The Dongers Club – July 29th

Monday, July 29th

It’s only a SEVEN game slate tonight and Coors Field is back as the Dodgers visit the Rockies there.  Keep an eye out for teams making trades with the deadline approaching.

Congrats to the three finalists for the Dongers Club Championship.  I’ll post the results so all you folks who didn’t qualify can sit there and throw stones at those who did and talk about how you would have beat them if the guy down the road hadn’t been mowing his lawn when you were setting your lineup and causing your dog to bark….. Or something.

The Championship Round rules are as follows:

• Monday through Friday this week, Main Slates
• Lowest score dropped.  So you are not killed by one low score
• Cumulative scoring for the other four scores.
• 5 point bonus each day you finish in first.

And the wrinkles:

• -10 point penalty if the Dongers Club Chairman homers and you do not have him (-10 for each HR)
  • So the obvious thought here is okay just play the Chairman right?   Well, he has to homer and if you fade him and he doesn’t homer and the other 2 do take him with potentially a bad score then you are up on them.   Choose Wisely.

WEATHER

All games play.

For today’s article and likely every day this week I am going to focus you to lineup construct the following method.

• Optimal / Single Entry or Cash Lineup:
  • Start with Pitching and then SKIP the Team/Stacks section and go down to the positional plays and build a balanced lineup off those notes.  Obviously as you are going through if you find yourself moving to recommendations on players from the same team then logically fill in a stack as it feels necessary, but don’t start with the mindset of just stacking a team, because ….
• If you are doing a Multi-Entry Field Lineup (or 2nd lineup, etc.)
  • Then you start with the Target Teams/Stacks section and not with pitching.
  • Start with the team you are stacking, i.e. TWINS (yesterdays top team) and go off what I wrote up, which was 1-4 & Schoop.  Thats your core of the stack.
  • A stack recommendation is typically one of two things
    • It’s either saying – I like this entire team so picking just about anyone from them is where we want to go expecting tons of offense.
    • or … these are the specific guys from this team to get into a stack, could be 3 guys, could be 5….  read
  • When building the ‘Team’ based stacks, i.e. ones that arent calling out specific players then pick a player batting in these spots:
    • Cheapest player batting 1-3
    • Cheapest player batting 4-6
    • Cheapest player batting 7-9
      • Then fill in that stack up to 5 on DK by filling in the other two from one of those sections.  So if you take the guy batting 2nd and wanna wrap him with 1&3 then do that.
      • If you are on FanDuel, I’d Take the best value player 1-5 and the best value bat 6-8 and then wrap 2 hitters around the 1-5 player you picked.
  • Then after building the stack we will pick our pitchers and then fill in the other spots.
    • Because the lineup wont matter so much about those last 3 — even though they should hopefully come from the positional breakdown.  The lineup is based upon the core stack.

Chris Paddack

Baltimore comes in swinging a lot of good bats, which I hope drives Paddack’s ownership down slightly — but it likely isn’t enough to make him contrarian or anything along those lines.  He will deal tonight against the Orioles.

Caleb Smith

Imagine my shock and annoyance when I find out during the D’Backs/Marlins game that they have a rare 4 game wrap-around series with the Diamondbacks not leaving until after tonight.  So the whole South Beach Theory — although Arizona didn’t do much yesterday — carries over to tonight?  Well, that aside, I trust Caleb Smith to pitch well at home as he has all season again today.

Brad Keller

Simply going off prior starts we could argue Keller is among the elite options tonight, but I’m not gonna sucker into his dominant start in Atlanta in front of friends and family.  He gives up a HR tonight — probably Smoak or a random dong to Danny Jansen — but Keller’s velo and swing and misses are way up as he gets more and more comfortable as a reliant SP.  He gets run support tonight too and this is a game KC can win.

• COMP:  Jaime Barria … I am not a Barria guy, vs the Tigers he has a soft match-up obviously, but I’m just not a Barria chalk guy.   Kinda think Tigers upset them.

Merrill Kelley

Good soft spot for Kelly tonight against the Marlins in big ole Miami.  This game logically is going to carry a ton of SP ownership tonight so if you are on a leverage mindset then sure fade him and Smith and go with bats, but nothing outside of doing that is a reason to be scared off of Kelley today.

UPDATE:  I really think Kenta Maeda pitches well in Coors tonight.   He shuts down Nolan and Story is lost at the plate.  Worth a flier as an SP2 on DK.

DK PITCHER PAIRINGS RANKED

1. Paddack and Smith
2. Keller and Smith
3. Kelley and Maeda

FD ARMS RANKED

1. Paddack
2. Smith
3. Kelley

Projected Chalk:   Dodgers, Reds, Angels

REDS – Holy hell they are way underpriced on DK.

Even with Lyles being traded I am still heavily on the Reds — see the part in RED below.

