The GPP Scene - MLB Week 3

by Justin Van Zuiden (stlcardinals84) Last Updated 2014-04-22 04:38:50

The end has finally come for one of the most eventful MLB weeks I have ever had since I started playing daily fantasy sports. With that is another edition of “The GPP Scene”…. and boy do I have some information to share this week. Without further ado, let us dive right in to this week’s results!

Here’s the way it will work. I will enter the $10 FanDuel Line Drive GPP five days a week with three different teams, and only those three teams. The teams will be composed of the following:

¹ – This is my general GPP strategy on FD.

I’ll document the results of each team along with my profit and loss and return on investment as the days go by, with some final analysis for the week at the end of the article. Let’s get to the week one results!

MONDAY, APRIL 14

Team #1 – Atlanta (at PHI) and Seattle (at TEX) mini stacks with Archer at pitcher at Orioles. The Braves stack was the right play as they went off for nine runs and five homers. However, I was missing most of the good pieces as I only had two of those five homers (both by Gattis). Seattle managed seven runs against Colby Lewis and the Rangers, but again I didn’t have the best combinations. Archer was terrible and only managed four FanDuel points. If your pitcher does that poorly, it’s really hard to cash. The stack combinations were there but I didn’t put the puzzle together correctly.

• FINISH: 30.50 PTS / 906 OF 1674 FOR $0.

Team #2 – I went back to Jordan Zimmermann against the Marlins as my stud pitcher despite his horrible outing the week before. This worked well as he came away with 16 points. My catcher and first baseman also combined for 14 points (Montero and Pujols). Potential abounds here! However, my punt hitters of Almonte and Parra did nothing, and this team fell just short of cashing.

• FINISH: 39.75 PTS / 378 OF 1674 FOR $0.

Team #3 – Brad Hand was my choice for punt pitcher because he was the cheapest on the board and the Nationals sometimes struggle with lefties. This did not work as he finished with a whole 0 fantasy points. In fact, this team only scored 0.25 points more than the pitcher alone on Team #2. In other words, Team #3 was a wasteland on this Monday.

• FINISH: 16.25 PTS / 1610 OF 1674 FOR $0.

TUESDAY, APRIL 15

Team #1 – Texas (vs SEA) and Kansas City (at HOU) mini stacks with Cole at pitcher vs. Reds. I regretted taking Cole as soon as the games started, but I had to make a lot of midday changes today with four games postponed due to rain. I figured the Texas offense would get on track against a bad pitcher in Beavan, and I always like to pick on Lucas Harrell. I was very confident with these stacks but it didn’t work out and Cole was not good.

• FINISH: 23.25 PTS / 1045 OF 1673 FOR $0.

Team #2 – Strasburg was the easy stud pitcher of the night against the Marlins. He got torched and therefore this team had no chance. I even rostered Billy Hamilton as a punt hitter here. I’ll blame the loss on that. (If you are not aware of my disdain for Billy Hamilton, it won’t take much perusing of my Twitter page to find out). Somehow, this team still beat the stacks.

• FINISH: 26.25 PTS / 904 OF 1673 FOR $0.

Team #3 – Yordano Ventura was the easy punt call of the day and he was 33.3% owned. He scored 17. I even had Mike Trout who scored 13.25. Here’s the rest of the offense.

Posey – 1.25
Goldschmidt – 0.25
Matt Carpenter – 1.25
Moustakas – -1
Everth Cabrera – 0
Almonte – 0.25
Bryce Harper – 1.25

So it goes yet again with the punt pitcher. Two guys get me 30 points and I still can’t cash.

• FINISH: 33.50 PTS / 566 OF 1673 FOR $0.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16

Here’s the first of two nights this week where I absolutely hit it big across the industry, and it even paid off for purposes of this study.

