Draftkings MLB: How to Build Winning Lineups

Draftkings MLB: How to Build Winning Lineups

Baseball season is right around the corner and I could not be more excited for Draftkings MLB! For those of you have been following me during the NBA season, you know I have a passion for playing DFS and for writing. NBA DFS is a ton of fun, but MLB DFS is by far my favorite DFS sport!

In this article, I wanted to give you look at how I build lineups for MLB DFS on Draftkings. There’s a lot of universal concepts when it comes to making MLB lineups, but playing MLB DFS on FanDuel and Draftkings is very different in many ways so this article is going to be specific to those DK builds for both cash games and GPPs.

It’s going to sound odd, but the first thing you have to be willing to do in order to win in MLB DFS is lose sometimes. Variance rears its ugly head on a nightly basis and the unexpected happens often. If you like going against the grain and not following the herd, then playing tournaments in MLB DFS is going to be enjoyable and hopefully profitable more often than not.

Even the best players have no floors in MLB DFS. Mike Trout and Bryce Harper can go 0-5 on any given night even in the best matchups. Jacob DeGrom and Gerrit Cole can get lit up by a terrible offense. It’s going to be about minimizing risk in cash games on a nightly basis and leveraging ownership in GPPs.

Let’s start by talking about how to select pitchers for MLB DFS contests. And guess what? I am going to be writing a daily pitching article focusing on DK pitching this season here at FantasyCPR!

Draftkings MLB: Start with Pitching

Getting your pitchers right on a slate is probably the most important thing you can do in building a winning DK lineup. On most nights, several pitchers are likely going to be the highest scoring players unless we have a hitter hit three home runs or hit for the cycle with 10 RBI or something else very rare.

The scoring for pitchers is much different on Draftkings than it is on FanDuel. While we like when our pitcher gets a win, it’s much less important on DK since it’s only worth 4 points as compared to 6 on FanDuel. There’s also no reward for a quality start.

What we are really looking for is a pitcher that will pitch fairly deep into the ballgame since every inning pitched is 2.25 DK points, minimize the damage against them (hits and walks are -.6 DK points, earned runs allowed are -2) and rack up some strikeouts (2 DK points each). I use a lot of advanced sabermetrics when looking for my pitching options every day, but one simple stat to use for DK pitchers is WHIP, which tells us how many walk and hits a pitcher allows per inning pitched. DK scoring really rewards efficiency and strikeouts so I tend to avoid guys who allow a lot of hard contact or who are excessively wild.

DK is a two-pitcher site, so it adds an extra wrinkle and challenge when building rosters. There are several different ways to approach how much salary cap you want to spend on pitchers. You can try to pay up for two studs, which forces you into using all value bats. You can also try to pay down for two cheap pitchers and then load up on bats. But the best formula on most nights is to play one stud and one value pitcher and leave enough cap to be able to afford the hitters that you want.

I like to spend no more than18k of the 50k salary cap on pitching if at all possible. If you spend 18k on pitching, that leaves you an average of 4k per position player to fill out your roster. For example, on opening day (salaries and contests are posted in the DK lobby!) you can pay up for Gerrit Cole at 10.4k and then roster someone like Jon Gray at 7.5k and spend a total of 17.9k on pitching. We often refer to this second mid-tier or value pitcher on DK as an SP2. My DK pitching articles this season will highlight my favorite spend-up pitchers as well as my favorite mid-tier or bargain options for SP2.

Draftkings MLB: Stacking Bats

One question I get from DFS players all the time is “do I need to stack batters from the same team in cash and/or GPPs.” The answer is not a simple yes or no, but rather “it depends on the situation and on the slate.” I try not to make hard and fast rules for DFS as there are usually a number of different paths to a successful lineup and a winning night.

Stacking up consecutive hitters (or sometimes non-consecutive hitters) from the same lineup is usually a strategy that is reserved for GPPs but that doesn’t mean you can’t use more than one batter from an offense that is projected to score a lot of runs. The danger with running a full 3 or 4-man stack in cash is that you’re “putting a lot of your eggs in one basket” so to speak. If that offense is cold or the opposing pitcher is feeling it then you’re lineup might end up with multiple goose eggs.

I prefer to use 1-2 bats from the same team in cash games, but on smaller slates, I do think a 3 or 4-man stack can be viable. That’s why I don’t like to say “never stack in cash.” I also think you can create hybrid lineups in MLB that have some correlated plays in them to give them a ceiling and some chalky plays in them to make sure there is a decent floor, too.

When you are building your stacks, please consider that stacking 1-4 on a popular team is likely going to be a very chalky stack. One of my favorite things to do to be contrarian is to stack the bottom of the order (say the Braves 5-6-7-8 last season) or do a “wraparound stack” and play the 8 or 9 hole hitter with the top of the lineup.

And stacking doesn’t have to be consecutive batters. Let’s say we really like the left-handed hitters on Team X, but they hit in lineup spots 2, 3, 5, and 7. Well, just skip the 4th and 6th batters in the lineup and hope that the lefties are the ones who do most of the damage. Once in a while you’ll get burned and the player missing from your stack will be the one who hits the 3-run home run. But when you get it right, you’ll be the one without a zero in your stack with the guy you skip strikes out 3 times and the other hitters all produce for you.