Jordan Lyles had an out of nowhere April and if you recall we routinely stacked against him the first few starts and took some losses because he was pulling some good starts out of his ass — then I touted him thinking hey maybe its a Pirates pitching coach revitalization and bam, he went back to sucking.  You’re welcome.  Now we are profiting off him sucking and while he should manage to not be as horrific tonight he also comes in still unable to get lefties out, nor keep them in the park.

Add onto that, the fact that the Pirates bullpen is among the WORST vs LH hitting and we have ourselves the type of team who can be stacked and expect them to put up lots of crooked scores tonight.  I wouldn’t mind mixing in one or two RH bats such as Puig and obviously Geno but Votto, Winker, Gennett, Barnhart all are primary plays tonight.

• BEST VALUE (DK)
  • 1-3:  Votto
  • 4-6:  Gennett
  • 7-9:  Barnhart
  • EXTRAS:  Winker & Suarez (Preferred) or Puig & VanMeter
• EXAMPLE FULL STACK:
  • Winker, votto, Suarez, Gennett, Barnhart

SNEAKY SPOTS

PIRATES

This is the next best ballpark outside of Coors and with Keuchel and Corbin likely limiting blow ups in the Braves-Nats game I like this one for more HR upside over the rest.  Pittsburgh will have to find a way to get into the Reds bullpen to really pay off but Starling Marte has had massive success in Cincinnati and has been swinging a hot bat of late.  Look for Bell to get going again and Jung-ho Kang is a nice sneaky value play as well.  Sonny Gray runs into some problems today and is chalk I’m willing to attack.

• SPECIFIC STACK:   Marte, Bell, Dickerson

BRAVES / NATS

Very warm temps, to very up and down at times lefties and two teams who can hit LHP pretty well + some shitty bullpens and elite HR offenses?   What are we overlooking here?  How does Anthony Rendon not pop off for us today?  Oh, right, because its a Coors slate and the Orioles and Tigers are gonna get beatdowns on the west coast?  Nah, gimme this game over those two late night games.

UPDATE: I’m not a Jaime Barria guy as I mentioned and so I’ll have a Jones-Castro-Goodrum mini 3 man in a ME lineup today.   Tigers are a great late night contest play against Barria Bad Chalk IMO.

FADE

• Rockies … They dont hit Kenta
• Blue Jays … Couple one offs stand out but I think they’re quiet today after the trades yesterday.

Below are the plays that I will be looking towards for my main lineup tonight.

CATCHER

Because most catchers won’t ever bat at the top of the order or the ones who do are expensive, we always look at the ones playing in good parks to run into a good situation or simply attack the worst SP.  Today we have a combination of the two things together in Cincinnati

1. Tucker Barnhart
2. Francisco Mejia
3. Kevan Smith

FIRST BASE

Probably gonna be wise to eat the chalk out in Coors tonight with Joc Pederson, but if ever there was a Votto game today is it.  Only 7 games and facing Lyles who is terrible vs lefties.   I could see Smoak going on a little mini hot streak this week as well.

1. Joey Votto
2. Joc Pederson
3. Justin Smoak

SECOND BASE

1. Scooter Gennett … See above on LH bats vs Jordan Lyles
2. Ozzie Albies … Oz is only 3100 on FD and is hitting LHP very well.
3. Harold Castro … The Angels arent pitching well.  Castro very cheap and a park playing well for hitting

THIRD BASE

1. Justin Turner
2. Anthony Rendon … Was very very very close to making him the cover boy today but Whit is just too sexy.
3. Hunter Dozier

SHORTSTOP

1. Corey Seager … He sucks but its a weak SS slate, so the Coors donkey HR is worth it.
2. Jung-ho Kang
3. Manny Machado … DK Only move here or UTIL on FD.

OUTFIELD … Mt Rushmore 

It’s back, after a HUUUUGE Sunday for the Mt. Rushmore, we are bringing it back again tonight (it’s a requirement when the damn thing has a 4-4 HR day)

1. Whit Merrifield … Not a HR guy  but if we can get that wHIT streak started tonight then he’ll have a big game all around.
2. Ronald Acuna Jr
3. Justin Upton
4. Starling Marte

OUTFIELD – Tier 2

1. Yasiel Puig
2. David Fletcher
3. Jesse Winker
4. Alex Verdugo

OUTFIELD – Value

1. Justin Upton
2. Jacoby Jones – Best way for Barria to get beat up is by the RH bats on Detroit.
3. Manny Margot
4. Franmil Reyes

THE CHAIRMAN

1. Starling Marte – OF – Pirates

THE REST

1. Yasiel Puig – OF – Cincinnati Reds
2. Anthony Rendon – 3B – Nationals … As I QC my article I find myself noticing… Self… You wrote up Rendon a lot.
3. Whit Merrifield – OF – Royals
4. Tucker Barnhart – C – Reds
5. Harold Castro – 2B – Tigers
6. Joey Votto – 1B – Reds
7. Jacoby Jones – OF – Tigers
8. BONUS ………………………….. Justin Upton – OF – Angels