Daily Fantasy Strategy — April 9 — For Draftstreet

Brad Johnson, an author here at Fangraphs that you’ve probably read numerous times, wrote a little bit about luck the other day. It’s definitely more prominent in daily fantasy than the standard roto setups that we all normally play. Daily fantasy is fun. We get to draft a new team every day, perhaps win a little money, and scoreboard watch. However, it can also be so, so maddening.

For example, one night last week I entered a tournament on Draftstreet and missed winning anywhere from $300-$500 (depending on my ultimate finish) by 1.5 points. Brad Miller gave me zilch, but it wasn’t his fault. The combination of the terrible playing surface in Oakland and the error in judgement made by the groundskeepers, probably cost me. But, on the bright side, at least my lineup construction got me close in the first place?

To echo Brad once more, you’ll likely have nights where you barely lose. You’ll have a few nights where you play matchups and definitely have the edge, but someone of the Kevin Correia ilk will toss a shutout and completely blow up your chances. That doesn’t mean you’re terrible at picking a lineup; you just got a bad beat. Keep pushing and playing the right matchups and you can definitely make some money. And hopefully we can help you do that.

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Tuesday I mentioned which offenses had outperformed my expectations so far, and perhaps even thrown a few wrenches in daily fantasy games so far. So, which staffs have been better than I thought so far? Well, the Brewers, Marlins, and Cubs are all in the top 10 in ERA, as of Monday morning. I wouldn’t have predicted that. I also wouldn’t have predicted that an Atlanta rotation without Mike Minor and Ervin Santana would be second in ERA and sixth in FIP, but there they are.

On the other side of the coin, the Twins’ staff has been woeful. So have the Orioles, Diamondbacks (kinda shocking), and the Angels (not shocking). These numbers don’t mean anything, yet, but eventually they will. And that knowledge will aid us into choosing our offensive players more correctly, especially when we’re stacking against one particular staff.

The Daily Five

Paul Goldschmidt – $6,546

Honestly, I’d probably pay $10,000 for Goldy today and not really care. I know, I know pitcher/batter matchups don’t mean much, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you talk me into not believing that Goldschmidt doesn’t own Tim Lincecum. I feel like when these two square off people I follow on Twitter have scheduled tweets to let me know Lincecum has been taken for another ride over the wall. Seriously, how is Goldschmidt only $6,546 today?

Brewers Stack

Carlos Gomez – $6,891
Jean Segura – $6,808
Ryan Braun – $6,413

Believe it or not, I’d actually chosen Braun for today’s piece before he decided to put on a one man home run derby last night. Roberto Hernandez gives up a lot of homers. I bet against him last week and it didn’t quite work out, but I’m not sure he will be able to defy his tendencies against the Brewers today.

Jake Odorizzi – $10,814

Odorizzi is extremely cheap tomorrow. Some may view him as a disappointment already, because his lofty prospect status has turned into to him only being a solid major league projected starter instead of an “ace.” It’s also because we probably hold each prospect to ridiculous standards, but I digress. He’s made some changes to his repertoire which could help him strike out more hitters and keep the ball in the yard going forward. I believe there’s value to be had here today.

This post, covering one of the leading sites for daily fantasy, is sponsored and made possible by the generous support of Draftstreet. FanGraphs maintains complete editorial control of the postings, and brings you these posts in a continued desire to provide the best analytical information on the latest in baseball.





Landon is a senior writer at The Fantasy Fix. You can follow and interact with him on Twitter (@joneslandon).

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KilleBrews
9 years ago

This may be a silly question, but would you manage a H2H points team differently than you would a daily team? For instance, I drafted D Wright as my starting 3B and Aramis as my backup. ARam looks like the better play today but I’m hesitant to play him over Wright, as there was a reason I spent a much larger portion of my cap on David. I think Id lose out if I started picking and choosing based on matchups?? Does this rambling make any sense? Lol.