An Evening with Max DaLury...

(Note: after writing this entry, I heard Max DaLury on a podcast, and it made me believe I missed something pretty crucial to his strategy, after reading this it's in your best interest to read my follow up entry here.)

Lately, I've been trying to avoid the big hitters on the Draft Kings site, making attempts to play with less experienced players like myself.  Early on, I sought out the big guys to see what they were doing, I figured it was worth a couple of bucks to see what the seasoned pros did.  I won a few, lost a bunch, and learned a few things.

Tonight, in a $5 10-team league, I was shocked to find Max DaLury pop up in the game.  His name is ubiquitous on the Draft Kings site (if you want to see who is hosting the $10K H2H game, it'll be this guy 9 out of 10 times.  As it's been a few weeks, I thought I might take another look at his line up construction.

Now, I came in second with a 111.95 points and came away with some cash.  And unfortunately, you can't glean too much from the pitchers he chose because it was a two game format where basically everybody took Hendricks & Salazar (as opposed to John Danks and/or Odrisamer Despaigne).  But the hitters show a discernible pattern.  There are three basic groups he picked from, with a little overlap and one outlier.

1. He picked on the obvious worst pitcher of the night.  John Danks was clearly the worst of the four possible pitchers and was the most likely to lose this night.  He's been pretty bad all year long with a 4.66 ERA & a 1..37 WHIP.  A pitcher who is bad can make fairly pedestrian players on the opposing team seem very good.  And this strategy works more often than not.  This reasoning accounts for Carlos Santana, Jason Kipnis, Mike Aviles, Ryan Raburn, and Nick Swisher.(or 62.5% of his roster).

2. He chose players who were hot in the very short term past.  Jason Kipnis has been on fire in the past week. Kris Bryant has been at or very near the top of the Third Base pile since his second game in the big leagues.  Dexter Fowler homered the night before, and Mike Aviles was fresh off a two hit night the day before (both good for more than 10 Draftkings points).  This part of his strategy accounts for 50% of his roster.

3. He chose players who had very good splits versus lefties.  Aviles, Raburn, and Swisher are three players on Cleveland known to beat up on the southpaw pitchers, and have been very good at this during the 2015 season.   So it wasn't enough to target players who were facing Danks, but it was important to get the players Cleveland uses to beat up on pitchers like him..  This accounts for 37.5% of his roster.

We must, of course, note that four of the players appeared in more than one category.  Which means that if a player has one good reason for choosing him that's alright, but more than one makes the case for that particular player all the stronger.

That leaves one guy remaining, the outlier, Chicago White Sox First Basemen Jose Abreu.  It would be easy (and wrong) to build a fourth category around something like Superstar Players (Besides Abreu, Bryant, Kipnis, & Santana might qualify at their respective positions).  But I don't believe this is the case at all.  I believe that the first 7 players were targeted and he took the best available remaining player at the last remaining position.  It is impossible for me to know what exactly went on in his head, but there was no obvious reason for choosing Abreu.  He's not been too spectacular this year and he was facing Salazar who was projected to be the toughest of the four pitchers to face on the slate.  Now, Abreu does have nice Batter vs Pitcher results versus Salazar, but it's only been 6 at-bat's as they both were rookies last year.  This might have been considered secondarily, to kind of give a push for one guy over another, but a sample size that small would never be a principle reason for picking a player.  I ruled out the Superstar factor because I fielded Anthony Rizzo, who is a bigger name so far this year, and they were the exact price tonight at $4900.  Maybe, it was the BvP, Maybe is was the Ball Park factor (US Cellular field is much easier to hit a home run in the Petco), maybe it was a personal preference, Whatever the reason, I believe it was the final player rostered for him this night.

I've played Max DaLury at least a dozen times before, and this sort of strategy is pretty typical based on my previous experiences.  If it works for him, and it appears it does, it should work for you.  Regardless, there are important lessons to be learned from the roster construction of one of the pros.