Team #1 – Kansas City (at HOU) and Boston (at CHW) mini stacks with Darvish at pitcher vs Mariners. I loved that I could fit Darvish on a stack of these two teams, and I also loved the two stacks. Keuchel and Danks are two mediocre left handers and therefore I felt confident from the start. To be fair, a ton of luck was involved with this result as both games went extra innings and the stacked teams ended up winning. However, those are the breaks you sometimes need to take down a GPP. Xander Bogaerts had a great night and was the catalyst to a lot of my top finishes this evening. This was easily the best finish so far this season, and I had another KC/Boston combo that finished 3rd in the DFBC qualifier and would have won had AJ Pierzynski’s fly ball in the 14th inning carried about five more feet. That close… but I’ll take the great night nonetheless. Also I want to give a shoutout to RG user “Nicslim” who tied with me with the exact same lineup here. I didn’t even know him before this but he sent me a private message and we got a good laugh out of it. Clearly he’s been reading this column!

Top Lineup of the Week

DFBC Third Place Lineup

• FINISH: 48.75 PTS / 7 OF 1340 FOR $250.

Team #2 – I’m trying to get some diversity in these teams and I used Darvish as the top pitcher, so I made sure to avoid the KC/Boston bats on this team as they were on Team #1. Needless to say, the KC/Boston bats were the place to be and this night was very low scoring overall. None of my hitters were outstanding on this team and it middled its way through the night without much success. You can see how low scoring this night was as this team didn’t even hit 30 points but easily finished in the top half of entries.

• FINISH: 29.75 PTS / 520 OF 1340 FOR $0.

Team #3 – I used Tanner Roark as my punt pitcher because I love his talent and they were facing the Marlins. He did OK but not great, and once again the prime bats let me down. I had Buster Posey (again), Miguel Cabrera, Josh Donaldson, Hunter Pence, and Giancarlo Stanton. None of my hitters topped 3.5 fantasy points. These teams are pretty much stinking up the joint right now.

• FINISH: 17.33 PTS / 1231 OF 1340 FOR $0.

FRIDAY, APRIL 18

What a night for me. Outside of this year’s Opening Day, it was far and away the best night I’ve ever had playing DFS in any sport. All told, the net result wasn’t that much worse than Opening Day. One of my FD rosters put up a whopping 88 points on this night, which was good enough to win the $25 Strikeout and $200 Monster. I also had another roster which finished third in the Monster. Those three results combined to pay out $36,000 and leave my flying high, except for a somewhat bittersweet 2nd place finish in the DFBC Qualfier, my second finish of third or better in just three days. All the top entries used the two team mini stack approach. I had to write this not to brag about my results, but to show yet another evidence point as to the viability of the Team #1 approach. Since I am forcing myself to stick to three entries in the Line Drive, it limits my ability to show this on a larger scale. Unfortunately, I didn’t put the right stack combination in for the Line Drive as I did for the other tournaments.

Monster/Strikeout Winning Team

Team #1 – NY Mets (vs. ATL) and Colorado (vs PHI) mini stacks with Hutchison at pitcher vs Indians. Part of the reason I had so much success tonight is because I wasn’t afraid to roll with contrarian picks at pitcher. I love Hutchison for GPP’s because he strikes out a lot of batters and he was the 3rd cheapest option on the board. As I said on GrindersLive with CSURam, he makes great sense as a GPP play because he can be dominant if he harnesses his command. The Rockies stack went off and that was a key cog in my winning lineups tonight. However, I whiffed on the other half of this one with the Mets, who almost got no-hit by the suddenly resurgent Aaron Harang. The winning squads had the Angels as the other half, and they also went off for 11 runs.

• FINISH: 41.83 PTS / 533 OF 1674 FOR $0.

Team #2 – I used Matt Cain as my stud pitcher tonight, and he was solid. However, this was a very high scoring night and I wasn’t able to catch enough points out of the bats. I actually put Tulowitzki on this squad and he scored 15 points. The rest of the hitters did OK, but again it wasn’t enough on a high scoring night. This team was barely short of cashing.

