(AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)
As we cross over from NBA to MLB, we need to review the basics before jumping into the deep end of statistics and strategy. We always need to understand the scoring of the site we plan to play. And, if playing a couple of sites, we definitely need to know the nuances of each so we can roster the players suited to perform better on the appropriate site. I will focus on FanDuel and DraftKings only, but each site has it’s own scoring system published. It’s fairly simple to compare sites to each other.
Let’s start with FanDuel.
I am going to assume you are new to this. FanDuel changed it’s scoring this year, but I’m not going to bore you with those details. In a nutshell, they tripled all scoring and removed the negative scoring for outs made by hitters. You can listen to the chatter around the web and make up your mind as to if this is good, bad, or indifferent on your own. I’ll leave it as “it is what it is” and we need to learn to make the adjustments accordingly until further notice.
The scoring for hitters at FanDuel is actually quite standard. The scoring for singles, doubles, triples, and home runs is pretty balanced. So, there’s no imbalance in the system to exploit by keying on singles hitters vs home run hitters or the other way around. I will say that with the removal of negative points for outs, this really does something significant that I have yet to hear anyone mention. It adds value to top of the order guys. If we accumulate negatives for outs, sometimes that extra AB can hurt you. Today, this means we want all the ABs we can get from our hitters. I am focusing much more heavily now on top-of-the-order hitters because it’s just one more opportunity to score points. And, we all know fantasy sports are all about players with opportunity to score points. It’s perhaps the most important factor when deciding to play a player. We’ll dive a bit deeper in to the batting order in the 7th Inning of this series. Where you see the real difference at FanDuel is pitching.
Pitching on FanDuel is actually quite simplistic by nature. You gain points for wins, innings pitched, strikeouts, and you lose points for earned runs. Other sites penalize you for hits given up, walks allowed, etc. So, we should look a little differently at which type of pitcher we roster on FanDuel (where we only get one shot at the correct choice). We want pitchers that roll deep into games, strike people out along the way, and have factors indicating they are in line for the win. K/9 (stikeouts per nine innings) becomes a key statistic for a FanDuel pitcher (more on statistics in our 3rd Inning). Our goal is to find a pitcher that can get us more than 45 points. And, when a solid score appears to be 150 total points, this single pitcher can get us almost a third of the way there just by himself. Needless to say, he’s important…..and in many cases worth paying for.
At FanDuel, you have a salary cap of $35,000 to spend in order to roster the best 9 players you can. This averages out to $3,889 per position. You roster one each of the P, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, and you roster 3 OFs. You can roster multiple players from the same team, but FanDuel only allows four. All four can be hitters, or three can be hitters and one a pitcher. This is called “stacking” and we will dive into that concept in our 8th Inning of the series. It bears repeating that when a pitcher can earn you nearly a third of the points you need to earn cash with your LU (lineup), we should be choosing very wisely. A pitcher will generally cost you between $7,000 and $12,000 depending on your choice. The $12,000 pitcher is nearly 1/3 of your salary cap. If he earns you 50+ points, he might have been worth it. However, one thing you should learn to look for is a slightly cheaper pitcher than has the ability to earn you that same 1/3 of your points without costing you 1/3 of your salary. That pricing imbalance creates “value” and is what every daily fantasy player is constantly looking to find.
Now, let’s take a peek at DraftKings scoring.
You might be one real smart cookie and notice right off the bat that DraftKings makes you roster TWO pitchers instead of just one. You also have what is called “multi position eligibility.” This means you might have a Catcher that can also play 1B or the OF. This flexibility allows you a lot more lineup combinations, and can really make things fun.
Once again, for hitters, we don’t get penalized for making outs. This means we want ABs and as many of them as we can find. In case you are wondering, there is a neat graphic I will show you proving this fact. This graphic is from Fantasy Baseball for Smart People by Jonathan Bales and illustrates how often a LU cashed when focusing on the tops of hitting orders.
You can see that if a player built a LU with players only in the top four spots, he cashed in over 50% of his 50/50 contests (more on types of contests in the 2nd Inning). You can see as our player included players from lower and lower in his LU, he reduced his chances of cashing slightly. In the GPP column, you see that after the top row, the same thing happens as well. On any given day, this strategy may or may not bear out. But over the course of a season, it most certainly will. So, pay attention to rostering players from as close to the top of their respective batting orders as possible.
Pitcher scoring on DraftKings has it’s nuance, too. A pitcher here has some very extreme scoring possibilities. Earning the win is very important, but so is avoiding the negative things like hits and walks that we don’t have to worry about over on FanDuel. That said, the same basic principle is in play. We want to roster pitchers that figure to earn the victory for their club, that go deep into ballgames, and tend to strikeout a lot of batters. There is some importance placed on the statistic “WHIP” because it indicates how many walks and hits a pitcher gives up per inning. Obviously, the lower the number, the more we tend to minimize damage in the negative aspect of DraftKings scoring.
On DraftKings, you get a larger salary cap to make up for having to roll out two pitchers. $50,000 is your mark there. You build 10 players like this P, P, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF. You will be spending more of your cap money on pitchers like other sites, but a straight average gives you $5,000 per player.
With an overview of the sites and their scoring, my goal is for you to pick which one you would like to learn and get in the game. My recommendation would be sticking with one site until you are comfortable with it’s subtleties. Playing both at the same time will only serve to slow down your growth curve.
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Army, dismissed!