The Baseball Diaries: Thursday, July 2nd
Welcome to the Baseball Diaries. This is a morning after review of my main team(s) on a designated site. I’ll go over the process that went into selecting the players, good or bad, in hopes you will find something in here that ultimately helps your team selection.
If you’re not trying to learn, then just kick back and read for the revelry. Sometimes the tilt is real…and highly entertaining for the observer. Below you’ll find one of my main DraftKings teams for Wednesday night.
Player Analysis
Hey, 25 points isn’t too bad…except when you left 45 off your roster by not taking Carlos Carrasco. I normally would take Carrasco in that situation over Lester 90% of the time, however, when I looked at the Mets lineup yesterday, I felt the play was Lester. They had bad hitters in there, in addition to three lefties at the top of the order.
Welp, I spent up for Goldschmidt last night and got two points. I’m a little bitter, but anytime you have a chance to roster Goldy against a lefty I think you need to go for it.
Gennett was the easiest selection of the night for me. He was near the top of the order, has been playing well and was facing a weak pitcher; plus, second base was a thin position. I certainly didn’t expect a 28-point game, but I will gladly take it.
Baltimore was my top team to stack last night and I wanted to get some of them in my cash games. I chose wrong to say the least. This really should have been JJ Hardy as part of my cash team, but I chose a different shortstop. Catcher should have been a total minimum salary punt, so I slipped up on that one.
I love playing Van Slyke vs. marginal lefties. Clearly the zero is a killer, but next time he is batting fifth against an average lefty I will select him for my team again, especially at that kind of pricetag.
Here’s where the big mistake was made. I really cannot tell you in hindsight why I rostered Castro over Hardy. Well, there’s one explanation and I’ll get to it with the next player. Don’t get me wrong, Castro was in my top five shortstop options last night, but he shouldn’t have been on my team when I liked the Baltimore stack so much. This was a clear spot to play Hardy and I dropped the ball. The extra points from Hardy would have been the difference in cashing almost every double up contest I entered.
Here is where I dropped the ball on the shortstop position. I clearly remember what happened now. I clicked on Castro and then looked at my last options for the outfield and clicked on Pagan because he fell in the price range of the guys I had left on my list. I meant to go back later when lineups were released to upgrade this spot. I didn’t want to roll with Pagan for the night. However, I flat out forgot to go back and edit, so I got stuck with Pagan and didn’t realize I could have had Hardy over Castro. That last check 10 minutes before roster lock could have done me a lot of good.