John Deere Bets, DraftKings, Cheatsheets
BETS
Unfortunately, Bet 365 got rid of our free money players under par cash cow. That’s OK, just means we need to do some extra leg work to find an outright winner.
WATCH: JOHN DEERE FINAL BETS + ONE AND DONE
Adam Schenk — Let’s just go with the most obvious choice in Adam Schenk. Is he the best player in this field? Hardly. But he’s been plenty close to winning this season with double silver medals at the Valspar and Colonial. Schenk’s struggled against the elevated fields, no shocker. However, the JDC is far from a designated event. After a pair of MCs at the U.S. Open and Travelers, he rebounded nicely in Detroit with a T7; it seems like his game is trending to the point where he may be able to build off his T6/T4 finishes in his last two JDC starts.
Adam Hadwin — It may be difficult for Hadwin to replicate the +9.8 SG:PUTT from last week, but there’s certainly room for improvement off the tee. Obviously, he’ll still need his hot putter (who won’t), but if he can get back to field average off the tee then continue to dominate from 150 and in, he’ll be in the mix. I had initially left Hadwin off the card when he was 22/1, but that price, as it turns out, wasn’t for anyone, so now he’s as high as 33/1 (365), and steadily 28/1 everywhere else. That’s far more palatable.
Chez Reavie — Chez led the field in approach in Detroit, by more than a stroke over Rickie Fowler. He just happen to bleed strokes with he putter. A lot of them. It was strike first time in 10 starts he lost on the greens, though. He doesn’t need to be as sharp with his irons if he can just make a few more 5-footers.
Callum Tarren — With this new schedule we’re getting the “wedge swing” of events right now. While the Travelers, Rocket Mortgage, and John Deere don’t appear to have much in common, they are three of the course with the most approach shots indie 150 yards. While Tarren’s results haven’t been overly noteworthy (T33/T29), his ball striking has been elite. The British averaging over 4 strokes off the tee and 4.5 on approach the last two weeks. He just can’t putt at the moment. Not inspiring. However, the JDC was the site of his best 2022 finish, where he gained 4.3 on the greens.
Dylan Wu & Michael Kim — Wu has shown he can keep up in a putting contest, and if Michael Kim is ever going to capitalize on his recent run of good form it’s at the place where he crushed the field in 2018.
In case you were wonder who else faired well in that wedges and short putting model over their last 12 rounds…
GET 20% OFF ALL RESEARCH TOOLS, LINEUP GENERATOR, OWNERSHIP PROJECTIONS AND MORE AT FANTASY NATIONAL
NFL
I talked shop with Adam Levitan Wednesday as I start ramping up NFL coverage for the year.
WATCH: Underpriced RBs, Best Ball vs Season Long Value, Insider Info
Then on Thursday, my co-founder at Run The Sims, Justin Freeman, joined me to discuss how NFL Projections actually get made and how to best utilize them for season-long and Best Ball purposes. Then we look how to customize projections for injuries or to invert offenses to see what happens when things don’t go according to plan. Fun show.
Most importantly, if you want to create your own 2023 projections, it’s FREE TO DO at Run The Sims right now. Customize them all you want and save your progress.
FREE NFL TOOLS: Run The Sims Season Long Player Projections
WEATHER
It’s looking like we’re going to a great week of target golf based on the latest forecast.
WIND TOWER: Quad City International Airport
The Tidbits
Per usual, Tambo has rounded up the best of free content this week and put it all into one, helpful thread for you. Remember to shoot him a follow as well.
CHECK OUT TAMBO’S TIDBITS ON TWITTER
DRAFTKINGS
As Tambo pointed out in his tidbits research, it’s tough to find the players people like this week behind the obvious 10 or so. On the show, we came up with our core from below 8K and I did an exercise to see how it would go. I picked all the guys above 8K I liked and made 75 lineups to play in the Mini Max. Then I just pivoted off each of them to the guys no one wanted. A one-for-one swap and built another 70. Curious to see how it all ends up going.
WATCH: John Deere Classic DraftKings Picks & Ownership
So, instead of Grillo, Henley, McCarthy, Cole, Hadwin, Schenk, Jaeger, and Ghim, you get these guys.
Kirk and Smalley will likely be popular btw, but I need some more names to round out the distribution. Then Baroff came off the top rope with the other foot so sneaky build.
Streaks and DK history
There is a favorable nine to start on, but don’t confuse that as me saying that there is a birdie streak waiting out there on either wraparound. Understanding that, I’m going back-to-front in showdown this week. Sure, No. 18 is the second hardest hole on the course, holes 16-17-1-2 are four of the six easiest on the course (all own a birdie rate of 21% or higher). That’s a far superior run out to those starting on the front nine … those golfers get holes 7-8-9-11-12 that all rank among the nine toughest on the course. Yes, No. 10 is a gettable par 5, but that’s basically the only scoring hole as those guys near and make the turn.
2022: Poston lapped the field with 25.5 more DK points than any other golfer, an even more impactful DFS result when you consider that the two most expensive options (Webb Simpson and Adam Hadwin) missed the cut.
2021: Another tough showing for the pricy options: 15 golfers priced in the $6,000s finished with more DK points than all three of the five-figure golfers.
2019: It was a nice mix of star power and bargain shopping at the top of the board. You could have rostered the top six DK scorers and still had $1,600 left.
2018: There were 15 golfers to surpass 95 DK points … one of them (Francesco Molinari, the most expensive golfer in the field at $11,600) cost more than $8,000.
GOLF
I’m playing Banff Springs today. Pretty excited. This is just a ripped image from googlee, I’ll add my own pics in next week’s newsletter if that’s something people would be interested in those sorts of things…
Who wouldn’t be fired up for this scenary?
— PM