April 24th DFS Analysis

I’ve already announced on Twitter that I’ve decided to win a DraftKings tournament this week, so here we are to take shot #1 at it.

Last year I lucked into winning the big $15 tourney that won me $50,000. I’m not going to be insane enough to think that’ll ever happen again, so I’m going to focus more on a smaller GPP to attack.

After checking out the lobby there really isn’t anything that stands out. I like the 3-entry max tournaments since people aren’t just throwing 150 lineups at the wall with an optimizer. There’s no like $12 3-entry max tournament though so we’re going to enter three lineups into 2 GPPs each:

That’ll make it $24 entry a day and we’ll see if we can generate any profits on that.

Slate Overview

Seven games to start the week. Cold temperatures but no rainout possibilities. No Coors Field or Great American, so it’s a pretty good slate for a seven-gamer. Should be good.

Pitchers

I will give you free subs a gift and show the whole pitching projections for the slate.

Clearly, Spencer Strider is going to have the ownership. I don’t think it’s going to be wise to fade the ownership in this case just because there are so few other strong options here and he has such a strong floor. Might even end up with him on all three lineups.

I think Lance Lynn is a nice option as well. He’s been quite bad this year but is still getting strikeouts. That gives him the upside and probably some lower ownership given the current form and the tough matchup with Toronto.

Jordan Montgomery is next on the list and he gets the matchup with the Giants which is a juicy one. They have a team 28% K% which is the worst in the league. Montgomery isn’t a super high-ceiling pitcher, but does have a 35-pointer already this year. The $9,500 price tag is probably just right on the money, but that could work to keep the ownership down a bit so we can consider him for the three lineups.

The other standout upside arm is Edward Cabrera against the Braves. That could so easily be like a -10 point outing if he walks everybody like he’s prone to do and gives up some bombs which the Braves are prone to hit. Huge spread of potential outcomes there but I think I want to put Cabrera in one lineup.

I guess we shouldn’t forget about Sonny Gray and his 28% K% this year. He faces the Yankees who aren’t a great lineup right now. Gray is so tough to predict though. His whiff counts this year: 13, 9, 16, and 7. I can only pick a few pitchers so I think Gray will be the one I’ll leave out here.

Maybe my SP mix looks something like this:

Strider + Montgomery
Strider + Cabrera
Strider + Lynn

Obviously, then we aren’t taking a stand on an SP2 which means we’ll have to get really lucky to combine the right stack with the right SP2, but yeah I mean these GPPs are largely luck so that’s the game we’re playing.

Hitters

Vegas says:

1. Angels 5.91 runs

2. D’Backs 5.63 runs

3. Blue Jays 5.01 runs

4. Royals 5.87 runs

5. Braves 4.77 runs

The Royals are the real standout offense in terms of projected runs compared to their usual performance. They also have the 2nd highest team fantasy point projection on my model for teams on the main slate. I’m guessing they won’t go overlooked, but a Royals stack is probably an order here (they do have some high-upside bats at this point unlike previous years).

One thing I like to do is to use the projections dashboard and select the top five in the lineup and see the ceilings:

That is sorted by projection, but on the right there you can see the Angels ceiling is really crushing everybody else. Trout + Ohtani is never overly popular since they’re so expensive, but they’ll probably get plenty of clicks tonight.

The “Top Plays” from the hitting projections sheet:

Maybe just going full Strider+Trout+Ohtani in all three lineups is the ticket here. Obviously, that makes it a one-outcome chance at the top spot, if those three don’t score something like 80 points I’m pretty much dead in the water, but they are very likely to have big games, and if they all do it together that would put me in a really competitive spot. I think we’re going to go with that.

Alright, I’ve given you free-loaders enough, we’re going behind the paywall to give my favorite plays at each position. We’ll even put together a cash lineup there because the projections have really been putting out some double-up winners this year.