Yawn. Good morning. Happy Saturday. Baseball and NASCAR happens today, and I anticipate that they go slightly overlooked today with everybody thinking about NFL tomorrow. The action that does come in on those games should be soft action, but I too do not have as much time as I would like to devote to making baseball and NASCAR lineups when I have about 50 NFL lineups to make between now and tomorrow morning too.

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I’ve already made a NASCAR lineup. They’re easy to make more of if the contest overlays, and after checking it appears that things are not going to be overlaying. That really surprises me. I guess with so much traffic on the site people are like, hey, why not make a NASCAR lineup?

I wrote about the race here.

I’m going to make a couple of MLB lineups but limit my exposure to overlaying contests, and with less than 5 hours to go before lock the MLB contests look more likely to overlay than the NASCAR contests.

The interesting conundrum today is what to do with Jose Fernandez. He comes back from the DL after suffering from a bicep strain. I am always wary of rostering an athlete immediately after coming back from an injury, but I think this is a special circumstance. The Marlins are 20 games back and have no chance of playing ball in October. Jose Fernandez is young and their franchise ace. He’s never lost a game at home and is vying for history tonight, trying to tie the record for best career start in a home stadium at 16-0.

It’s this simple to me. If Jose wasn’t ready to go, then the Marlins wouldn’t be pitching him. The problem is that I cannot find any coach quotes or anything implying whether or not he is on a pitch count. I can’t imagine that the Marlins would be willing to let him go 120 pitches for the same reasoning that their season is done. Either way I think his ceiling is capped.

I haven’t discussed Mad Bum yet because I assume y’all knew he was a must play. At home facing the Padres as the biggest favorite on the board in a game with the lowest total on the board. Since he’s such a must play, that makes the Padres a really good team to stack because everybody will have Madison and nobody will have the Padres.

I really like Roenis Elias tonight. He’s only 6.3k and facing Colorado at home. Safeco is a pitcher’s park. He’s a -173 favorite and the total is 8.0. I have Roenis projected for more points than Noah Syndergaard… hard for me to believe too. Quintana is the other guy I like and would consider rostering.

If there were a game in Coors or some more exciting bats to pay up for then I would likely roster Elias and MadBum tonight for all formats. I don’t know what I want to spend on though, so maybe I’ll just run MadBum and Jose for cash? I’m just trying to win tickets tonight. But maybe Jose is a good GPP play because he’s coming off injury and should be lower owned? Maybe he’s a bad GPP play because he will probably be on a pitch count? I dunno. I’m worrying too much about which Manning to play at QB tomorrow.

Here’s my 1st draft cash lineup:

P M. Bumgarner P SD@SF $12,200
P Jose Fernandez P 15Day Was@Mia $11,700
C Kyle Schwarber ChC@Phi $4,500
1B Kyle Parker Col@Sea $2,000
2B Chris Coghlan ChC@Phi $3,300
3B Justin Turner LAD@Ari $3,700
SS Jimmy Rollins DTD LAD@Ari $3,500
OF Carl Crawford DTD LAD@Ari $3,000
OF Angel Pagan SD@SF $2,500
OF Josh Reddick Oak@Tex $3,400

Lots of Dodgers and Cubs. They’ll probably be who I stack too. But again, I’m just seeking to poach some overlay tonight. There are a lot of question marks surrounding that lineup and I don’t have the time today to dedicate to answering those questions. It’s important to limit your exposure to DFS when you can’t properly research to be competitive.

Yesterday’s Daily Update was all about ownership percentages seen in cheap FanDuelNFL contests that locked on Thursday. If a player is popular on FanDuelon Thursday, then we can deduce that he will be popular on FanDuelon Sunday, and likely will be popular on DraftKings. It’s a good read; check it out.

I’m making about 20 lineups on each site and they’re really easy to break up. I will have Romo, Palmer, and Ryan, all throwing in various combinations to Dez, Witten, Brown, and Julio. I am targeting Carolina, Tampa Bay, Denver, and Minnesota for my defenses. There’s 12 lineups. I’m still not sure what to do with the rest. I like Peyton Manning due to ownership and team total (and ownership of DT and Emmanuel). I like Eli Manning due to ownership and expectation for him to be slinging it in Dallas, and I like his receiving targets in Randle and Donnell. All attention in Dallas and DFS goes to ODB.

I think it is extremely important to fade the really highly owned guys in the massive GPPs around the industry this weekend. Granted anti-sweating the chalk sucks, but it is so awesome when they fall short and tens to hundreds of thousands of lineups just lost their chance of winning the GPP. When all those people lose their shot, your probability of winning the GPP goes up considerably. Based on FanDuel numbers, the highest owned guys will be:

Team all chalk:

QB Sam Bradford
RB Eddie Lacy
RB Lamar Miller
WR Davante Adams
WR Jordan Matthews
WR Julio Jones
TE Greg Olsen
D/ST Jets

Honorable mentions: Tyrod Taylor, Ryan Tannehill, and Aaron Rodgers. DeMarco Murray, Adrian Peterson, and Doug Martin. Miami D/ST.

If you avoid just those players I listed, you will have a great chance of having a unique lineup.

Have fun out there.

Devo