Apparently I missed the point of Survivor tourneys, and mistakenly thought that drafting the worst possible pitchers while trying to survive was the point. Gerrit Cole was 73.5% owned, which brought me little consolation when he tallied just 3.9 points. But that was better than my pairing option, the disastrous Roenis Elias, who took away 5.95 points, leading to a grand total of 74.95 points for my team. That was good for 4477/5000, pretty far from the 2,500 cut-line.

Making matters worse, that mistake proved critical. All I needed was 97.6 points to Survive, and my two pivot options (Jimmy Nelson or Ryan Vogelsong) provided plenty (28.2 and 21.3) to be the difference. My hitters weren't great, but sufficient.

At least it was a profitable day on FanDuel. My entry in the SXM $5 contest scored 41.75 points, good for 27th place out of 150 entries and $10. Jimmy Nelson (16) was the key player. I also got lucky in that a 33.66 entry in a 50-50 still cashed (14/50), despite using Gerrit Cole and his 4.66 points.

One other note - I violated one of my rules in using a pitcher against the Reds, and got punished for it. I'm not glad - I really wanted to do well in that Survivor tournament, but in a way I deserved it. It was against my dumb little rule, but also against my go-against-the-crowd instincts, and against the previous matchups. I talked myself into it and failed because of it. Don't do that.

Also, it's not helpful to play the woulda-coulda-shoulda game in checking out where the cut-line was and what might have happened had I switched out the second starting pitcher. The game operators don't give you credit for your intentions - all that matters is what you did.