The Daily Grind: DFS, Streaming, and More for August 10

Agenda

1. Experimental League#3
2. The Daily Grind Invitational and Leaderboard
3. Daily DFS
4. SaberSim Observations
5. Tomorrow’s Targets
6. Factor Grid

1. Experimental League #3

I had an idea for an experimental league yesterday, and I wanted to record it before losing it to the aether. But it’s too late. It’s gone, confused in the litany of weird league ideas I want to try. Maybe I’ll remember it another time.

Wait, light bulb! The idea has phoned home. The backbone is a fairly standard 12-team (or any number) redraft with a few extra categories and a thin bench. The identity of those categories isn’t very important as long as they’re relatively uncorrelated to other numbers. This leaderboard is good enough for an example.

Here comes the M. Night twist: the minimum score in any category is eight points. The point of the league is micro-manage a few big category leads. In traditional scoring, there’s big separation here between first and fifth place. Under the new rules, Jefferson Manship has +19 points, Jonestown* has +24, and Honkbal Hoofdklasse has +11. A surge in RBI and holds could put Honkbal neck-and-neck with first place.

*Jonestown has used a large IP total to hide a bad K rate. He’s also lost all of his closers but Roberto Osuna. He’ll lose at least four pitching points.

This sample league doesn’t fully illustrate the strategic and tactical implications of this format. When only excellence will earn you points, successfully managing categories requires the owner to make trade offs. It begins in the draft. A typical redraft strategy is to aim for a third place finish in every category. In this redesigned league, that’s still a viable strategy (expected +12 points). However, most owners will go for dominating a few categories.

I’ll flesh this out in more detail sometime in the offseason. In the meantime, let’s chat.

2. The Daily Grind Invitational and Leaderboard

Congratulations are in order for Buctorber25 who narrowly held off jbodnar79 for the win. The margin of victory was just .25 points. Bucky received home runs from five of his batters. The leaderboard is updated.

Wednesdays are DraftKings, I’ll see ya there.

3. Daily DFS 

Yesterday’s Grind

Early: Three games are early. None of the pitchers are flat out terrible with Gio Gonzalez, Jeremy Hellickson, Scott Kazmir, Josh Tomlin, and Jeff Samardzija representing viable plays. David Phelps is the obvious weak link – mostly because he won’t last very long.

Stack Targets: Phelps, Samardzija, Hellickson

Late: The other 12 games are in the main contest. Headliners include Justin Verlander, J.A. Happ, and, to a lesser extent, Jose Quintana. Verlander is opposite Felix Hernandez’s ghost while Happ gets Blake Snell and Quintana faces Ian Kennedy. Happ is my preferred play of the “aces.”

Drew Pomeranz’s price has declined enough to be rosterable again. The Pom has provided minimal value since joining the Red Sox. A home start versus the New York Retirees could jump start his Boston tenure.

Robbie Ray is a decent GPP play due to his high strikeout totals. The lefty will have the platoon advantage against most of the Mets best hitters – those that aren’t on the disabled list. He’s unlikely to throw more than six innings.

Even Wily Peralta had a good outing against the Braves. It’s not entirely unbelievable that Chase Anderson could do fine tonight. He’ll even toss seven or more frames if he’s having a good day.

Dallas Keuchel is showing signs of life including a complete game shutout in his last start. His price remains affordable since neither site reacted strongly to the studly outing. The lefty is prone to a suddenly volatile Twins offense.

Stack Targets: Ross Detwiler, Joel de la Cruz, Martin Perez, Ricky Nolasco, Edwin Jackson, Jorge de la Rosa, Yovani Gallardo, Nathan Eovaldi, Ryan Vogelsong, Blake Snell

4. SaberSim Observations

SaberSim says Ray is King. Not to be confused with Ray King.** Scott Kazmir, Happ, Hernandez, and Gonzalez round out the projected top five. Stacks include the Braves, Angels, Red Sox, Brewers, Blue Jays, Cubs, Astros, and Orioles.

**The pitching coach of my age 13-14 team claimed King was a kleptomaniac. They played together in High-A.

5. Tomorrow’s Targets 

Pitchers to Start: Miguel Gonzalez has pitched well enough that I figure he can survive a game at Kauffman Stadium. The righty delivers merely adequate numbers across the board, and he’s not likely to win opposite Danny Duffy. Alternatively, you could use one of the spontaneously combustible fireballers below.

Also consider: Jose Berrios, Michael Pineda

Pitchers to Exploit: It’s a real Fausto Carmona sighting. The Braves are digging deep for starting pitchers, turning to Roberto Hernandez. Good ol’ Royberdito allows plenty of high quality contact. Brewers owners rejoice.

Also consider: Braden Shipley, Christian Friedrich, Chad Bettis, Lucas Harrell, Matt Garza, Andrew Triggs, Jhoulys Chacin

Hitters (power): Tyler Naquin has a 41 percent hard hit rate and 30 percent HR/FB ratio. While he won’t maintain those marks or a .420 BABIP, he’ll probably continue to produce above average contact. He’s opposed by Chacin.

Also consider: Andrew Benintendi, Pedro Alvarez, Hyun-soo Kim, Gerardo Parra, David Freese

Hitters (speed): Let it not be said that Jarrod Dyson doesn’t run a lot. He has 17 steals in 212 plate appearances although that ratio is a little deceptive. Some of the steals are of the pinch running variety and hence did not incur a plate appearance. You’ll only get the one category from him.

Also consider: Rajai Davis, Jace Peterson, Ender Inciarte, Hernan Perez, Ryan Gennett, Orlando Arcia

6. The Factor Grid

The table below indicates which stadiums have the best conditions for hitters today. The color coding is a classic stoplight where green equals go for hitters. The weather conditions are from SI Weather’s home run app. A 10/10 means great atmospheric conditions for home runs. A 1/10 means lousy atmospheric conditions.

The Link.

This post is not brought to you by any DFS platform. The current author is quite pleased to present a DFS ad free environment.