You could spend the entire day researching the different reason to purchase different possible lineups. I find that overthinking is more of a problem for me, so I try to keep it as simple as possible. So here's an overview of the websites I use in the order I use them daily.
First, the Daily Lineups.
I use Rotowire's Daily Lineups (Link here)
There are plenty of daily lineup sites and I often check two, if I have time (my second choice is Baseball Press). I like Rotowire because it will alert you to weather conditions with an unavoidable graphic placed between the two teams in the header of each box and the Vegas Over/Unders are listed at the bottom. It also has side links to "Matchups to Target or Avoid," if I want to know about Batter vs. Pitcher information quickly.
I'll spend 3-5 minutes here tops, but I will refer back frequently as I'm building lineups.
Second, The Pitchers:
I like to start my evaluation of pitchers on MLB.com's Probable Pitcher page (Link Here)
I think it's important to begin to evaluate the pitchers before you look at the prices, to get a good feel for who you think might score well for you today. We are so socially programmed to rationalize things economically, the neighboring pricetag on a DFS site can't help but influence your decision. There are also quick links here to the players season stats, last three starts, and performance against the opposing teams batters. Hopefully, this will be enough for me to move to the DFS site to look at pitchers. If there aren't two or three I've settled on, I will either not play that day or look for more detail elsewhere, more often than not on Rotogrinder's Starting Pitchers Hub. I know I have a tendency to overthink pitchers so as awesome as the information you can find on Rotogrinders is, I do try to avoid doing this too much.
I spend no more than a minute or two here, it's just to get a good idea in my head who I might want to field a Pitcher.
Third, Who's hot?
There seems to be a dearth of actual Draft Kings or FanDuel Data available, so I devised my own way to find out who's hot using Yahoo's Fantasy Baseball League website and adjusting the setting to reflect points scored on DFS sites:
I couldn't find a website that gave me the breakdowns of FanDuel or Draft Kings points that was recent and searchable in a way I was comfortable. As I play most of my year long Fantasy Baseball on Yahoo, I created two points leagues modifying the stats to reflect FanDuel and DraftKings points totals. This gives me access to hot players by position over a past 7 or 30 day period, while the DFS site only shows the full season. Furthermore, I can move to "Live" to see who is doing well today, as during normal play you are really only aware of your players and your opponents players on a daily basis. You do have to be aware of differing positional eligibilities, though. If you want to learn more about this drop me a note (the explanation of this setup is more detailed and would dominate this post). If you don't want to go through this hassle, the best public site I've found is on RotoGrinders here, but I find it a little unwieldy.
I spend about 5 minutes looking over the players stats page, and often refer back to it should I need.
Fourth, Batter Splits
I said that there is a danger in over thinking things at DFS. However, when it comes to batters, especially your 6th, 7th, or 8th Slot, one often gets pressed for decent options at prices you can afford. I tend to look closely at splits (Primarily Righty vs. Lefty, but at times others). I used two sites for this depending on the need.
Fangraphs Leaders Dashboard (Link Here)
More often than not, when I'm looking at Splits, I already have an idea of what I want in mind. I might know that I want to get hitters in versus a weak lefty like John Danks or that Minnesota hitters hit lefties well, but I don't know much about anyone there but Joe Mauer and Brian Dozier. I turn to Fangraphs and use the pull downs to narrow to a team and vs. L. I like this because it gives me this years data, rather than some conglomeration of many years. I want to see recent history a bit more than general history. The same site can also be used for pitchers or Home/ Road splits or nearly whatever I might need.
Daily Baseball Data's BvP list (Link Here)
I don't completely discount BvP history and I think it's nice to know as much as you can provided it's quick and easy to use. Daily Baseball Data's format allows you to see every historical BvP chart in a very streamlined fashion. I also like that every player has quicklinks to his player page on other sites, should I want to delve into a single player further (do I want to know how Wandy Rodriguez has fared historically vs. Baltimore? just click the yahoo link by his name). And that they allow you to get a look at not just today's matchups, but three days in the future should I want to get an advance jump on tomorrow's lineups.
