Choosing Hitters

After you choose your pitchers, you must choose your hitters.  As hard as it is to predict pitcher outcomes, hitters are far worse.  90% of MLB hitters most common outcome will be zero (mode), even though every site will happily provide you with batter's averages (mean).

In both FanDuel and Draftkings, you must select 8 batters; 3 Outfielders and one player at the remaining 5 positions.  There are certain categories or "buckets" from which players will be chosen. Many players could actually be placed in more than one bucket.

• Superstars

I bring up superstars first because it's the first thing anyone will consider.  And it is something you should almost completely wipe from your mind when selecting a lineup.  I say almost because as they pertain to the rest of the buckets they should be considered accordingly.  It is true that at the very top of the game, the select handful of hitters, the kind of player you might select with the first three or four picks in a standard fantasy league draft are the types that can take over a game on your behalf.  However, they are expensive and often severely curtail your ability to put together a team that can do damage from all eight hitter slots.  And because this group is very small, your not losing to much by moving quickly to the next step.

• Value Plays (about 25% of your roster/2 players)

This is the most important thing to learn about drafting a DFS roster, so I'll spend the most time here.  It requires you to jettison the superficial thoughts most Fantasy baseball players look at when building a roster.  You don't want to take the best player available, you want to take the player that returns the most for your money.  At Draft Kings, after drafting pitchers, you're typically going to have about $3750 per hitter to spend (At FanDuel about $3200).  Almost all the best players are going to be above, and often substantially above this number.  So if you want to field any star hitter, you're going to have to know the cheap players than can produce, to be able to afford that luxury. There are places where these types of mispriced players can be found.

               New Players
               Player Who don't play regularly
               Batters who move up to the top of the order
               Weak Positions
               Relative Values

The people who run the game often make mistakes in the pricing of players.  They might drop a good hitter too much because of a slump or a relatively tough pitcher matchup.  Or they might just not know who the player is.  For whatever the reason, your odds of winning hinges on your ability to recognize this and capitalize on it.  Understand that most cheap players are cheap because they are not very good, but the exceptions exist if you can find them.

A new player to the database has no track record for the controllers to make an analytical judgement as to the proper pricing.  For the hot shot callups they price in the value of the hype almost universally, often going overboard, in my opinion.  But the journeyman fill in or injury call up can provide significant value.  Already this year, non-household names like Jimmy Paredes, Delino Deshields, Cory Spangeberg, Chris Colabello, and Kyle Blanks have gotten the call by their team and have performed admirably considering they were all originally priced at or almost at the rock bottom minimum of $2000 (DraftKings).  It doesn't take a lot to make a $2500 player worth it, if he gets you 5 points and allows you to start Paul Goldschmidt at 1B, he's worth his weight in Gold.

There are a number of players who are reasonably talented who don't get a lot of playing time.  They may not hit lefties well, or a highly paid star player might be in their way, or they might be a fielding problem for the team.  If they played full time, their pricing would be about $1000 higher, but because they don't play often they are cheaper than their talent levels.  If they get the start on a particular day, you can find value.

The pricing of players takes into consideration the number of at bats the player will get, so a player who bats in the 7-8-9 slots will normally be discounted versus the 1-2-3 slots.  So if you should see a batter who normally bats eighth or ninth get tagged for a game to bat second, it will take a day or two for the websites to alter pricing to meet this new value.  Earlier this year, we saw Marcus Semien move from the 8 slot to the 2 slot, giving him effectively one more at bat per game.  This is the type of thing you must be on the lookout for.

At the weakest positions, you can often find value.  For me, I am generally talking about Catcher and Shortstop.  At these position there are one or two standout players who come with a high price tag, and have a difficult time living up to the money you pay for them.  Buster Posey is probably worth his price tag about one game every two weeks or more.  Any old catcher you choose will beat out his production more often than not.  All it takes is one solid trip to the plate to do it.

