The GPP Scene: Year 2, Week 9

by Justin Van Zuiden (stlcardinals84) Last Updated 2015-07-01 17:38:07

Thanks for checking out another edition of The GPP Scene! I was excited to get back to work after a very profitable Week 8, with the hope of ending the week in the green for the year to date. Here’s the way this series works. 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 most recent week of results!

TUESDAY, JUNE 16TH

Team #1 – The mini-stacks I chose on this night were the Reds and Tigers facing off against each other in Detroit, with Michael Lorenzen and Kyle Ryan toeing the rubber for each team. I figured there would be some runs scored in this one, but it played to an unremarkable 5-2 finish. Todd Frazier did manage to crack two home runs for the Reds, and I had Trevor Bauer as the pitcher on this squad. He tossed seven scoreless innings with seven strikeouts and racked up a win against the Cubs. The bad news was that this was a high-scoring night, and the Tigers offense really weighed this squad down in the end.

• FINISH: 42.50 PTS / 1689 OF 3800 FOR $0.

Team #2 – Matt Harvey was the obvious choice for the ace of the day, as he was facing a Blue Jays team that was without both Edwin Encarnacion (because of injury) and their designated hitter (since the game was in New York). He pitched seven scoreless innings and earned a victory, but I was on the wrong value bats to go along with the Mets’ ace. My outfield of Kevin Kiermaier, Kole Calhoun, and Curtis Grandson combined to go 1-for-13 with one measly single. That’s negative two points in total, and that kind of production from your outfield isn’t going to get the job done. I actually paid up for Todd Frazier on this team, too, but there was nothing else going on with my bats.

• FINISH: 32.75 PTS / 2817 OF 3800 FOR $0.

Team #3 – The punt pitching choice of the day could almost always be “whoever pitches against the Phillies” so long as that pitcher qualifies as a cheap option. Chris Tillman fit the bill today, and he got 19 runs of support behind him. The problem is that this team didn’t have any of those Baltimore bats that provided the 19 runs of support. Instead, it had a collection of expensive bats that under-performed. This squad didn’t get a single extra-base hit despite the presence of Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout, and Tillman had his upside capped as he only struck out three batters. It was a high scoring day, and this team didn’t come close to the money. In fact, this squad finished in the bottom 20% of entries despite scoring almost 30 points.

• FINISH: 29.50 PTS / 3089 OF 3800 FOR $0.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17TH

Team #1 – The Brewers scored just two runs against Joe Blanton. The Yankees scored just two runs against Jose Urena. Needless to say, stacking these two teams didn’t work out. Even the presence of Clayton Kershaw — who was underwhelming by his standards with 13 fantasy points — wasn’t enough to save this squad from drifting into the Wednesday abyss.

• FINISH: 18.50 PTS / 1530 OF 1724 FOR $0.

Team #2 – As I usually do, I chose a different ace for Team #2 since Kershaw was on Team #1. That led me to Madison Bumgarner, and this worked out fine as Bumgarner actually outscored Kershaw by two. Unfortunately, the bats were not fine. Three of my hitters (Lucroy, Rosario, and Ceciliani) were negative, and another two (Kendrick and Jhonny Peralta) were at one point or less. That kind of production from five of your eight bats is going to keep you pretty low in the standings.

• FINISH: 21.00 PTS / 1443 OF 1724 FOR $0.

Team #3 – Even though I stacked against him on Team #1, I opted to use Jose Urena as my punt pitcher on Team #3 because he was super cheap and does have a talented arm. Here’s where everything went wrong. He did hold the Yankees to two runs, as I wrote above. He even made it through six innings. The problem? He only recorded one measly strikeout and the Marlins lost the game 2-1. That means Urena scored just five points on FanDuel, and I got the worst of both worlds on Team #1 and Team #3. The bats were better on this squad, thanks to big games from Travis Snider and Josh Donaldson, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the five pitching points.

• FINISH: 27.75 PTS / 1121 OF 1724 FOR $0.

THURSDAY, JUNE 18TH (EARLY GAMES)

Team #1 – For the early games on Thursday, I stacked Cardinals (against Mike Pelfrey) and Angels (against Adam Warren) with Ian Kennedy as my pitcher against a red-hot A’s team. Kennedy pitched a solid game, but the St. Louis offense was stymied by Pelfrey and the Angels didn’t do enough damage against Warren to offset the lack of production from the Cardinals. On a short slate, this team simply wasn’t good enough.

• FINISH: 27.50 PTS / 415 OF 689 FOR $0.

Team #2 – Since I had zero Coors Field exposure on Team #1, I wanted to try to get some on the last two squads. There wasn’t a single expensive pitcher to choose from, so Jaime Garcia was the de-facto ace. The good news is that this allowed me to get more big bats than I usually can on Team #2. Preston Tucker was the big winner on this squad, as he had a double and a home run on his way to a double-digit fantasy point performance. This team also got big games from Ryan Howard and Manny Machado, and it finished near the top of the leaderboard.

• FINISH: 45.50 PTS / 36 OF 689 FOR $30.

