As promised I'll be blogging about my DFS exploits this year, usually on Tuesdays. This week, with Opening Day making today a short slate, I'll start in earnest on Wednesday. But after logging into my Fanduel account and looking over the salaries this morning, I realized I had $1.84 left over from NFL, so of course I entered a $1 tournament based solely on hunches. (For the actual series, I'll put in $1000, use that as my baseline and take the selection process more seriously.)

For what it's worth, here's my lineup:

SP Wei-Yin Chen

C Buster Posey

1B Paul Goldschmidt

2B Johnny Giavotella

3B Jacob Lamb

SS Marcus Semien

OF Giancarlo Stanton

OF Marcel Ozuna

OF Travis Snider

My thinking was pretty simple: Because the four best pitchers are either rained out or likely to be, use a mid-level option like Chen against a weak offense, load up on a few elite hitters with the extra money saved and fill in with scrubs. Giavotella's batting ninth, so it might have made sense to go with Eric Sogard, hitting second against Colby Lewis, but he was $300 more, and this is a large tournament, so I wanted to have a couple picks out of phase with the rest of the field. Also, Giavotella's hitting ahead of Kole Calhoun, Mike Trout and Albert Pujols in that spot.

I also like the mini Marlins stack (Stanton/Ozuna) against lefty Alex Wood. Wood is one of the more hyped young starters in the league right now, and that should keep people from paying up for the Marlins bats. The rest of the lineup is pretty straightforward - Lamb is cheap and opposite-handed against a weak starter at home,  Snider is hitting third against Nate Karns, Posey is facing Rubby de la Rosa at Chase Field and Goldschmidt draws Ryan Vogelsong at home.

I wanted a mix that was plausible but just off enough - the handedness is wrong on Posey and Goldschmidt, for example - to have a unique entry against a big field. I even thought about rolling with the top pitcher on the board, Zack Greinke, knowing there's a good chance he'll be rained out, because the field is so big in this contest. Put differently, on the off chance the rain (70% likely) doesn't disrupt his start too much, he's likely to deal, and I could be a rare beneficiary of it. But ultimately I chose a more definite rooting interest for my measly buck.

Starting tomorrow when I put some real money behind it, I'll take this more seriously. But I don't want to get too conservative and only play cash games, with opposite-handed bats high in the lineup against weak pitchers.