Depending on how detailed I want to get I could spend between 10 minutes and 10 hours looking at these things. In the interest of time, I try to limit it to specific questions like exactly how good is Charlie Blackmon at home or does Michael Brantley hit lefties well?
If all goes well, this takes about 8 minutes of my time. Should I take longer, I begin to think about diminishing returns.
Which puts me basically at the 20 minute mark. This allows me ten minutes to finalize my roster or rosters and choose my contests and opponents to total a half hour of lineup prepraration. The more I do it, the better I get at it, and the more info I internalize. I can often get lineups rostered and contest entered for all three sites I play on in under 20 minutes now. There are other websites I use on occasions for things like more detailed weather or Ballpark factors. But 99% of the time these five do the trick.
First, the Daily Lineups.
I use Rotowire's Daily Lineups (Link here)
I'll spend 3-5 minutes here tops, but I will refer back frequently as I'm building lineups.
Second, The Pitchers:I like to start my evaluation of pitchers on MLB.com's Probable Pitcher page (Link Here)
I think it's important to begin to evaluate the pitchers before you look at the prices, to get a good feel for who you think might score well for you today. We are so socially programmed to rationalize things economically, the neighboring pricetag on a DFS site can't help but influence your decision. There are also quick links here to the players season stats, last three starts, and performance against the opposing teams batters. Hopefully, this will be enough for me to move to the DFS site to look at pitchers. If there aren't two or three I've settled on, I will either not play that day or look for more detail elsewhere, more often than not on Rotogrinder's Starting Pitchers Hub. I know I have a tendency to overthink pitchers so as awesome as the information you can find on Rotogrinders is, I do try to avoid doing this too much.
I spend no more than a minute or two here, it's just to get a good idea in my head who I might want to field a Pitcher.
Third, Who's hot?
There seems to be a dearth of actual Draft Kings or FanDuel Data available, so I devised my own way to find out who's hot using Yahoo's Fantasy Baseball League website and adjusting the setting to reflect points scored on DFS sites:
I spend about 5 minutes looking over the players stats page, and often refer back to it should I need.
Fourth, Batter Splits
I said that there is a danger in over thinking things at DFS. However, when it comes to batters, especially your 6th, 7th, or 8th Slot, one often gets pressed for decent options at prices you can afford. I tend to look closely at splits (Primarily Righty vs. Lefty, but at times others). I used two sites for this depending on the need.
More often than not, when I'm looking at Splits, I already have an idea of what I want in mind. I might know that I want to get hitters in versus a weak lefty like John Danks or that Minnesota hitters hit lefties well, but I don't know much about anyone there but Joe Mauer and Brian Dozier. I turn to Fangraphs and use the pull downs to narrow to a team and vs. L. I like this because it gives me this years data, rather than some conglomeration of many years. I want to see recent history a bit more than general history. The same site can also be used for pitchers or Home/ Road splits or nearly whatever I might need.
Daily Baseball Data's BvP list (Link Here)
Depending on how detailed I want to get I could spend between 10 minutes and 10 hours looking at these things. In the interest of time, I try to limit it to specific questions like exactly how good is Charlie Blackmon at home or does Michael Brantley hit lefties well?
If all goes well, this takes about 8 minutes of my time. Should I take longer, I begin to think about diminishing returns.
Which puts me basically at the 20 minute mark. This allows me ten minutes to finalize my roster or rosters and choose my contests and opponents to total a half hour of lineup prepraration. The more I do it, the better I get at it, and the more info I internalize. I can often get lineups rostered and contest entered for all three sites I play on in under 20 minutes now. There are other websites I use on occasions for things like more detailed weather or Ballpark factors. But 99% of the time these five do the trick.
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