Also, you should note the relative positioning of the players and the corresponding values.  It's easy to look at the top players and know that they are good.  Take for instance 1B: Goldschmidt and Miguel Cabrera are the cream of the crop, but very good hitters at the same position like Adrian Gonzalez or Prince Fielder are often $1000 or more cheaper to roster.  There isn't as much value here as in the previous spots, but there is value to be had.

• Hot Hitters

This should be pretty easy to understand.  There is a psychological aspect to the game where if a batter is feeling good about his approach, he often continues to perform well.  Most stat sites will allow you to look up stats over the past week of play.  It shouldn't be hard to figure out who went 3 for 5 yesterday.  Players in the "zone" are much more likely to continue contributing to your totals than ones who are "cold."

• Great Matchups

There's an adage that "Good Pitching beats Good Hitting," which is true,  However, the corollary to this rule is "Bad Pitching makes Good hitting."  If a pitcher is the sort to let up a lot of hits, runs, and home runs, any player on the opposing roster has a better chance of adding to your totals with what the pitcher allows.  These guys are easy to find also as they have high ERA's or don't have a starting job but get a spot start due to injury.  Just as you might think to avoid a batter who is facing Clayton Kershaw, you might want to target a batter who is facing a pitcher who is his exact opposite.

• Split Specialists

There are many ways to look at splits, the most common one is the Lefty/Righty matchup.  There are a fair number of big league ball players who have made useful careers out of being able to crush left handed pitching (Ryan Raburn, Seth Smith, Scott Van Slyke, come to mind), and there are many others. At fangraphs, you can search stats vs. L or R, and most online player pages will give you this information.  They are cheaper plays because of the lack of every day playing time.  There are other splits to consider like the Tigers playing so much better during the day or some hitters being better or worse away from home due to the tendencies of the ballpark.

Often people will look at batters individual track record versus individual pitchers.  I understand the desire to do so, but because of the almost always minute sample size, I don't believe you can glean that much information here.  If you look at this information, I suggest you only look at three things: Insanely high batting averages (3 for 10 isn't noteworthy, but if a batter is 11-14 I might take notice), Multiple home runs versus the pitcher (a guy who has 3 HR's in 17 AB's is noteworthy), and on the exclusionary side, very low batting averages like if the hitter is 1 for 14 or so).

• Good Batting Position

Any one who bats first or second will have more opportunities to do anything for their team and yours.  Three through Five hitters should have more opportunities to drive in runs.  The most common way to find value will be in the batters who bats first or second, when they play.

• High Scoring Teams

The more runs a team scores, the more at bats your player will get.  And the greater chance he might knock in a run when he gets a hit, or get driven in when he gets on base.  

• Remainders

You will often find yourself with seven of your hitters spots filled with a less than promising remaining amount of dollars.  In this case, you might not get great, but you might find good enough. Closely examine the previous buckets and look to see if any available player checks off any one of them.  Does he bat fifth? Is he facing a really bad pitcher?  Does he play at a weak position where the top guys aren't great?  If he does, take the best you can get.  The highly random nature of this game actually rewards you for taking an outside of the box player should he hit that particular day.  And since there is no way of knowing, it might as well be that day, right?  I've been lucky enough to take multiple cheap catchers on days they've homered, not because I've wanted them, but because it's all I had left.  If you really like the guys at the other positions, try to resist the urge to downgrade at 3B just so you can have a slightly better third OF.  

Superstars Revisited

Name the best hitter you can think of in baseball.

Now look up the past week and find out how many players have outscored him on any given day. Most likely, he was never the best player on any day.  Most likely, there was a relatively unheralded player at or near the top of the scoring pile every day.  Keep this in mind always.

I know you are going to take some superstars.  I do it too.  But you should look for the Superstars for other reasons than because they are superstars. Look to see if they hit better vs. Lefties or are facing a bad pitcher.  Don't grab the guy simply for name recognition.

Mike Trout is awesome, but if he's facing Felix Hernandez, even though he can handle him, the other guys on his roster may not, which means fewer plate appearances and scoring opportunities.  If he's going through a slump, don't just jump up and take him because he's due, wait for the site to start pricing in the slump.