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Daily Fantasy Baseball 101: An introductory course

By Adam Strangis

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - MAY 03: A Minnesota Twins keeps the book with a pen on his scorecard against the Chicago White Sox on May 3, 2015 at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Twins defeated the White Sox 13-3. (Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS, MN - MAY 03: A Minnesota Twins keeps the book with a pen on his scorecard against the Chicago White Sox on May 3, 2015 at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Twins defeated the White Sox 13-3. (Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images) /
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In preparation for the MLB daily fantasy season, this article will take a look at the general strategies and goals of building lineups.

Playing daily fantasy can be a touch intimidating. There’s a lot of people who play it for a living. It can be scary to be an average player. It’s even scarier if you don’t have a huge bankroll to play with. We’re going to do our best to prepare players to make money during the 2018 season. There’s plenty of keys that will be put to use during the year. It’s always helpful to lay out goals before you get in over your head.

Bankroll and contest selection

One of the easiest ways to lose money is to play the wrong contests. The big money prizes are sure tempting to try and chase down. As glittery and awesome as the big money prizes are, the risk goes up exponentially. Those large field tournaments(which are almost always multi-entry) means most players are playing many different lineups.

If the entry fee is $5 and players can enter 150 lineups, you can be sure that some DFS players are spending $750 in said contest. If you play one lineup, you’re at a HUGE disadvantage. The best contests to play for small bankroll players are single-entry and what’s referred to as “cash games”. A cash game is any contest that half the field wins money.

It’s not the most fun way to go about things, but it is the safest and most consistent way to make money. The general rule is to spend at least 80 percent of your daily money on 50/50’s or cash games while 20 percent goes towards tournaments, or GPPs(guaranteed prize pools).

Even then, it’s best to seek out single entry tournaments with the lowest rake you can find. The rake is the amount of money the website takes from the pot. For instance, a site like FanDuel generally takes between 10-15 percent of the entry fees right off the top. It’s worth the extra couple of minutes to research and see which contests have the lowest rake.

General Strategy

Now that you have an idea of which contests to play, now it’s time to learn some general strategy and lingo. It’s important to understand that every slate is very different. The general strategies that we’ll employ are just that: general and subject to change. For the start of the season, we’ll be leaning on 2017 stats quite often. That will change as the season unfolds.

The FanDuel lineup consists of 9 positions – Pitcher, Catcher/First Base, Second Base, Third Base, Shortstop, three Outfield spots, and a Utility spot. Perhaps the most important spot in the lineup that you’re going to have to nail is the Pitcher spot.

Whoever you pick is going to take up a massive part of your budget. Even the cheapest pitchers are more expensive than the best position players.  FanDuel rewards innings pitched, quality starts, wins, and strikeouts. They don’t penalize walks or hits, which opens up possibilities that aren’t as appealing as other sites.

So what’s the best way to decide on a pitcher? There’s a lot of factors that go into it but here’s some of the factors that we’ll look at every day-

  • Career numbers versus current roster of opposing team
  • Opposing starting pitcher
  • Vegas lines
  • Strikeout percentage
  • Types of pitches they throw versus opposing team’s weaknesses
  • Park Factors
  • Current performance(how has he pitched lately?)

Obviously, price is going to be a factor. as a general rule, we’ll side with a high-end pitcher and figure out the offense. A great start out of an expensive pitcher can be worth upwards of 40-45 points. A batter is going to need an amazing day to put up that amount of points.

In addition, we’ll also have a few pitchers that we’re looking to target batter against. A lot of the factors used to pick a pitcher we want to play can be flipped to see which pitcher is in a bad spot on that day.

Offensive players

One thing that is brand new to FanDuel this season is the dual eligibility in the Catcher/First Base spot. One way we’ll attack it at the start of the year is to stick to a low priced player. Spending a little bit of money in this spot leaves money on the table for the Utility spot. The views on this could certainly evolve as the season moves on.

Some of the factors that will help decide which batters to target on any given day include-

  • Batter vs. pitcher data(this will always be a small sample size and it’s best to treat it as a tool, not a be all, end all)
  • Park Factors
  • How well they hit pitch types against what the opposing pitcher throws most
  • Platoon Splits(does the batter crush lefties and struggle against righties?)
  • Plate Discipline
  • Home/Road Splits

One way to attack any given day is to stack a particular lineup. This means you would play three or four batters from the same team against a bad pitcher. This can be risky because if the offense has a bad day, there could be three or four low scores in your lineup.

It’s more a tournament play, although even in cash games it’s wise to link tow hitters from good offenses. This isn’t football. If Tom Brady throws a touchdown pass, only one player gets those points. In baseball, three or four players can all score points off a home run or one big hit.

The Humidor

One side note to the start of the season is to address the elephant in the room. That would be the humidor being installed in Arizona at Chase Field. Coming into the season, Chase was always a hitters paradise.

That may not be the case anymore. the humidor could hamper offense in a big way. The truth is we don’t know enough about it yet to react properly. We’ll also get some data right out of the gate.

The Rockies visit the Diamondbacks in Arizona for the opening series. Typically, players would want a large part of that game. For the time being, it may be wise to be underweight on those games. If the humidor decreases offense, you can’t spend big money on those teams to get a small score in return.

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Next: All-Time 25-Man MLB Roster

The end goal is to provide the best analysis we can on a daily basis. Hopefully this leads to some good results and a lot of fun along the way. Baseball is a very fun sport to play in the daily fantasy format and it should be a great season.