The Chronicles of a DFS Newbie

 Welcome to The Chronicles of a DFS Newbie. This space is going to show the journey of a completely inexperienced DFS player and hopefully act as a piece that most new DFS players can relate to.

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Chronicles of a DFS Newbie. I will try and give the thinking behind my lineup decisions and where I went right and/or wrong.

I have just started playing MLB, so I think it will be good to go over my lineup from the April 13 main slate to give an idea of how a newbie goes about picking a MLB lineup. This is the second MLB lineup that I have created.

So without further ado here is the lineup that I chose for a $1 GPP. I had only 1 lineup posted in this multi entry tournament on Draft Kings.

This lineup won me $2 with a score of 152.15! It was nice to see my first well researched lineup cash. Now let me go over how I came up with this lineup. First off, let me say that wow is MLB a whole different beast than NBA or NFL. There are so many more variables that can arise when picking a lineup than in an NBA lineup. For NBA, I would mainly just look at the point spread and the DvP and base my lineup from that; however for MLB there are so many different factors and statistics to consider.

The first thing I looked at which I am sure many of you do as well, were the Vegas Lines. Colorado and San Francisco had by far the highest run total for the night. Obviously this mostly has to do with the game being at Coors Field, and as they say you always want to target Coors. So for me, the main priority was to get as much exposure to the highest projected scoring game in the highest scoring ballpark as I possibly could.

The second thing I did was trying to find a second game to target. The rest of the games were all pretty much the same in terms of point spread, so I had to try and find another thing that could give me an advantage, and it turns out that it was weather that lead to my decision.

Of all the games that were played yesterday, only two had wind blowing away from home plate. One was the game at Coors Field, and the other was the game between Arizona and LA at Dodger Stadium. The wind at Dodgers stadium was blowing towards Right Field, so I knew that targeting Left handed hitters was the way to go.

Next step was to see who was actually playing, and I found that the Rotogrinders MLB Starting Lineups page is very good. They give you the lineups, the weather, BvP, and stats splits for the pitchers all in one spot. Obtaining all the information that I felt that I needed, I set out to get players from those two games in my lineup.

Now after I had picked my offensive players, I wasn’t left with enough to get any of the stud Pitchers of the night. Now to be honest, I was pretty lost when trying to figure out pitchers. I tried to find low projected scoring games, best potential for Ks, and best history against the opponents. That is how I landed my two pitchers.

Successes:

Going after Rockies players was just as important to me as going after Giants players. I felt a lot of people would be loading up on the Giants, so I wanted to be a little different and went with the two big Rockies studs; Arenado and C. Gonzalez. This strategy definitely paid off, as those two players scored 46 and 22 points respectively and were the main reason I was able to cash. My Giants players that I picked did not do as good as hoped, but they all put up some points. I feel that whatever Giants players were picked it was more of a hit and miss with who was going to put up the points, so I am not too disappointed that I didn’t pick all the right Giants in this game.

I also felt that going after A. Gonzalez was important, as he was the main lefty hitter in the game at Dodgers stadium. This also paid off as Gonzalez was able to get me a solo homerun.

Failures:

Where I went wrong today was with my Catcher position. Castillo put up a nice bagel for me. I think it was a mistake to just pick any player from this game due to the weather. In the future, I will have to look across the board a little more to try and find a matchup from a game that I am not stacking. Stacking is good, but I have to make sure that I don’t convince myself that it is the end all and be all.

Random Thoughts:

I’ve been focusing on finding mid-tier pitchers. They weren’t the best pitchers on the board and could have picked better pitchers out there (i.e. Eickhoff), but they did put up decent numbers. I can’t be too upset with my Rodon pick, but if I had downgraded on him to someone like Eickhoff or Lackey, it would have allowed spending a bit more for my second pitcher who had the 4^th lowest total on the day.

Overall, I am pleased with the start to my MLB journey. Hopefully, I can keep it going and it is not just beginners luck. As always, feel free to hit me up on twitter @Kamani31 to go over your lineup choices or to give me any tips on the lineups that I have chosen. Until next time!

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