The Baseball Diaries: Thursday, June 4th
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 my main DraftKings team for Wednesday night.
So, this was an interesting night. The weather in Colorado caused me to re-adjust my team last minute. I lost out on a few points. What’s worse is that the Joc Pederson home run later in the game cost me a bunch of cashes. Baseball has its upside and can be entertaining, but I can’t wait for college football already!
Player Analysis
Chris Sale and James Shields – This team was cash game heavy. About 85% of the entries and dollar amount for this squad went into double ups and head-to-head contests. Therefore I went with the two best pitchers out there. I liked Kluber a lot also, but marked him off last minute due to the matchup. Shields was on my radar, and after doing the show with Hoop yesterday, he talked me into Shields.
Derek Norris – Norris was the cheapest catcher I could find that wasn’t a “punt”. I felt like he had some upside against Gee and didn’t break the bank. All the punts in this position had brutal matchups. In hindsight I shouldn’t have played the middle ground. If you’re going to punt, then just punt. I got caught in No Man’s Land and paid for it with less money to spend at another position.
Ryan Zimmerman – My most disappointing pick. This Nats team gets shut down by Mark Buehrle. That’s all you need to know here.
Logan Forsythe – Tough to pass on a middle infield, cleanup hitting guy who pounds left-handed pitching at only $3K.
Alex Guerrero – The one left over from the Dodgers game. I felt like it was fine to keep in the lineup because the salary was so cheap that even if the game got rained out he wouldn’t cripple my team.
Jose Reyes – Originally this was Tulo in here at shortstop. The rained scared me off, so I went with the second best option, in my opinion. Reyes did fine and I was sitting there watching the Dodgers game hoping Tulo wouldn’t go yard and send me into mega-tilt…he did.
Jose Bautista – I really liked the Jays’ chances against Jordan, but Donaldson was too expensive and the guys hitting after cleanup were occupying positions I already had filled. So, I settled on Bautista as my big exposure to the Jays lineup and he paid off. Lucked out is more like it, with a 9th inning, meaningless home run, but I’ll take it.
Tyler Moore – If you want to take two of the most expensive pitchers on the board, you have to tighten the belt somewhere. For me, I found Tyler Moore’s price tag, matchup and overall stats vs. lefties a solid place to save cap.
Will Venable – If Venable was always facing a right-hander, batting leadoff and had a $3,300 price tag, he would be in my lineup every day. He was a solid player in the right matchup.