I have a pretty straightforward process to making lineups in MLB:

• Early in the morning I read some articles, check the vegas lines, and mentally note who might be good plays later
• From 2-3PST I watch a few live shows to get a general idea of who the industry is on
• I work on pitcher projections and manually make the lineups I want
• Once all lineups are in, I upload projections and check what optimal lineups are
• I run my favorite lineup close to optimal, sometimes making a 1v1 switch if I think a player is undervalued

Yesterday I went through this process and hit a couple roadblocks. The first was weather: there were 4 games with inclement weather that could face delays, early stoppages, or possible PPDs. There were a couple players in these games I was considering, so I needed to analyze each city and estimate how much risk was involved playing guys in each game.

The second was teams unwilling to release lineups. Usually all the relevant lineups are out over half an hour before lineup lock, but when a team has a player that's hurt but may still be able to play that night, they take longer to finalize the decision. And then once the lineup is finally released, it takes the models I use 5-10 minutes to fully process the changes.

Once the lineups were in at just after 3:40PST, I hand made my lineups, finished up registration and unregistering my unfilled Draftkings HUs, and ran the numbers. The disparity between what I wanted and what the numbers told me to play was huge. Usually I'm a 2v2 or less away and finalizing my lineup is easy. However yesterday I was at least 5 players off on each site, and they were not players I was even considering. I double checked each projection and there was no way around it. Being that far away from optimal made me uneasy, but with a limited time to tinker for 3 different sites and lock in guys I thought were underprojected, I just played the optimals; it did not work out.

Draftkings

P Chris Sale P 100% 27.55 lock
P Luis Severino P 100% 18.45 lock
C Alex Avila 4 100% 2 lock
1B Chris Davis 4 100% 0 lock
2B Chris Taylor 1 100% 22 lock
3B Todd Frazier 5 100% 0 lock
SS Kiké Hernández 4 100% 7 lock
OF Grégor Blanco 1 100% 14 lock
OF Delino DeShields 1 100% 10 lock
OF David Peralta 2 100% 21 lock
TOTAL FANTASY POINTS: 122.00

To give you an idea of how far off my rogue lineup was, I wanted a different pitcher (Wood over Severino), 1b (Morales or Goldschmidt), 2b (Cesar, Josh Harrison, Kinsler), 3b (Harrison or Yolmer Sanchez), OF3 (a number of options over Delino).

I was ok with Severino over Wood here: Severino saved $600 salary, I had them projected similarly, and Wood was going to be my pitcher on Yahoo, so he gave me a natural split between sites.

Severino projected higher than Wood on DK, but the same on Y! where Wood was cheaper

Instead of fully trusting my intuition and forcing in players I just ran the lineup and moved on.

FantasyDraft

P Chris Sale $25,200 27.55
P Luis Severino $17,100 18.45
IF Alex Avila $6,300 2.00
IF Chris Davis $8,800 0.00
IF Kendrys Morales $8,000 6.00
OF Ezequiel Carrera $6,000 3.00
OF David Peralta $7,200 21.00
OF Grégor Blanco $6,000 14.00
UTIL José Bautista $8,800 9.00
UTIL Manuel Margot $6,600 3.00

I also hated this lineup. After Draftkings I was ok with going Severino, but I didn't want Avila (no need to play a catcher), Chris Davis, or Margot. I also didn't have Ezequiel Carrera, but after spending so much time tinkering with Draftkings to no avail, I just stuffed in this lineup and also moved on. There was no way around playing a lineup I wasn't comfortable with without giving up equity, but I should have at least locked Kike Hernandez, who was underprojected on the models: he often gets pinch hit for late in games, but due to a Justin Turner injury this was less likely, so he deserved a bump.

Yahoo

PChris SaleSP@ OAK35.031.9728.662
PAlex WoodSPvs MIA21.822.0729.240
CAlex Avila4vs TEX6.76.632.013
1BKendrys Morales3@ BAL6.07.746.013
2BJason Kipnis1@ HOU4.86.8514.011
3BDavid Freese4vs PHI5.16.540.010
SSTrea Turner1@ ATL7.48.3010.021
OFAndrew McCutchen3vs PHI6.27.872.013
OFDelino DeShields1@ DET5.16.698.010
OFTyler Collins2vs TEX5.16.272.07

Another lineup I hated: I didn't want Kipnis, Freese, Trea Turner, or McCutchen. The Pirates were in one of the threatening weather games, but X'ing those players out was just as ugly. I had less than 3 minutes to decide so I just locked and moved on.

Results

Bloodbath.

Draftkings:
Buyins: $1,850
Cashes: $1,204
Profit: -$646

FantasyDraft:
Buyins: $1,377.75
Cashes: $3.60
Profit: -$1,374.15

Yahoo:
Buyins: $3,500
Cashes: $134.70
Profit -$3,365.30

Overall: -$5,385.45

Just one of those days. The one mistake I made was not playing with my optimals early enough: all the information was not in yet, but I could manually adjust players I liked better while the models updated to get lineups closer to what I wanted instead of these.

Time to take a much needed weekend off from DFS and just sit back and watch crypto rise. To the moon!

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My name is Ryan Daut and I'd love to have you as a follower. Click here to go to my page, then click in the upper right corner if you would like to see my blogs and articles regularly.

I am a professional gambler, and my interests include poker, fantasy sports, football, basketball, MMA, health and fitness, rock climbing, mathematics, astrophysics, cryptocurrency, and computer gaming.