DFSR Takes on Daily Fantasy Sports Network H2H

Last night I played DevilBall420 from Daily Fantasy Sports Network H2H on FanDuel. It was our second matchup. I took Thursday's action here: https://www.fanduel.com/contest/200443774/scoring/lineup/1003574392

DevilBall420 took it last night. Below are our lineups. I wanted to run you through my strategy and some of my thoughts ahead of time.

https://www.fanduel.com/contest/200443774/scoring/lineup/1003574392

Pitchers:
I, like many others in cash game formats, over-valued the early season returns on Jesse Chavez. I knew he wasn't as good as his ERA heading into the game suggested, but I didn't like any of the mid-tier options. The Astros K a ton and this seemed like insane value. Essentially, my issues cascaded down from this decision to start Chavez. (Incidentally, I ran another cash lineup with Strasburg in it. I didn't play that one here. Oops.)

He took Archer against a hot White Sox team. Archer didn't pay, though went six innings and wasn't terrible. It's been hard to know how much of the new White Sox offensive success is real. I think it is legit. We pushed points on pitchers.

Infield

My strategy tonight was to grab a few A's and Rays as I thought each team's lefty bats had the biggest value considering their opponents. I thought Jaso, hitting second against Peacock was the top catching value on the day. He was hit for late in the game and lost an at bat. I doubt it would have mattered for this H2H though the A's put up runs late.

At first base, I loved Moss today. He crushes righties and Peacock gets bombed by lefties. Moss was acceptable, getting plunked a couple of times. It's worth noting that I did have Cabrera but switched him out for Moss late.

The big difference in the H2H was devilball making a great play with Rendon against the lefty. He had a huge game and I really couldn't make up the difference. Rendon was on my radar, but I never actively considered putting him in. Hat tip to DB for this call. Zobrist was my top value at 2B against Johnson. The Rays put up some runs, but I was expecting more from Ben considering he was at the top of the order.

Third base and shortstop were where I hemmed and hawed the most. Essentially, by choosing to go so cheap at pitching, I had to get some money in a way I thought was less than optimal. Hanley is a good example of this. While I didn't hate him necessarily, he wasn't near the top of my list tonight (that was Lowrie and Bogaerts)and playing the cheaper guys felt I was leaving too much money on the table. Enter Hanley. He underperformed in this one against Lyles.

Outfield

We both took Joyce which turned out well considering he just walked every time up. For me, CarGo fell into the same category as Hanley, though our system did like him quite a bit more. Braun was a much more popular cash game play last night against Villanueva. This would have swung the difference for me. But I had to get some big money in with Chavez in at pitching and went with Gonzalez. He blew it.

DevilBall made a real nice with Kubel who came under 3K and had a strong game.

Coco Crisp fell into my A's strategy. And while the A's put up a monster line, Crisp was able to contribute a bunch of the outs that allowed the game to ultimately end. So there's that. Crisp was my top big money value in the OF today and he was trash.

All in all, a good H2H. If we continue it I'll try and post my lineup thoughts afterwards to give a view into my thinking.