With 162 games per team the need to approach the MLB Season with a strong plan is paramount if you wish to achieve success with your investments. Employing the proper strategy depending on the tournament you wish to enter and the site that is hosting, will change depending on the slate of games, the pitchers available, and perhaps most importantly how all of the players are priced.
Various tools will be at your disposal, like custom MLB DFS projections provided by The DFS Doctors, a guide on understanding the Vegas betting odds, or in-depth analysis that you will be able to do yourself. Learning how to value and apply each of these will further your daily fantasy bankroll far more than throwing darts and hoping they stick.
Using Fantasy Baseball Projections
Many sites will offer you projections, and many of they will be of a high quality. With high quality projections comes higher traffic, thus diminishing the payout you are likely to receive. This statement holds true if everyone accessing the is using the fantasy baseball projections to select the top nine batters to fill out their lineups. So how do you differentiate?
Given the pricing structure of the operators, it is all but impossible to use the top nine projections offered. You have to mix and match. Do you spend on pitching and go cheap on bats? If so, how do you maximize the money you have left.
Finding Valuable Pitchers
We strongly advocate going heavy on pitchers. Searching for value in the lower ranks in order to spend on a premier bat will leave you too heavily invested on the performance of that one batter. After all, many pitchers will score 20+ points based on an average outing (5Ks, 6IP, 3ER with a Win), whereas a batter scoring that high would require multiple extra base hits. The point being that it is far easier to bounce back from a subpar pitching performance than it is a 0-4 day at the plate.
The proper strategy to employ when trying to find valuable pitchers is to look for those with a high strikeout upside. Pitchers possessing this quality are uniquely adapted to weathering the negative points that come with allowing earned runs. After this, look for arms that routinely go deep into the game, by eating up innings they negate any losses that come with allowing opposition scores.
Vegas Odds
Applying the betting line offered by Las Vegas Casinos, or offshore sportsbooks, is a great ways to quickly identify pitchers with a high ceiling. You will use the collective knowledge of the betting markets to reduce the list of available players. Use Vegas Odds to find a team with a high moneyline and focus on those pitchers as their team has a higher expected win percentage.
If there is no large favorite, look for a game with a low total (Between 6 and 7.5). Focusing on pitchers that are heavily favored, or involved in a defensive matchup, will allow you to build a staff not expected to give up earned runs.
Conversely, you can also identify games intended to be high scoring, using this info to build your batting lineup.
Stacking Batters
Find games with a high total by looking at the betting market, then identify the players on these teams that are projected to have a strong outing. Picking and choosing the best players available, while using no more than four teams is the key to daily fantasy success. When stacking batters, the players you chose will ideally be within four spots of each other in the batting order.
You want to play off the high correlation available in baseball. When one of your players gets a hit, ideally the other one scores the run. We recommend stacking in a 5-2-1 or 4-3-1 fashion for GPPs, while a 2-2-2-2 is advisable for cash games.
If you build your stack using the later part of a batting order, you can generally afford to purchase a quality arm to go along with it. Remember, a high scoring game anticipates runs throughout the entire batting lineup, so don’t be afraid to own the non marquee players.
There is plenty of value to be had using a player, batting 8th, for a team in a game with a total of 9.5 or higher even more so if that player is priced at less than $2500. It’s not uncommon to find a player priced on the lower end of the spectrum in the 5 spot or 2 hole, so be sure to search out these situations.
