One of the best things about DFS is the vast number of routes to success. You can go pitching heavy, stack a top lineup, spread the risk, etc…, etc… The methods for picking players, especially hitters, are vast. I'm looking to try one out for the week and I wanted to share the results with you. I'm looking to ride out the storm on some established veterans in the midst of a results downturn.

Sure, "results downturn" might be another way of saying cold streak, but I purposely avoided the preferred nomenclature because poor results don't always mean a player is struggling. He could be seeing the ball really well and just hitting it right at guys, even when he crushes one. I understand why we're drawn to players who are hitting .400 over the last X-number of games, but we know that is an outlier performance even if they are a great player. On the other end, we know guys hitting .100 are outliers and if they have an established track record of success, you know they're going to come out it.

In this case, I was just looking at the last two weeks. I've culled together a pool of players on the down end who I will pick from all week. I can't just take the same eight guys every day for a week because schedules simply won't allow it. First of all, only five teams play all week so Monday and Thursday will have shorter slates. Secondly, there will be day/night game conflicts that would make using the same eight guys all week tough even if all 30 teams had full weeks.

To find the pool of players I'd be choosing from, I looked at the last two weeks leaderboards (as of Monday) over at Fangraphs and honed in on wRC+. I didn't have strict qualifications for what constituted an "established" player, but I think the names included will pass the sniff test on that imaginary threshold. Ideally, I'm just getting the absolute dregs, guys with single-digit wRC+ totals, but at some positions I had to get guys who aren't exactly freezing cold, but definitely below expectations (81 was the highest wRC+ for anyone included).

So let's take a look at the pool of players I'll be picking from this week:

Ryan Zimmerman is toting a -26 in the last two weeks, but I think that plantar fasciitis is a big issue so I'm removing him for injury reasons. Some of the other guys might be nicked up, too, but I don't think Zimm is anywhere near 100%.

I did my first lineup last night and well, it went about as expected. Thanks to the prices of these guys being depressed I was able to afford some premium pitching, but the presence of Altuve in the lineup made me reluctant to take Chris Sale as my top arm. Here's how it turned out:

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="315"] Is this good?[/caption]

I'm trying to get the coldest guys so Starling Marte won't be used again. Neither will Jose Altuve. They're both down compared to expectations, but at 80 and 76, respectively, they are hardly freezing cold. Pablo Sandoval at -14 is colder than Ted Williams right now so look for him to join the mix starting on Tuesday and remain a staple in the lineup.

I'm not necessarily trying to prove anything with this experiment as I'm sure seven days of doing it wouldn't be enough to do so anyway, but I just want to see how it works out and figured I'd share it here as it continues. I'm probably not even the first to try it out, but it's the first time I've done it. I'll get my Tuesday lineup up in a little bit, but you can pretty much guess it from the chart of potential players above.