• FINISH: 51.75 PTS / 167 OF 1674 FOR $0.

Team #3 – I am sounding like a broken record with this team. Every night this seems to happen. I used Hutchison as the punt pitcher, so we should be sitting pretty. However, I avoided Tulo as he was on the other two teams already. That was a major mistake. The rest of the big bats all stunk up the joint yet again. When is Miguel Cabrera going to hit again? Why does it seem like I always get saddled with three studs that score 2 points or less on this team? The beat rolls on.

• FINISH: 29.83 PTS / 1163 OF 1674 FOR $0.

SATURDAY, APRIL 19

I am a huge believer in DFS momentum, and it’s actually somewhat rare that I follow a huge day with a total thud. I like to press the issue when I’m running hot, and I followed the same procedure as I did with my big Friday as I did my Saturday research. To top it off, there was overlay on DraftKings today and I ended up throwing 30 entries into the $200 Perfect Game. I cashed with one, and it finished 92nd. Yeah, it was a bad day. I had zero exposure to the Rays bats and I think they scored 500 runs against the Yankees.

Team #1 – White Sox (at TEX) and Seattle (at MIA) mini stacks with Ervin Santana at pitcher vs. Mets. It was easy to fit whatever pitchers you wanted today as none of them were priced over $7,000. Santana at $6,500 against the Mets was an easy pick and he was almost 50% owned, which is unheard of in such a large field. The Mariners almost got no-hit by Henderson Alvarez and the White Sox couldn’t do anything against Colby Lewis. This was a swing and a miss. Santana scored 17. This team finished with 17.

• FINISH: 17.00 PTS / 2289 OF 2492 FOR $0.

Team #2 – I chose Garza as my stud pitcher simply to fade Santana since I knew he would be so highly owned. Garza got shelled by the Pirates and there wasn’t going to be any prayer after Santana outscored him by 15 points. Ryan Braun was the only bright spot on this team as he homered twice. He managed to outscore the rest of this squad.

• FINISH: 25.50 PTS / 1900 OF 2492 FOR $0.

Team #3 – Stults got the call as the punt pitcher against the struggling Giants, and he was solid with 11 fantasy points. The stud bats were average at best, and again having no exposure to the Rays was the big miss for me tonight. Some Wil Myers or Evan Longoria ownership would have worked out just fine. Alas, I went for Robinson Cano and Hanley Ramirez, among other guys who flamed out yet again.

• FINISH: 27.25 PTS / 1773 OF 2492 FOR $0.

FINAL RESULTS: WEEK THREE

MY ANALYSIS

This was one of the most schizophrenic weeks I’ve ever had in DFS play, as I had some horrid nights mixed in with some absolutely fabulous ones. If this happens every week, it will probably increase my blood pressure but I’ll take the monetary results. It’s amazing to me how clear it is as to which strategy is going to be successful in the long run. I’ve been very up front with my general GPP approach favoring stacking, and I’m glad it’s showing through, though I am doing nothing to sabotage the results in favor of Team #1. Perhaps you could argue that it’s because I am so used to using that strategy that I am just better at that than the other two approaches, and I think that’s a fair point.

I am also feeling charitable this week, so I will let you guys in on an EXTREMELY underrated point related to stacking:

Stacking road teams is extremely beneficial. This seems counter-intuitive, but let me explain a little further. Let’s say there are two MLB games going on. In both games, the score is 7-1 after eight innings. In one game, the road team is leading. In the other game, the home team is leading. The home team that is ahead 7-1 is done hitting. The road team has three more outs to bat, and they might easily get you another couple of runs. I love looking for road teams in good spots as my favorite stacks. It’s not an end-all rule, but in tiebreaker situations I almost always favor road teams. For purposes of this article, you will probably see my mini-stacks be from road teams about 60 or 65% of the time over the course of the season. Trust me, this is more than worth considering if it never crossed your mind before.