Whether you are a seasoned-veteran or just starting your daily fantasy conquest through FanDuel and DraftKings, the following list will help refine your approach. Dropping these bad habits along with following rotoworld.com/daily throughout the season serves as an excellent one-two punch towards daily fantasy baseball success.
1. Playing Favorites
There’s a reason this mistake is listed first. When it comes to major league baseball, most of us have favorite teams and players as well as hated rivals. You need to erase that mentality when playing daily fantasy baseball on FanDuel and DraftKings. In other words, let objectivity rule the day. Take inventory of your preexisting MLB dispositions and make sure they aren’t clouding your judgement. This may seem obvious, but numerous daily fantasy beginners succumb to this pitfall: rostering players from their favorite teams so they can cheer them on. There’s nothing wrong with this strategy from a pure entertainment perspective, but don’t expect consistent profits to follow.
2. Putting Too Much Stock in Game Logs
The average daily fantasy player relies heavily on game logs. This is something we can use to our advantage, especially given the volatility that comes with baseball. For example, if a player has notched six hits, two homers, and seven RBI over his past three games, he’ll likely hold a higher-than-deserved ownership rate despite the quality of his upcoming matchup. It may seem that a hot streak is underway, but that’s a fickle proposition when it comes to hitters. All in all, that player will probably be overrated and overpriced due to the recent success, two things worth avoiding on FanDuel and DraftKings. On the other hand, a quality hitter who doesn’t have much to show in his recent game log could be on the cusp of a breakout performance (assuming a quality matchup). That player will likely be underrated with a softer price point worth taking a chance on.
3. The “Set & Forget” Mentality
You can have a pretty good idea of your FanDuel or DraftKings lineup early in the day, but you better be flexible to breaking news. Whether it’s a superstar receiving a day of rest or an up-and-coming rookie getting promoted within the batting order, you’ll need to be cognizant of the headlines. Luckily, Rotoworld makes this a simple endeavor with their up-to-the-minute app or website feed at www.nbcsports.com/edge/headlines/mlb. The award-winning people creating these writeups are often kind enough to explain what this means for your daily fantasy lineups on top of breaking the actual news.
4. Inviting Rain to your Parade
Checking weather forecasts can be tedious at times, but it’s a necessary evil when aspiring to daily fantasy success. Getting stuck with an old-fashioned goose egg due to rainouts and postponements can absolutely kill any lineup on FanDuel and DraftKings. There’s enough free sources (twitter works great as well) to keep you in the loop when it comes to weather situations.
5. Entering the Wrong Contests
This is probably the biggest mistake for daily fantasy beginners. Whenever someone signs up on FanDuel or DraftKings, they often have aspirations of winning a big tournament. However, you need to be realistic when starting out, giving yourself the best odds to achieve success. For example, if you only build one lineup per night, you are better off playing in a tournament that only allows one entry per person. Otherwise, when competing in a multi-entry setting (some with 100+ entry maximum per person), you are at a serious disadvantage to the user who submitted over a hundred different lineup combinations. I personally like to play in tournaments that allow 3-5 entries per person. This allows me enough room to be creative with different lineups while avoiding the overwhelmed feeling that comes with submitting too many entries.
6. Subscribing to Groupthink
No matter the day, there will be very obvious selections when playing MLB on FanDuel or DraftKings. It’s nice to be aware of those marquee selections, but don’t forget about the other fish in the sea. As mentioned earlier (mistake No. 2), baseball is one of the most volatile sports, especially when looking towards hitters. Use this to your advantage by thinking outside the box with hitters who look good, but not necessarily as good as those headliner plays. I actually construct a column every day at Rotoworld.com/daily that speaks to this concept. The series is called Daily MLB Pivots. In the article, I outline the likely popular picks of every position and then list some sneaky-good options who could outperform them. The combination of prevalent selections underperforming and your hand-selected “pivots” overachieving can lead to some massive earnings.
7. Not Utilizing Stacks
Stacking is one of the most powerful tools in daily fantasy baseball. Here’s how it works: First, you select 3-4 hitters from a specific team. Then, if that offense performs well, scoring 6-10+ runs, you’ll likely see a desirable reflection in your fantasy lineup. One player is credited with an RBI while another of your players is credited with a run scored. You essentially received double the fantasy points on the same swing of the bat if things work out this way. This is certainly a high-risk strategy, but the rewards are fantastic if you can strike the correct combination. Pairing this strategy with the previous write-up (mistake No. 6) makes for an excellent strategy in large-field tournaments.
8. Playing it Safe with Hitters
Admittedly, this mistake dictated my early MLB DFS career. I’d often select players who had a good chance of providing some value instead of risk/reward power hitters who could realistically provide no return. It seemed like a logical strategy in head-to-head or 50/50 formats, but I quickly changed my tune moving forward. I was limiting the ceiling on my DFS lineup, consequently restricting my potential winnings as well. I’ve found that deferring to upside throughout your entire lineup is a much better approach. If a few of those power hitters live up to the billing, you’ll find yourself with a quality entry. On the other hand, if you strike the right combination of power hitters, your lineup could soar to new heights. In other words, always think upside when selecting hitters at each positon.
9. Forcing It
This pitfall represents an extension of Mistake No. 5 – Entering the Wrong Contests. You need to understand your daily fantasy playing style and enter contests that suit those strengths. For example, if you have a penchant for rolling out above-average lineups on a consistent basis, then head-to-heads, 50/50s and double-ups are right up your alley. If you recognize high-upside stacks (think Mistake No. 7 & No. 8) while diversifying lineups to cover your bases, then maybe 3-5 entry tournaments play to your strengths. In other words, find contests that bring you the most success while coming naturally to your playing style. Attack those aggressively and ignore the rest.
10. Losing Perspective
Here, we have a callback to Mistake No. 6 – Subscribing to Groupthink. Essentially, you want to gain perspective from other sources without falling into groupthink. Find the happy-medium within that. There are so many options in the player pool each and every night, it’s impossible to have an in-depth opinion on all of them. Rotoworld Daily publishes a myriad of daily fantasy baseball content every day throughout the MLB season. You can utilize these resources to identify the popular selections and gain perspective on some lesser-known options that may have eluded your initial research.
