The GPP Scene: Year 3, Week 5

by Justin Van Zuiden (stlcardinals84) Last Updated 2016-07-10 14:03:03

Editor’s Note: Congratulations to STL for taking home first place ($20,000) In Wednesday’s DraftKings Payoff Pitch!

Welcome back to The GPP Scene! If you are unfamiliar with this series, this is an attempt to break down my own tournament entries to determine if we can figure out an “optimal” strategy for tournament play. Here’s the scoop: I will enter the $3 DraftKings “Slider” GPP (3 entry max) five days a week with three different teams. The teams will be composed of the following:

Team #1 – Two-team stacks with 4 hitters from each team, finished off by whatever pitchers I like best that fit within my remaining cap

Team #2 – A 5-man stack from one team surrounded by plays that I like at pitcher and with the other 3 hitters.

Team #3 – The cheapest plays that I like at pitcher surrounded by a team of elite hitters.

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 fifth week of results!

SUNDAY, JUNE 19TH

CASH LINE CUTOFF = 116.70 POINTS

Team #1 – I mini-stacked the Tigers against Chris Young and the Astros against Brandon Finnegan, and only half of the stack worked out. Young held the Tigers in check (before giving up seven runs in two innings against the Astros later in the week), and Detroit managed just one run in thirteen innings. Houston did put up a six spot, while Archie Bradley and David Price combined for 53 fantasy points. Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite enough to overcome the dud from four Detroit hitters, as I didn’t even have exposure to the one Detroit run, which was a solo home run from Steven Moya. This team finished just outside the cash line.

• FINISH: 112.70 PTS / 1494 OF 5882 FOR $0.

Team #2 – The five man stack was the Reds against Mike Fiers, and they got shut out by a 6-0 score. I was able to fit two aces alongside them in Carlos Carrasco and Jacob deGrom, but they both scored less than 20 fantasy points. There’s nothing to see here.

• FINISH: 83.40 PTS / 4038 OF 5882 FOR $0.

Team #3 – My cheap pitching choices were Jake Odorizzi against the Giants and Carlos Rodon against the Indians. Both were under 8% owned, and the results were pretty good as both pitchers topped 20 fantasy points. Some of the expensive bats paid off, too, as Evan Gattis, Rougned Odor, and Jake Lamb combined for 50 fantasy points. That is the recipe for success with Team #3, but it is just so difficult for everything to come together on the same day. Every hitter put up some type of positive fantasy score, and this team finished in the money, though the finish wasn’t near the top.

• FINISH: 121.95 PTS / 860 OF 5882 FOR $6.

TUESDAY, JUNE 21ST

CASH LINE CUTOFF = 121.60 POINTS

Team #1 – The two mini stacks I chose were the Reds and Rangers facing off against each other in Texas with Anthony DeSclafani and Colby Lewis on the mound. I went with the cheaper hitters from these two squads in order to fit Fernandez and Kluber here, too. Again, it worked out well (though I wasn’t able to get Jay Bruce on this squad). Cincinnati scored eight runs, and that was enough to lift this team to a comfortable cash when paired with the 71 points from Fernandez and Kluber.

• FINISH: 135.60 PTS / 564 OF 5882 FOR $7.

Team #2 – This was a weird day for me in that I wasn’t on the right stacks, but I still had a good day. As a perfect example, my five man stack was the Mets against Ian Kennedy. They scored just two runs, but the rest of my team went off. I opted for the Jose Fernandez Kluber”:/players/corey-kluber-11495 pitching combination on most of my teams on this day, and they racked up 71 fantasy points on the strength of a Kluber complete game shutout. In addition, two of my other three hitters had great games. Jay Bruce tallied 28 fantasy points while Peter O’Brien tallied a solo home run. All told, my two pitchers and my three additional hitters scored 120 points. My five man stack scored 22.60 points, and this team still finished near the top. Oh, what could have been had the Mets scored some runs…

• FINISH: 142.60 PTS / 383 OF 5882 FOR $8.

Team #3 – This was not the day to go cheap with the pitching choices. Sonny Gray did all right with a 20 point game against the Brewers, but Tyler Duffey got shelled by the Phillies in what turned out to be a 14-10 game. As for the bats, Brian McCann, Jose Altuve, Jake Lamb, and Mark Trumbo all scored three points or less. All told, it was still a fine day thanks to the strategy I used on the other two teams. This squad was nowhere near a success.

• FINISH: 70.25 PTS / 4914 OF 5882 FOR $0.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22ND

CASH LINE CUTOFF = 125.55 POINTS

Team #1 – Texas was my favorite stack of the night, as I like taking them at home in the warm summer months. They were facing off against Dan Straily and the Reds, but keep in mind that the Reds bullpen is also a factor in why you want to stack against them. I paired the Rangers stack with some right-handed White Sox bats against Eduardo Rodriguez. This should have worked out better than it did, but I didn’t put the right bats together. Texas scored six runs and the White Sox put up eight, but I wasn’t on the right guys. Again, this team came close to cashing but fell just short. It was that kind of day.

• FINISH: 116.00 PTS / 1894 OF 5882 FOR $0.

