The GPP Scene - MLB Week 7
Happy Memorial Day Grinders, and welcome to the week seven edition of the GPP Scene! This was an interesting week filled with some good and bad days which will make for an interesting breakdown. Hopefully those of you that are still reading this column have been able to take some ideas from this series to apply them successfully to your own game. The ultimate goal of this piece is to help everyone with GPP strategy. As always, thanks for giving this a weekly read!
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:
| Team #1 | Two-team stacks with 4 hitters from each team, finished off by whatever pitcher I like best that fits within my remaining cap.1 |
| Team #2 | My favorite expensive pitcher of the day with a team of lesser hitters. |
| Team #3 | A total punt at pitcher surrounded by a team of better hitters. |
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 seven results!
MONDAY, MAY 19
Team #1 – The mini stacks were the White Sox and Royals facing off against each other with punching bag Scott Carroll and Jason Vargas on the mound. It was a short slate of games and this combination allowed me to fit Strasburg at pitcher, so I really liked the combination. Though the game finished with a 7-6 score, I was on some of the wrong hitters with the mini stacks and Strasburg was extremely disappointing with only 9 fantasy points. This was a solid score on a low-scoring night but wasn’t enough to cash in GPP’s. * FINISH: 32.75 PTS / 379 OF 1116 FOR $0.
Team #2 – Stephen Strasburg was again the easy choice as ace of the day on the short slate. Again, his nine points put us behind the eight-ball here. The bats on this squad were solid as I had both Dayan Viciedo and Alexei Ramirez on this team as I did not have Viciedo on the mini stack in team #1. However, it was not quite enough to overcome the underwhelming performance by Strasburg. * FINISH: 34.50 PTS / 290 OF 1116 FOR $0.
Team #3 – There was no need to go totally cheap with the punt pitcher of the day as there weren’t a ton of huge bats out there. Garrett Richards at $7,200 was the perfect fit as I was still able to fit the likes of Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera on this squad. Richards was facing Houston at home and had stellar numbers to start the year, and he was actually more highly owned than Strasburg on this slate. However, the results didn’t follow as he finished with a horrid 3 points and there was no overcoming his nightmarish start. * FINISH: 22.00 PTS / 920 OF 1116 FOR $0.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 21
Team #1 – I wasn’t a huge fan of too many stacks tonight but chose the Cardinals against Brandon McCarthy and the Angels against Colin McHugh, who I was still under the impression would come crashing down to earth at some point. I had to remove one Cardinal bat to fit Wacha in at pitcher here because FD limits you to four players from one squad. The Angels only scored two runs and the Cardinals only scored three, so this team was dead in the water. * FINISH: 27.00 PTS / 806 OF 1340 FOR $0.
Team #2 – There were once again limited options for aces tonight so I doubled down with Wacha here. He wasn’t great with only 10 points and the bullpen blew his victory. In addition, I took three Tampa Bay right handed bats as they were relatively cheap and facing a weak lefty in Tommy Milone. All three of them went hitless and this team was down the tubes in a hurry despite a double dong performance from Edwin Encarnacion. * FINISH: 29.75 PTS / 614 OF 1340 FOR $0.
Team #3 – There was no need to go totally cheap with the punt pitcher again today so I went with a value-priced Jered Weaver against Houston as he was $1,100 cheaper than Wacha. This probably doesn’t qualify as a total punt, but I was still able to fit the bats of Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista, Matt Holliday, and Dee Gordon on this squad. Therefore, I decided it still qualified under the realm of Team #3. It worked like a charm as Weaver pitched a solid complete game and the bats were fueled by Encarnacion’s two home runs. If Dee Gordon would have been up to his usual tricks this team would have finished near the top, but I’ll take the solid results as they have been few and far between lately. * FINISH: 47.50 PTS / 39 OF 1340 FOR $60.
THURSDAY, MAY 22
Team #1 – I stacked St. Louis against the struggling Wade Miley and Baltimore against a struggling Justin Masterson on short rest with Garza at pitcher. The Orioles bats performed well, but the Cardinals didn’t do a whole lot and Garza was awful. Somehow, he managed just one strikeout in over six innings against the strikeout-happy Braves. In short, this team was underwhelming. * FINISH: 24.08 PTS / 712 OF 1339 FOR $0.
Team #2 – Finally a solid ace was on the hill as Greinke got a favorable matchup with the offensively-challenged Mets at Citi Field. I thought this team was doomed as Greinke only got eight points, but the bats picked the squad up and this was a really low scoring night. Raburn, Peralta, and McCutchen were solid and this team ended up cashing comfortably despite a not-so-brilliant score. As I said above, this was a low scoring night. * FINISH: 37.00 PTS / 73 OF 1339 FOR $40.
Team #3 – I loved Arrieta against the Padres in Petco Park as the punt pitcher, and he was great with 16 fantasy points at only 4.2% ownership. The bats, however, were terrible. Molina, Chris Davis, Cano, Braun, and Hanley Ramirez combined for less than two points, which doomed this team. This is an extreme case of where leaving salary on the table would have worked. Heck, I could have put Arrieta in straight up for Greinke on Team #2 and had $5,000 leftover, and that team would have finished in 11th place. Alas, the big bats did not do anything on this night and that’s why it was so low scoring. * FINISH: 25.00 PTS / 627 OF 1339 FOR $0.
