Pitchers and Stacks Guidelines for FanDuel and DraftKings
The following advice is okay to be used on FanDuel and DraftKings for anywhere between 20-150 lineup entries. It’s important that the more lineups you make the higher the exposure cap I find acceptable. I.E., if you have 150 lineups, I don’t mind having the max exposure set at 60-70%. The fewer lineups you have, let’s say 20-50, I really don’t want more than 50% exposure to any one team or pitcher. Make sure you adjust this on that sliding scale. *The more lineups you have the higher the acceptable max exposure limit – vice versa*
Pitchers Guidelines
Make sure you have a minimum of 5-10% on each of the following, however, similar to our max exposure guidelines above – the more lineups you have the more acceptable it is to target any one player or stack with a higher exposure. If you have 150 lineups and love CC Sabathia, then throw 20% minimum on him which would result in 30 lineups out of your 150. If you only have 20 lineups, you might want to just have 10% or so which would result in a minimum of 2 lineups with CC. *Just remember, your pitching percentage on DraftKings is 200% total due to there being 2 pitching slots. I am normally more apt to have a higher minimum exposure on DK just due to the two pitcher spots*
Stacking Guidelines
The first “group” of teams are your primary targets. Your goal is to make sure that you have the largest portion of lineups with these teams fully stacked with the 4-4 settings and 2 or 3 uniques (2 on slates that are smaller and 3 on the larger slates).
The second “group” of teams are your secondary and tertiary targets. You’ll want to sprinkle them in a little on their own and a few of them with your favorite teams from the first group.
MME Playbook for FanDuel and DraftKings
Due to the extremely cheap pitching options, we have plenty of opportunities to take whoever we want on the mound and for hitters on both sites. The rankings for the pitchers are loosely favorite to least favorite but the gap is an extremely small margin in between each one. Nothing special out of any of them besides Duffy, for me. Today will be ruled by hitting.
Pitchers:
Jacob deGrom (@PIT 3.4 IRT, -145 Fav) – I like him on both FanDuel and DraftKings and think he might be rather low owned with Starling Marte and Corey Dickerson likely making their return to the lineup today. The fear of the Pirates offense taking off again is not one that has gripped me. deGrom has held opposing hitters to a 21% hard-hit rate over his last two starts and 28% on the season. He is pounding the strike zone with a 70% strike ratio and a 96.6 MPH velocity (1.1 MPH increase over his last two starts). I also think people will gravitate towards using Justin Verlander more on this slate so I like the lower owned pitcher with the equivalent upside.
Jake Odorizzi (@BOS 5.7 IRT, +184) – The Red Sox will be highly owned so I like to leverage the field by using Odorizzi, especially considering he’s been pitching quite well over the past month. He has 42 strikeouts in his last 32.1 innings pitched and has only allowed 3 HRs over that span of innings (just about .88/9IP). He’s going to have very volatile production today, he’ll either score 35+ at 3% ownership or he’s going to get absolutely shelled. Perfect MME target.
Max Fried (LAD 4.8 IRT, +118 Dog) – On June 30th, Fried started and went 6.2 innings and struck out 11 hitters. He had trouble with walks and gave 3 free passes that game. In his second spot start against the Brewers a week later, he walked another 3 batters but this time in just 3 innings. He’s another volatile option but clearly has some upside. I love these mid-range options with upside and downside that keeps their ownership levels low. We are going to hedge this a little with some Dodgers stacks, just like we will with Boston stacks to hedge our Odorizzi exposure.
Tier 1 Stack Targets:
OAK/COL – I think in the second game of the series that we are going to see absolute fireworks. Two pitchers on the mound that struggle to make hitters miss and two offenses that are hot. The Rockies are destroying lefties in July and the Athletics are destroying everything that moves. Load up and make sure you also use both of these offenses on their own and not just in a pure game stack.
HOU – Don’t let me down, Houston. Another nice spot for the Astros. Hopefully, the mild let down (turds) from Friday keeps their ownership down. They’re a nice pivot away from the Rockies and Athletics who likely will be very highly owned.
BOS – This is hedge life. We are going to use a little Odorizzi and a lot of Boston. Their bats are hot and have been pretty much all season. They are potent 1-5 right now and the bottom of the order is starting to look alive (thanks Jackie Bradley Jr.).
Tier 2 Stack Targets:
LAD – They’ll be the highest owned for me out of tier 2. Fried has control issues and if he starts putting Dodgers on base they’re bound to start hammering those runners in.
ARI – Bats are warm, Ross was shelled by them the last time they met, it’s perfect for MME. They’ll be low owned due to their 4.2 implied run total but this offense can score in bunches.
TOR/CWS – A combined 10.1 implied total between these two teams put them on the radar for me. The Blue Jays went nuts on Friday and belted a million home runs. Giolito has produced the last 3 starts but also has been getting a bit lucky, as evidenced by the 45% hard-hit rate against him in those games. If the Jays hit him this hard today they’re due for another explosion at the plate.
Helpful Hints for Using the Domination Station
- If you ever ask for 10-lineups with your stacks/pitchers/settings and it spits back less than you asked for – you have two options.
- You can choose to just download, highlight and copy, then paste those into your final upload file and roll with those
- You can simply just ask the DS to create 20/25 lineups and when it makes more than the 10 you asked for just download, highlight and copy the first 10, then paste those 10 into your final upload file and roll with those. I don’t get too scientific with this as I normally am pressed for time.
- When my pitching pool is bigger than 3 or 4 pitchers, I try to just set a 20% minimum on my favorite 1 or 2 pitchers only when running my stack from my primary Group 1. This ensures that if I run an Astros and Braves stack for 10 lineups, that I make sure that CC Sabathia is in 2 of those 10 lineups. If I start asking the DS to have minimum % on multiple pitchers – this is when the DS only spits back 3 or 4 out of the 10 lineups I asked for.
- I run 4-4 on FanDuel for every single lineup.
- I run 3-5 on DraftKings for each stack for half of what I want then 5-3 for the other half. 5 out of 10 would be 3-5 then 5-3 for the other 5 making 10 total stacks with the two teams I had selected. If that is confusing or too time-consuming just use 4-4 for all 10 and you are good to go!
- Let’s say you are making 150 lineups and you did all your groups/pairings and were able to create 110 of your 150 stacks and you realize you don’t have any more ideas. Take those last 40 lineups and get crazy. This is when you start to create some stacks with teams you never feel comfortable about but that might be in a decent spot. Padres facing a left-handed pitcher that gives up a lot of fly balls – go ahead and run the Padres at 100% exposure (in the stack settings) and leave the other 100% open (don’t label any other team). As long as the settings are at 3-5 on DK or 4-4 on FD – the DS will automatically make full stacks 3/5 and 4/4 with whatever team it deems most optimal to go with the Padres. That’s a next level tip that nearly nobody knew about until you read this!
- Tag me on Twitter and in Slack with your triumphant victory!
- Read this very important page – MLB BASIC TRAINING – Tutorials, Videos, Articles to Help You Get Started
- I and my friend Ram8727 put together this tutorial for anybody who needs help with the DS optimizer and CSV files when using a Chromebook or operating system that’s giving you errors. CLICK ME CLICK ME!
- Download, like, subscribe and follow here: Podbean & SoundCloud & YouTube
This process will likely be tweaked and manipulated as the season progresses and the DFS landscape shifts every so often as it normally does. As always, I will continue to share my findings with you in the hopes that we are able to find an edge over our competition!
Fortune favors the bold. Go make your own luck!
– Donuts