Win Big Playing Major League Baseball Daily Fantasy Sports Contests

Baseball is Here!

Now that I play Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) every day, each new sports season brings with it a lot of excitement. I’ve completely immersed myself in MLB DFS since opening day on Monday and I’m having a blast with it. In four months, it will be driving me completely nuts and I’ll be pumped for football season. But for now, let’s go take a quick look at some of the many factors to look for when setting a lineup for MLB DFS.

Vegas

Our old friend Vegas. Utilizing betting lines and totals is just as important in MLB DFS as it is in any of the other sports. The standard number for a run total is 7 or 7.5, so any time you see the total veer from that you should take some notice. When the total is 6-6.5, you should be taking time to think about why and probably should be considering pitchers in that game. Conversely, when it creeps up to 8.5-10.5, you should definitely be looking to figure out who the best hitters to have in those games are.

Pitching

Baseball is an inherently volatile sport when it comes to hitting. Pitching, especially strikeout rate, is fairly consistent from year to year. This means that if you’re looking to add some consistency to your MLB DFS lineup, you should be paying for pitching, particularly strikeouts. What I like to look for is how each pitcher for the day compares to the others in terms of strikeout percentage and strikeouts per nine innings. In addition to that, sabermetric stats like xFIP and SIERA were created to help identify the true quality of a pitcher. Use those as your guide. We want high K% and low xFIP and SIERA. As always, don’t forget to combine that knowledge with what the betting lines are telling you.

Hitting

There are so many factors that come into play when choosing hitters that it’s tough to even know where to start. In an effort to simplify it some, we’re going to go bullet point style, in order of importance, at some of the most important things to take note of.

• Overall Quality – The overall skill level of the pitcher and the batter is the most important factor, yet I often overlook it when doing my research. Why, you ask? Well, it’s so easy to become consumed by all of the other factors you can make judgments on that you can look back and realize that you didn’t see the forest through the trees.

• Handedness – In the majority of cases, hitters perform better against pitchers of opposite handedness to themselves. Pitchers, in contrast, tend to have more success with batters of the same handedness. The degree to which this exists varies for each player and information regarding each individual player can be found at sites like fangraphs.com. Weighted on-base average (wOBA) and isolated slugging (ISO) are a couple key hitting stats to pay attention to for overall quality and for how each hitter fares against left handed pitching and right handed pitching.

• Batted Ball Profiles – One factor that is easily overlooked is batted ball profile. It would stand to reason that more fantasy points are scored on balls that are hit into the air than on the ground. So we want to leverage that by finding hitters that, duh, hit the ball into the air more often. You can also find information regarding each pitcher’s batted ball profile.

• Weather – Temperature, humidity, air density and wind strength and direction are all very important factors when it comes to offense. Coors Field is the ultimate example of this, as the air is so thin that the ball travels there like it does nowhere else and as a result, nearly every game played there has a run total projected around 10. Wrigley Field can show signs of this in completely opposite directions. Seeing as it is the windy city, you can have the wind blowing out one day and see a total of 10 projected by Vegas, and the next day it can cool off and the wind can flip and you can see a run total of 6. Extreme examples aside, it is still good to be checking the weather for each game and seeing the temperature and wind direction. The warmer the day, the better for offense.

Well hopefully this gives you a better idea of what to look for when setting baseball lineups for DFS contests. If it seems like a lot, take solace in the fact that I’ve only skimmed the surface of the thoughts running through my head every day when I play.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Find me on Twitter @IanJ300 with any questions.

Right now, you can play Major League Baseball DFS contests every day of the week at DraftKings. On April 14, the site will be hosting the $500,000 Sweetspot, which will award $50,000 to the winner with just a $27 buy-in. You can even satellite your way in for as little as $0.25.

If you think you are ready to play, check out our Daily Fantasy Sports page. Card Player readers eligible for deposit bonuses of 100 percent on a number of the best DFS sites around.

Related Articles

Senators Seek Investigation Of DraftKings, FanDuel

Winning Bets Costing Sportsbooks Millions Of Dollars

DraftKings Expands ‘Electric Poker’ Product To Pennsylvania

Most Viewed Articles