Daily Fantasy Sports: A Big, Fun Sweat

Last week, I got a reminder of why I really love playing daily fantasy sports. On Friday evening, FanDuel was struggling to fill its $500 buy-in tournament where the top two places were guaranteed a trip to Boston to compete in the $150k prize pool Boston Fantasy Baseball Championship. With only a few minutes until contests locked for the day, the tournament was only about half full. Seeing as I love overlays, I bought an entry. At lock time, 61 players had entered, with the top two lineups receiving entry into the Boston Championship and third through seventh place coming away with a little money back.

My tournament only lineup featured Noah Syndergaard, the fantastic young pitcher for the Mets, on the hill. On a night where Madison Bumgarner had a prime home matchup, this drove all other pitcher ownership down. So when Syndergaard dazzled with eight innings of one run ball, including thirteen strikeouts and a win, I knew if my guys could hit that this would be a solid tournament lineup.

The Padres were facing a lefty in Texas so catcher Derek Norris and second baseman Jedd Gyorko made for really good value plays, causing them to be highly owned. My goal with the tournament lineup was to differentiate myself some so I purposefully avoided those two players and instead paid for studs at catcher and second base in Yasmani Grandal and Brian Dozier, respectively. This would prove to be a very fortunate move later. Besides only differentiating at those two positions, taking that approach will generally differentiate your entire lineup, as most people will have one or both of them and the lineup construction becomes very similar elsewhere.

With Syndergaard’s big game in the bag (24 points on FanDuel to be precise), it was on to sweating the hitters. The big break of the night came when the Minnesota Twins, down 6-1 heading into the bottom of the ninth, sparked a rally. In addition to Brian Dozier, I had rookie sensation Miguel Sano on this roster and he hit a ground-rule double and scored a run as the second batter to come to the plate in the ninth. The Twins continued their charge until Dozier came up, down 6-5, with two runners on and one out. Bingo! Dozier hit a game-winning three-run homer that vaulted me into second place in the Boston Championship satellite.

At this point, I began to sweat the teams behind me to see if anyone had a strong chance of catching up. Most of the lineups near the very top had Syndergaard and there were large gaps in between those teams and teams that used Bumgarner who pitched later that night. So I was feeling pretty good on that front. There were, however, a few teams with some hitters I had to worry about that were fairly close to my score. Luckily, all those fizzled out and I felt relatively in the clear.

Well, I should’ve known better because in GPPs you’re never in the clear. Mike Trout’s third-inning homer against the Mariners pulled GPP legend McJester within striking distance of my team. After browsing the rest of the teams behind me, I told my friends I was watching the Mariners game seeing that the only way this will even be a sweat is another Mike Trout homer, and lo and behold that’s what happened in the top of the seventh. The ball bounced off the top of the wall, with the incessant replays showing it squish the yellow paint as it bounced, and went over. I was disgusted! Now, McJester and I were tied, with my team still having three players remaining to his lone Mike Trout.

While that sounds like a big advantage for me, it could be the death knell on FanDuel, where every out made is a -.25 for your team’s score. So after Nelson Cruz and Adrian Gonzalez both made outs, I was down to Yasmani Grandal versus Mike Trout, with McJester holding a half point lead. Well, Grandal walked on four pitches and that gave me the half point lead. Leaving it all up to Mike Trout in an at-bat that was probably about a $20,000 equity swing for yours truly. Trout got ahead in the count 2-0 and then popped out to short center field on a fastball right down the middle. It was, to say the least, a nail biter.

Next Friday, July 24, I’ll be on my way to Boston to play in the Boston Fantasy Baseball Championship on Saturday. In all, 12 players will compete for the $150k prize pool. First place will win $50,000, second $25,000 and down the line to twelfth, which is $4,000. Worst case is an all-expense paid trip and $4,000 in profit. Not too shabby. This is my first live final for any daily fantasy sport and I’m really looking forward to booming it.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Find me on Twitter @IanJ300 with any questions.

Right now, you can play Major League Baseball DFS contests every day of the week at DraftKings, FanDuel and FantasyDraft.

If you think you are ready to play, check out our Daily Fantasy Sports page. Card Player readers eligible for deposit bonuses of 100 percent on a number of the best DFS sites around.

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