Here are the top five scores from last night:

Big Italy – 207
Me (somehow) – 186
Ray Kuhn – 173.5
Kenyatta Storin – 169
BrocNessMonster and Scott Chu- 161.5

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Might be no small feat to unseat the No. 1 overall degnerate in Week 3. Big Italy’s winning squad was arguably a stars and scrubs endeavor, with major value coming in the form of Omar Narvaez ($4300, 23 pts), Dan Vogelbach ($3200, 27 pts), and J.D. Davis ($3800, 18 pts). Cody Bellinger (11 pts) was a letdown, but Christian Yelich (25 pts), George Springer (27 pts), and Yoan Moncada (32 pts) did not disappoint. Carlos Rodon nabbed the win and the quality start against the lowly Tigers, and struck out six along the way–good for 33 points. Paul DeJong (11 pts) was the final nail in the proverbial coffin, as Big Italy’s 207 points was a beatdown–21 points ahead of the second-place finisher. This is the second week in a row that the winner has “risked” the weather with his starting pitcher–first with Corbin, now with Rodon. Perhaps we should all take note…

Yours truly was pretty chalky with a Houston stack, but last week the Oakland stack against Drew Smyly let me down. In my humble estimation, Smyly also getting through Houston unscathed just wasn’t going to happen. I left Jose Altuve (31 pts) off in favor of Michael Brantley (22 pts), so that I could weave in the chalky Ryan McMahon (11 pts). Not a great switch, but it could have worked with a little more from McMahon, Carlos Correa (15 pts), or Yadier Molina (11 pts). Italy also saved coin at first base with Vogelbach ($3200) while I went up a little bit to Jose Martinez ($4500), who I thought would be mega-chalk against lefty Jason Vargas. Martinez checked in at 26% owned and nabbed a homer. I also thought Billy Hamilton batting second against C.C. Sabathia would be a little more popular, but he was only 4% owned swiped me a pair of bags for 22 pts.

I never could find a pitcher I really liked last night. Call it a symptom of the bad weather, but also a microcosm of the MLB DFS season so far. I’ve loosely been employing a “pay for bats and figure out pitching later” strategy…and that’s even more appealing on Fanball since pitchers can’t get you negative points. I felt like Matt Strahm was in a good spot against the Reds, and I liked his talent more than a guy like Anibal Sanchez, who I knew would be more popular against Miami. Strahm’s 20.5 points only bested Anibal by half a point, and Anibal was $400 cheaper…but it made me differentiate a bit by default. My guys finished with 186 points.

Ray Kuhn’s 173 points checked into third place, mostly behind Justin Verlander (38.5 pts), Charlie Blackmon (29 pts), Pete Alonso (28 pts), and Michael Brantley (22 pts). Props to Ray–I just couldn’t bring myself to use Blackmon, whose exit velocity is way down this year. Hopefully he’s starting to heat up.

Ryan McMahon ($5200) was 52% owned, and the highest-owned play of the night against Vince Velasquez in Colorado (fresh off of a two-homer game). Other popular plays were:

Justin Verlander (43%) vs. Texas Rangers
David Dahl (39%) vs. Velasquez
George Springer (30%) vs. Smyly
Cody Bellinger (30%) vs. Chacin
Paul DeJong (30%) vs. Vargas

And then a host of Cardinals and Astros were in the 20s, against Vargas and Smyly, respectively.

In summation…

No, no I did not. But there’s always next week…

Now that we have two weeks in the books, expect an official leaderboard post sometime prior to Week 3’s contest this coming Friday. Peace!