Team #3 – The punt pitcher of choice was Kendall Graveman against the Padres. I am not his biggest fan, but again there were limited options to choose from here. His performance was serviceable for his cheap salary, and this allowed me to get some of the more expensive bats in the Colorado game. Carlos Correa and Carlos Gonzalez combined for 18.50 fantasy points, and that is a big total from two bats on FanDuel. To make it all fit under the cap, I punted second base with Johnny Giavotella as the Angels moved him to the top of the order, and he responded by hitting a home run. The other bats were average at best, but the three big performances were enough to sneak this team into the money.

• FINISH: 42.00 PTS / 83 OF 689 FOR $25.

FRIDAY, JUNE 19TH

Team #1 – Heading into Friday, I was pretty confident with my stack choices. I liked the cheap White Sox left-handed bats going against Colby Lewis, and I liked the Cardinals bats against a walk-happy pitcher who had never made a major league start in Phillippe Aumont. Given the cheap prices for the bats of both these teams, I was able to do a 4-3-1 stack and fit Chris Sale as my pitcher. Two thirds of this team worked out. Sale pitched a gem and racked up 22 fantasy points despite the bullpen blowing his win late, and the Cardinals piled up 12 runs on the Phillies. Unfortunately, this was yet another high scoring day and the White Sox side of the stack didn’t live up to its end of the bargain, scoring just one run and falling 2-1 in the late innings.

• FINISH: 45.00 PTS / 454 OF 1724 FOR $0.

Team #2 – Since I had Chris Sale on Team #1, I opted for Jacob deGrom on Team #2. This was a mistake. Sale was extremely highly owned, and he ended up scoring 13.67 more points than deGrom. Ultimately, that put this team well behind the 8-ball, and I would have needed a big performance from the bats to overcome the difference between Sale and deGrom. I put a few of the Cardinals bats that I didn’t have on Team #1 on this team, and they of course performed well. However, none of the other cheap bats did much, and this team finished in the middle of the pack.

• FINISH: 36.83 PTS / 880 OF 1724 FOR $0.

Team #3 – Lance McCullers was the obvious choice as the punt pitcher of the day, and his ownership percentage was the second highest of any pitcher next to sale. He tallied 7.33 FanDuel points, but the real story of this squad was the bats… and not in a good way. In total, my hitters scored negative 1.25 points. That included names such as Kris Bryant, Giancarlo Stanton, Carlos Correa, Lorenzo Cain, Dee Gordon, and Chris Davis. Swing and a miss! Fading the Coors Field game wasn’t such a wise decision on this day.

• FINISH: 6.08 PTS / 1718 OF 1724 FOR $0.

SUNDAY, JUNE 21ST

Team #1 – Though I rarely do this, after the results on Friday I decided to stack the Coors Field game and go contrarian with my pitcher choice. As such, Milwaukee and Colorado were the two stacks. Although the Rockies scored 10 runs, I was on the wrong guys. I had Carlos Gonzalez, who went 0-for-2 and then left with an injury, and I didn’t have Nick Hundley (4 hits) or Nolan Arenado (home run). Kyle Gibson was the contrarian pitcher option, as I was hoping that he could maybe rack up more strikeouts than normal against the strikeout-happy Cubs. He did get six strikeouts, but he only lasted five innings and the Twins provided no run support. In other words, this team didn’t work out despite the stacked game ending up with a 10-4 final score.

• FINISH: 31.75 PTS / 600 OF 1065 FOR $0.

Team #2 – For the second time this week, Matt Harvey got the call as the ace of choice. He had an underwhelming start by his standards, striking out just 5 batters in 6 2/3 innings and being saddled with a 1-0 loss at the end of the day. For the lack of “name brand value” in the Atlanta lineup, they sure do a good job at avoiding massive strikeout totals. The bats almost carried this team to a cash, as Chris Davis racked up 10.75 FanDuel points, I managed to include Nolan Arenado on this team, and Lorenzo Cain also had a big day. Alas, it came up a tad bit short of the money line.

• FINISH: 38.41 PTS / 333 OF 1065 FOR $0.

Team #3 – I opted for J.A. Happ as the punt pitcher of the day, knowing he was a risk/reward option against a Houston team that strikes out a lot but also has significant power against LHP. Happ was decidedly average on the day, allowing just two runs but failing to pitch deep into the game. His 7 FanDuel points were a real drag on a team that had quite a few decent bats. Russell Martin, Adrian Gonzalez, Jhonny Peralta, and Bryce Harper all had 5+ points on the day. When all was said and done, this team also fell just short of cashing.

• FINISH: 37.75 PTS / 355 OF 1065 FOR $0.

FINAL RESULTS: THROUGH NINE WEEKS

MY ANALYSIS

I had one of my best MLB weeks of the year on DraftKings this week, but it didn’t translate to much success on FanDuel. It’s funny how that works. I’m sure most of you that are reading this article can relate to this in some manner. There are times where you just “run hot” on one site but can’t translate that success over to other sites, whether it’s FanDuel, DraftKings, or some of the smaller sites. The upshot is that I at least garnered a couple cashes this week, which limited the loss amount. It wasn’t the “continue-the-hot-streak” week that I was looking for, but it’s hard to string two very profitable weeks together back to back. I shall keep grinding and be back with another report next week! Good luck everyone, and thanks as always for reading!