Key strategies for MLB DFS tournaments

Major League Baseball is almost back, and with it MLB DFS. My focus for this article will be around my MLB daily fantasy strategy. This was the first sport that I won big on, as well as the first sport I ever did for DFS, so I can assure you that it is near and dear to my heart. I wanted to touch on a few points from my tournament primer. This is my focus when I’m looking to an MLB slate every day.

I primarily play DraftKings with a focus on the following:

• Opposing pitcher to target
• Top 3-5 favorite stacks for the night
• Weather
• Batting order
• Hot/cold streaks from hitters
• Ballpark
• Ownership percentages

The parts I most want to focus on are batting order, top stacks and ownership percengates:

Batting order

My strategy day in and day out is to try to get consecutive players in the batting order for my three-, four- or five-man stack. For example, if you want a chalkier build, you go the top five batters in the order. The even chalkier build is the Nos. 3-5 hitters in your three-man stacks. I love to focus on the bottom of the order to give me leverage. I’ll talk more about leverage in the ownership percentage side of this. Last year, I didn’t really have many bottom-of-the-order stacks, but with the NL DH this season, I don’t hate it at all. A good example of leverage or a way to be different is using the Nos. 6-1 hitters in your stacks instead of the Nos. 1-5.

Top stacks

We can combine a few of the categories with this item. When we view top stacks, we want to view hot and cold streaks from hitters, opposing starting pitchers and ballpark. I believe in narratives and streaks when it comes to MLB. A starting pitcher or hitter going against his old team, especially if they had a tough breakup. Since I believe in the narrative, I tend to avoid a stack against a starting pitcher going against his old team, no matter how bad he is. I tend to focus on a stack against a pitcher who has a high fly ball and line drive percentage. A pitcher who has a high ground ball percentage is someone we don’t like from a hitter stack perspective. Line drives produce 1.26 runs per out while ground balls produce 0.05 runs per out. It’s a very important statistic we need to focus on when targeting a stack against a starting pitcher.

Ownership percentages

Let’s talk some leverage. When we talk leverage, we talk about getting away from the chalk and going the path of a riskier, lower-owned stack. This could be the difference between a takedown. We want to focus on the safer, highest-floor play for cash games, but we want leverage and the highest ceiling player for tournaments. For tournaments, we can risk going a player who projects for a low floor, but high ceiling, especially if they project for low ownership.

As always, feel free to reach out with any questions. Get excited: MLB is back in two days!