Draftkings MLB: Cash Games vs. GPPs

So how is roster construction different for playing cash games vs. GPP tournaments on Draftkings? Well, like any other DFS sport the chalkier players with the best matchups are going to be popular options in cash games, while certain players and pitchers on bad teams or that have difficult matchups will be riskier GPP options.

Cash Games

The first thing you want to do is find the safest pitchers for your cash game roster. We’re looking for an ace with a good matchup as our SP1. Is he pitching in a pitcher’s park? Is he a large Vegas favorite? The general formula here is to lock in a stud pitcher who we think will go deep into the game and rack up some strikeouts and I’m willing to spend up for the most expensive on the slate if necessary.

Every slate is different, but as we discussed earlier, paying down into the mid-tier for your SP2 is likely the best option. Going with two expensive or two cheap pitchers is really only a GPP approach.

As we talked about in the stacking section, you do not have to stack hitters in cash games. If you absolutely love a particular team that you can go ahead and do it, but personally I like to look for some really strong individual matchups and try to locate hitters with some solid platoon splits against the handedness of the opposing pitcher. If a hitter is hot, that’s a bonus, too. Are they playing in a hitting friendly environment? You see where I am going with this – there are a number of criteria you can apply to each hitter and I’m pretty picky when trying to discern who my top cash game hitters are going to be each night.

And I do look at a hitter history against the opposing pitcher (BVP) just to see if there’s anything that stands out really positively or negative, but more often than not most hitters don’t have a large enough sample size against their opponent for that statistic to carry too much predictive capacity.

Draftkings MLB: Cash Games vs. GPPs

GPPs

In GPPs, just about anything goes. And that’s not lazy analysis, it’s just the reality of MLB DFS. If you want to roster Clayton Kershaw and Gerrit Cole and then fill out a roster of 3.2k value plays then go for it. There’s no telling what the winning formula is going to be. Heck, I’ve seen guys take down tournaments on DraftKings with a zero or even a negative number from their SP2 because their hitting stacks went off.

I’m always looking for correlation in GPPs. So, I love stacking hitters most of the time and then trying to headhunt home runs with one-off plays. That’s really the formula that has worked the best for me over the years and I would recommend it.

You simply can’t be afraid of fading the chalk or leveraging the chalk. If you think a certain pitcher who’s projected to be highly owned that night is in a bad spot – stack against him. You’ll instantly gain leverage on a large percentage of the field.  The same approach can be taken with a pitcher who seems like he will be picked on by other players – use him.  Don’t ever be afraid to be different and take the players you really like, regardless of who others in the industry are telling you to play.

Draftkings MLB: Unique DK Scoring

When playing MLB DFS you have to consider that the scoring on each site is different and you need to understand how that scoring system works in order to target the best potential plays every night.

I already mentioned in the pitching section that DK scoring really devalues a win for pitchers and rewards guys who keep the base paths clear or rack up a lot of strikeouts. There are also bonuses for complete games (+2.5) and shutouts (+2.5).  But DK scoring is much different for hitters compared to other sites, too.

A single is worth 3 DK points, a double is 5, a triple is 8, and a home run is 10.  However, a solo home run is actually worth 14 DK points since the player who hit it will also rack up 2 points for a run scored and 2 points for an RBI. Home runs are so valuable in DFS. Think about this. Player A could be up with the bases loaded, hit a triple that drives in 3 runs and score the same number of DK points as someone who launches a solo shot.

Drawing a walk or getting hit by a pitch is worth 2 DK points, which is less than a single. So while it is appealing to target guys in cash games who have high on-base percentages, always be careful with relying on guys who draw a lot of walks.

Stolen bases are 5 DK points each, and they are usually an undervalued statistic. While it can be hard to predict when guys are going to try to steal bases, we definitely can target certain pitchers who have a hard time holding on runners with speedsters who we think are likely to get on base and hope that they can run their way to a big number that night.

Draftkings MLB: Summary

Remember, baseball is a game with a ton of variance on a nightly basis. There will be nights when the chalky hitters and pitchers perform well and other nights when the chalk crashes and burns while players that nearly no one rostered have huge games. You have to be willing to embrace this variance and understand that there are going to be good nights and bad nights in MLB. The goal, of course, is come up with a process to identify the best low-risk and high-risk plays on a nightly basis so more of those nights are good than bad.

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Like with other DFS sports, I would recommend practicing responsible bankroll management. Contest selection is also an important thing to consider. The general rule of thumb in the industry is allocated 80% of your nightly bankroll in cash games and around 20% in GPPs. And as far as contests go, I always tend to favor single entry tournaments and smaller field tournaments over the larger big money tournaments.

If you love statistics then MLB DFS is going to be a lot of fun. There are so many different stats to consider on a daily basis. For a stats nerd like me, MLB DFS is a ton of fun and I love nothing more than to do some deep dives into a site like FanGraphs in order to try find an edge for that slate.

I hope you found this article helpful and I would encourage you to play some Spring Training slates (nothing crazy, maybe just a few dollars) on DK just to familiarize yourself with the scoring. The pricing is not reflective of an actual regular season slate, but at least you’ll see how things work from a scoring perspective.

Good luck this season and make sure you stay right here at FantasyCPR for all your MLB DFS content! We’re going to have a really great variety of articles covering every aspect of MLB DFS across multiple platforms!