Team #2 – Baltimore was the stack of choice against Erik Johnson and the Padres, and they were extremely popular. It was a mid-size slate thanks to a lot of day games, and everyone flocked to the Orioles. Matt Wieters, Chris Davis, and Mark Trumbo were 36%, 31%, and 30% owned, respectively. They did score seven runs, but they weren’t a “must have” squad by the end of the night. Pitching became the key difference maker, and I got just 37 total points from Chris Archer and Cole Hamels. My additional three hitters scored around 30 points, and it wasn’t quite enough when all was said and done. This team finished about four fantasy points short of the cash line cutoff.

• FINISH: 122.00 PTS / 1436 OF 5882 FOR $0.

Team #3 – Once again, Team #3 is starting to become a drag. I went for the boom-or-bust picks of Francisco Liriano (who was priced at just $5,800) and Julio Urias, and they combined to score just 25 fantasy points on the night. I did get decent offensive performances out of Miguel Cabrera, Rougned Odor, and Mookie Betts, but there were too many duds in the bunch to overcome the poor pitching performances. This is becoming a theme with this strategy.

• FINISH: 95.90 PTS / 3583 OF 5882 FOR $0.

THURSDAY, JUNE 23RD

CASH LINE CUTOFF = 101.75 POINTS

Team #1 – The two mini-stacks I chose were the Cubs against Wei-Yin Chen and the Padres against John Lamb. Both teams were fairly popular stacks on a short Thursday slate, and half of this worked well with the Padres scoring seven runs. Unfortunately, both Matt Harvey and Christian Friedrich were terrible on the mound, and that was a theme on this slate. Almost every pitcher that I chose struggled, which was a reason why this ended up being an empty day.

• FINISH: 82.95 PTS / 3369 OF 5882 FOR $0.

Team #2 – In an attempt to get as many expensive bats on a stack as possible, I used a hybrid of Team #1 and Team #3 here. I stacked five Diamondbacks in Coors Field while also taking Matt Kemp and Adam Duvall against weak left-handed pitchers. In order to fit all these bats, I had to use Tim Lincecum and Kendall Graveman as my pitchers. That did not work out, as they combined for a laugh-out-loud worthy nine fantasy points. Given the struggles of Team #3 all year, I have no clue why I thought this was a good idea. This was a very low-scoring slate, and the bats did do fairly well — Arizona scored seven runs while Duvall and Kemp both homered — but there was no overcoming the pitching. This team finished eight points short of the money.

• FINISH: 95.35 PTS / 1821 OF 5882 FOR $0.

Team #3 – For the cheap pitching selections today, I opted for Wei-Yin Chen against the banged-up Cubs and Matt Wisler against the banged-up Mets. I hit .500 on these selections, as Chen tallied 23 fantasy points while Wisler put up a total dud. Every single one of my offensive players scored something, but nobody scored more than 18. This team was teetering along the cash line all night, and of course it ended up six tenths of a point short of cashing. If only Wisler would have scored more than 4.4 points, the result would have been different. Insert sad face emoji here.

• FINISH: 101.15 PTS / 1207 OF 5882 FOR $0.

SATURDAY, JUNE 25TH (EARLY GAMES)

CASH LINE CUTOFF = 131.55 POINTS

Team #1 – I did hedge with a Coors Stack on Team #2, with four Arizona hitters and four Colorado hitters. However, I did not play Tony Wolters (who had a monster game), I did not play D.J. LeMahieu (who hit a three run home run), and my pitchers were terrible. Paul Clemens was not a good choice. As a result, this team finished near the bottom even though the Coors Field game featured 17 total runs.

• FINISH: 90.75 PTS / 1364 OF 1960 FOR $0.

Team #2 – With everyone gravitating towards Coors Field, I generally zagged to the Blue Jays/White Sox game on Saturday across the industry. This worked like a darn charm, as Toronto scored ten runs while the White Sox scored eight runs on the strength of seven solo home runs. As for this series, I used a five-man Toronto stack with Carlos Carrasco and Kevin Gausman on the mound. Throw in the ten runs from Toronto, a complete game shutout from Carrasco, and 33 fantasy points from Gausman, and everything came together here. This was my second best finish of the year in this series.

(On a side note, here is how well that Blue Jays/White Sox strategy worked out for me on FanDuel. This is a screenshot of the final standings in the afternoon Grand Slam GPP).

• FINISH: 163.10 PTS / 46 OF 1960 FOR $15.

Team #3 – The cheap pitching choices were Kevin Gausman and Matt Garza. As I wrote above in Team #1, Gausman was fantastic against the strikeout-prone Rays, but Garza did not pitch well against the Nationals. He racked up a whopping 5.5 fantasy points even though he got a victory. Yes, he had a total of 1.5 before getting the win. Yikes. The expensive bats were also duds, as only one of my hitters managed to score more than seven fantasy points. I’m pretty much done with this cheap pitcher strategy.

• FINISH: 82.35 PTS / 1529 OF 1960 FOR $0.

FINAL RESULTS – THROUGH WEEK 5

My Analysis

It was a relatively unremarkable week. Every team managed at least one cash, and Team #1 closed out the week with a nice finish thanks to the Toronto stack on Saturday afternoon. The results are starting to bear out as I expected, as Team #1 is closing in on the break-even point, Team #2 is in a great spot, and Team #3 is struggling. It really is tough to pick two cheap pitchers every day and make everything work with both those cheap pitchers and all the expensive bats. Maybe my opinion will change if that one finally hits a big score, but I am not sure if that is possible. The overall results are still great thanks to the big score in Week #4. I shall keep giving it my best effort!

As always, thanks for reading!