Daily Fantasy Baseball

Playing fantasy baseball is always more than enjoyable, but playing daily fantasy baseball can be a whole different beast.  There are tough decisions that have to be made, and you’ll have to look at many different things when you are picking players for your roster.  Obviously there are quite a few different baseball games that you can play, but whichever game that you play, you should know your strategy for.  We’ll look at a few of the types of games that you can play, and how the strategy will compare between them.  On top of that, we are going to break down some important things that you should make sure to look for when you are drafting your lineups, especially when you have a cap limit on the amount that you can spend on your roster!

We’ll use head to head games as an example to compare against bigger tournaments.  In the big fantasy baseball tournaments, you are going to want to take a few risks that can really give you an edge, but they can also give you the chance to get some of the high dollar players to put on your roster.  When picking the high dollar players, you’ll also want to make sure that you have a guy who can really give you some major points.  On the other side of things though, playing in a head to head game is going to have you wanting to choose a more balanced roster that doesn’t have a ton of risks in it.  This lineup isn’t going to need to score a massive number of points in order to beat your opponent in most situations, but you won’t be able to have players who come out and lay eggs, which is why consistency is so important.

For me, finding a starting pitcher who has a great match-up is key.  You can’t just simply spend all of your money on high dollar pitchers, or else you won’t have the money to fill out the rest of your lineup.  I like to look for mid-range priced pitchers who are going against teams who are struggling to hit right now, and they can’t seem to get over the hump.  Even looking for pitchers who are playing against teams who are on the lower end of the scoring spectrum can be a great thing to consider as well.  Pitching is obviously huge, so find teams who are heavily favored with pitchers who should be able to have a strong and consistent game.

Paying high dollar for a hitter who simply hasn’t been putting up huge numbers isn’t going to fly.  You definitely shouldn’t do it just based on the fact that you “expect him to turn it around”, which is one of the toughest things to do.  You need to find hitters who are consistently hitting the ball well, and who are playing strong baseball at that time.  It may take some time to look through all of the field players that day to find consistency at each position.  There are always players who are on strong streaks, and these are the players who you want to target in the big games, and also the head to head games.

It’s so important to watch for both injuries and days off.  These can really come out of nowhere, but using a site that has information on players who are going to be resting is huge.  Even using social media sites like Twitter can help out, as the announcements can come both early and late in the day.  You should have a back-up plan for a player if he ends up being out as well, because if you have a player in your lineup that gets called out 30 minutes or an hour before the game starts and you can’t get to a computer or don’t have the info available to see it, then you’re going to be stuck with a 0 that could ruin your lineup.

There are so many games that are offered on the bulk of these daily fantasy sites that it can be a bit overwhelming.  You need to be careful with how you choose your games, and also with your bankroll management.  Spending high dollars that eat up a large chunk of your bankroll is just an awful idea.  You should look through all of the games and only use a certain percentage of your bank.  This mean that if you have $200 in your account, I wouldn’t play in games that are larger than $5 or $10 at the most.  If you want to play in higher dollar games, then you should prepare yourself with that bankroll, but set a limit on how much you want to play with each week or each month.

There are many, many different daily fantasy sites out there, so choosing which one you want to play on is important.  I wouldn’t play on just one site, and I’d actually spread the money that I’m planning on using across a few sites.  A key reason for this is because each site does things slightly different.  Some sites will give extra fantasy points for baseball players who have great pitching performances, shutouts, and things like no hitters, while others will just score them normally.  Regardless of which sites that you play on though, you are going to want to make sure that you read up on the scoring for each and every site that you use, and that you pick players accordingly.

There are many angles and things to consider when choosing your daily fantasy baseball lineup, but it’s important to change up your lineups for each game that you do.  If you play multiple games, picking different players in the lineup can be important and can help you avoid having one bad lineup that ruins multiple games.