonny Gomes, and Ichiro Suzuki as your choices in that area. Last but not least, we take a quick look at the Best and Worst BVP of the day. Could the Orioles stack come through again? Four of the Orioles (Lough, Hardy, Young, and Pearce) have positive stats in greater than 10 at-bats. On the other end of the spectrum, avoid Starlin Castro and Dexter Fowler, as the two are a combined 4-for-21 off Shane Marcum. If you believe in BVP, you can’t ignore that, right?
That’s it for today, Grinders. It’s time to start building some teams. Good luck out there, and as always, see you tomorrow!