Winning in daily fantasy baseball is about learning the fundamentals. To build winning lineups, you don’t need to know how to research. If you are new, you need to learn where to start your research. This simple fantasy baseball for dummies checklist should guide you to some of the easiest fundamentals to watch. These fundamentals will help you narrow down the overwhelming statistical mumbo-jumbo most new players allow to overwhelm them. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
- Look for pitchers that are -150 favorites or better based on Vegas.
- Look for low run totals. Under 7.5 is suggestive of a lower scoring game.
- Lean towards NL teams pitching at home, preferably in pitchers’ parks.
- Look for a ratio of 1:1 or better in terms of strikeouts per inning pitched.
- Look for an opposing team that tends to strike out frequently. Best way is to sort by SO column on Fangraphs.com.
- For hitters, look for the same heavy favorites (-150 or better) and high run total (over 9). This suggests most of those runs will go to the favored team allowing you to run some stacks and concentrate scooping points in bunches.
- Look for teams facing pitchers with high ERAs.
- Or, target a pitcher with an ERA well under his SIERA. This suggests he is pitching better than his talent level and might come back down to earth in the short term.
- Focus on power hitters with high ISO numbers (.200 or better).
- Try and avoid any hitter batting worse than 6th in his respective order. At bats matter. The more you can get, the more chances you have at hits and homeruns.
This is an oversimplified list. But, it really doesn’t have to be much more complicated than this. Checking these criteria will put you in the best spot to build a competitive lineup day in and day out. With the crazy randomness that comes with DFS baseball, sometimes this MLB fantasy baseball for dummies is either all you need or all you can hope for.
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