This Friday, be sure to to enter the “Spring Fling” over at DraftKings. It’s your chance to turn an $11 entry fee into a $20,000 first place prize! Enter here!

It has been a rough week of action for the home team. A series of bad days and poor pitching performances have combined to shut me out. However, that is the beauty of daily fantasy baseball. Today is a new day. If you want to get in on the action, DraftKings is still offering their deposit bonus. You can get in on the action today if you want.

When we have a rough day (or week), it pays to get back to basics and play on some low stakes games. That means we go back to the MLB Daily Dollar. It’s only one dollar and brings some decent rate of return. We have to learn to walk before we can run. If anything has come through in technocolor for me this past week it is the importance of pitching. If you have a pitcher with somewhere between zero and negative points, you will likely not win money.

My Lineup

Pitchers: Shelby Miller vs. New York Mets, Max Scherzer vs. Houston Astros

The Astros offense is not all that bad really, but they do lead the industrialized world in strikeouts. Max Scherzer is one of the more prolific strikeout pitchers in baseball. This seems like a pretty safe play and safe plays are what we want this week. Shelby Miller is coming off a one hitter and the Mets don’t strike me as a brilliant offensive attack. They signed Rick Ankiel and immediately dropped in him the outfield for goodness sakes.

Catcher: Carlos Ruiz vs. Corey Kluber

Ruiz is one of those safe plays at catcher. He hits well against lefties and righies and while not as explosive as other catchers, a pretty safe guarantee to earn you some points on the evening. The key is not to get shutout at too many spots in your lineup.

First Base: Mitch Moreland vs. Dan Straily

Moreland has very quietly put up some good numbers this year and he is more on the affordable side of the equation for you. He isn’t likely to bust out for 20 or more points, but he can give a solid 5-10 on this evening. If you do that at every position then you should wind up in the money if your pitchers hold.

Second Base: Matt Carpenter vs. Shaun Marcum

You have a fairly hot hitter going up against a guy with an 11 ERA. You do the math.

Third Base: Brett Lawrie vs. Ryan Vogelsong

I will have to start calling Ryan Vogelsong the pumpkin. In 2010 he was nobody. He could have been selling insurance for all I know. In 2011 and 2012 he was one of the better pitchers in baseball. He has returned to obscurity. If you saved elsewhere then Miguel Cabrera is also a good play considering he has about 150 RBIs against the Astros this season.

Shortstop: Jhonny Peralta vs. Dallas Keuchel

Peralta is hitting over .300 on the seaon and he is going up against one of the more non-descript lefties in the business. This is a winning play.

Outfield: David Murphy vs. Dan Straily

This is doubling up. Murphy was struggling, but he faced the magic elexir that is the Astros pitching staff this past weekend, so his confidence is through the roof. Straily is an Astros-esque starter, so this should work out.

Outfield: Alex Rios vs. Mike Pelfrey

Rios has quietly put up some good numbers this year and he is one of those players that slips underneath the Draftkings radar. He rarely ever busts out for huge days, but he chips away at it one hit and RBI at a time. Pelfrey has been very hittable this year, so this is a decent play.

Outfield: Lorenzo Cain vs. Barry Enright

The poor poor Angels seem to be going down the tubes quickly and most of it is due to their pitching. Cain has been steady for most of the year and on Monday night everyone was getting in on the action. Tonight might be one of those nights.

The Soapbox

I very rarely ever get up on a pedestal, but my hometown nine has disappointed me yet again. Yes, the fact that they have won roughly one-fourth of their games is a part of that equation, but a bigger part has been the fact that they can’t seem to get out of their own way when it comes to public relations. For those not familiar with the situation, here is a short enumeration of related sins.

• Dynamic pricing (charging more for certain games) despite being the worst team in baseball three years running
• Running off half of the television crew and the entire radio crew for what could charitably be called inferior personnel
• Failing to keep local legend Larry Dierker in the fold
• Offering a free lunch with a pitcher that has been dead for nearly five years
• Letting a number of good people go and replacing them with cheaper options

For most Astros fans, any one of these by themselves would be tolerable, but the entire lot is too much to stomach. Team president George Postolos resigned on Monday and coincidentally, that day the club announced that the annual Black Ties and Baseball Caps gala to support the Houston Area’s Women Center was being canceled because there were not enough wives to do it. The Gala had been thrown by the player’s wives, but apparently stripping the payroll down to 21 million dollars and fielding the team with a bunch of early twenty somethings has limited the number of spouses able to do the work.

It should be noted that the announcement was made the day after Mother’s Day. Some of my compadres in the blogosphere have painted the picture of Ebenezer Scrooge removing money from the offering plate. The Astros will continue to give money to charity, but they won’t give their money there despite an affiliation with the Women’s Center since 1990. We can have no idea exactly why Postolos resigned, but it is clear that the Astros have become a public relations nightmare.