How I Approach Each Slate
Wake up!
It’s a new day, a new slate of games, and you’re ready to conduct your research. You have your pitcher master sheet set up, and you have your hitter master sheet set up (or, you have your organized information set up in whatever form you have chosen to set it up – master sheets, spreadsheets, secret document nicknamed Popsicle, whatever). How do you begin the day, then?
Well, for starters, I should say this: the same thing that went for organizing information goes for approaching each slate. That is to say: there is no “single right way.” All that truly matters is that you come up with a plan that works for you for approaching each slate. But in order to help you reach that point, I’m going to show you exactly how I, personally, attack each slate of games. Perhaps my approach will be the approach that works best for you. Perhaps my approach will inspire ideas that will help you come up with a different approach than mine — one that makes sense to your mind. Whatever the case, you need a plan. You need to be able to approach each slate the same way in order to be able to replicate your success from one day to the next.
In my mind, the best way to envision this process is through the lens of muscle memory. Of course, muscle memory applies to all sports — baseball included — but since not all of us have played baseball within the last few years, I feel the easiest way to illustrate this is by using basketball as an example.
If I stepped onto a basketball court right now, I could set up at the top of the key, take a moment to get settled, and drain a shot — nothing but net. I could. That doesn’t mean I would — not on that first shot, at least. But maybe I’d take a second shot and hit that one; if not, maybe I would hit my third shot, or my fourth shot. I’m not bad at basketball, so I’d probably hit a shot within my first few tries.
Take an NBA superstar, however, and put him in the same spot at the top of the key with no one guarding him and with all the time he needs to get set and take his shot. He’ll probably hit it. If not the first one, he’ll probably hit the second (and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth). Put him on the floor with nine other guys and a shot clock and bodies moving all over the place and defense being played, and that’s when it becomes more iffy whether or not he’ll hit that shot. Even then, however, he’ll be likelier to hit that shot than I would be with no defense and no shot clock and no moving bodies around me.
Why? Because I’m stepping onto the court for the first time in months, and this NBA superstar is out there every single day. When he stands on the practice court to take an unguarded shot, he doesn’t think, “How hard should I shoot this, and what should my form be like, and how high should I jump, and how late should I wait to release the ball?” No — he just shoots. And most of the time, he makes it because he has a repeatable shooting motion, and his body knows exactly how to shoot the ball from that spot on the court.
Muscle memory. This is how an NBA superstar is able to hit shots from all over the court without ever thinking through what he has to do in order to make the shot; this is how an All-Star pitcher is able to paint the outside corner with a hard-breaking slider. They don’t think through and calculate exactly how they need to throw the pitch in order to achieve the desired results; no, they have thrown this pitch so many times, they know exactly what they need to do.
This is why I like starting each slate the same way. If I were starting each slate differently, it might be the same as if I were stepping onto a basketball court and trying to sink a shot from the top of the key. Sure, I might make it once, but the chances of me making it over and over again (let alone making it more than fifty percent of the time) are slim because I do not have the muscle memory necessary to shoot with a consistent delivery (“consistent delivery” is actually a term for pitching, so I’m mixing up my metaphors a bit, but I like that term for the purposes of this discussion, as that’s how I think of the process of approaching each slate, so there you have it!). But by starting each slate the same way, I put myself in position to start out in the right direction. This is how a basketball player not named JM “JMToWin” Tohline can hit most of his shots in practice, and this is how DFS players — including JM “JMToWin” Tohline and including you — can hit on most of their picks each day in MLB.
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