Check out the low-scoring night
SATURDAY, MAY 24
Team #1 – I played the day slate here and mini-stacked Oakland and the Dodgers, two teams with great offenses going against poor pitchers. This required taking a mid-tier pitcher in Zack Wheeler. He was solid with 11.66 points, but the bats were awful. Neither stacked club topped 3 runs, Hanley Ramirez got scratched post-lock, and the bats totaled negative points. * FINISH: 10.41 PTS / 982 OF 1005 FOR $0.
Team #2 – David Price got the nod as the ace after I saw the Red Sox awful lineup without David Ortiz and Mike Napoli. He gave up five runs in the first inning but rebounded to a somewhat decent 10 point outing. However, the bats were middling at best and none of my hitters topped four points. A highly owned Lonnie Chisenhall was the top dog at 4.25. That just wasn’t going to be enough to crawl to cash-ville. * FINISH: 23.25 PTS / 582 OF 1005 FOR $0.
Team #3 – Josh Collmenter against the Mets became the default punt option, and he didn’t disappoint for his price with 12 points. Cespedes was the lead bat with a solid 9.75 points, and for some reason that I can’t explain I rostered Ben Revere on this team (in order to fit Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez, who were underwhelming). Revere had one of the best games of his career with four hits including a double, and those two bats were the key to this squad’s solid performance. For the first time since I started doing this series, I’ve recorded a cash on three consecutive days. Unfortunately, none of them have been super-high cashes — but this one was enough to guarantee the first positive week since Week 4. * FINISH: 40.00 PTS / 33 OF 1005 FOR $60.
Another Solid Cash for Team #3
SUNDAY, MAY 25
Team #1 – I was very happy with my top two stack choices for the day, with the Brewers facing Randy Wolf and Oakland facing JA Happ. The Brewers performed well buoyed by four hits from Ryan Braun. Dallas Keuchel fit right on the nose with the salary cap at pitcher, and he pitched a complete game with no earned runs. Everything was set up for a cash, except that Oakland couldn’t solve the surging Blue Jays left-hander and only scored one run. One miss on a stack team will keep you out of the money, and that’s what happened here. * FINISH: 38.75 PTS / 325 OF 1116 FOR $0.
Team #2 – Tanaka got the call as my ace over Wainwright, and I should have stuck to my gut and taken the hometown guy. The good news was that at the end of the day there wouldn’t have been a cash even with Wainwright on this team. Josh Harrison hit a HR and worked out as a punt play for $2,500, but Segura, Cespedes, Adams, and Granderson didn’t do enough to help this team cash. It was a solid squad for cash games but wasn’t quite enough for GPP’s. * FINISH: 34.91 PTS / 481 OF 1116 FOR $0.
Team #3 – Trevor Bauer was the choice as my punt pitcher of the day, and he was his usual dynamic-but-wild self, requiring well over 110 pitches just to get through five innings. The Cardinals also decided to give Yadier Molina the night off, which was a risk I took by rostering him in the Sunday Night Game. Trout and Braun were on this team and were very solid, but this was a high scoring day and Bauer put me in too big of a hole to dig out of. * FINISH: 32.83 PTS / 597 OF 1116 FOR $0.
FINAL RESULTS: THROUGH SEVEN WEEKS
| Statistic | Team #1 | Team #2 | Team #3 | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Score | 1188.54 | 1221.39 | 1072.37 | |
| Average Score | 33.96 | 34.90 | 30.64 | |
| High Score | 56.50 | 48.75 | 47.58 | |
| Low Score | 6.08 | 22.00 | 13.08 | |
| Entry Fees (Seas) | $350 | $350 | $350 | $1,050 |
| Winnings (Seas) | $450 | $185 | $560 | $1,195 |
| Profit/Loss (Seas) | $100 | -$165 | $210 | $145 |
| ROI (Seas) | 28.6% | -47.1% | 60.0% | 13.8% |
MY ANALYSIS
This was an interesting week and I was happier with my team selection this week than I was in weeks five and six. I am also starting to notice a correlation between the results here and my results overall. Some people have mentioned that they can see a disadvantage for me here because I am limited to three entries. Well, it also serves to limit your losses. When I was off in weeks five and six in this series, I only lost $200 or so. As a whole, those weeks were rough on my bankroll in places where I multi-enter a lot. On the flip side, the good weeks here are very good for my bankroll in other places. An important note to make about mass entry of tournaments — which I do pretty much daily — is that they have a very high risk/reward ratio. Multi-entry drastically increases your chances of a big hit, but it increases your loss exposure on bad days as well. In short, I’m amazed at how well this study has corresponded with my overall bankroll for the year. The first four weeks were great, weeks five and six were rough, and week seven saw a profit, though a small one, for the first time in a few weeks. That’s pretty much where I stand as a whole on the season.
It’s also noteworthy that Team #3 has the best overall results despite the lowest average score. That boom or bust approach has really started to pay off a bit. Also, Team #2 has the worst overall results despite the highest average score. Food for thought! Hopefully the wheels are back on the tracks! As always…. thanks for reading!