MLB DFS Strategy: Creating Tournament Lineups

This is the next installment of my MLB DFS Strategy Series. If you missed the first one about Bankroll Management and Contest Selection you can check it out here. The second installment about Contest Selection and Single Entry success is here.

Hello, RotoBallers, and thanks for taking the time to read this MLB DFS strategy piece! If you're here, it's likely because you want to be a better DFS player and learn more about how to be a sustainable DFS player who doesn't have to deposit more money in their account every week.

So far in this series you've read about bankroll management and contest selection. Last time I expanded on contest selection and now I am going to get into another crucial topic - how do I build lineups that maximize my chances of winning each night?

The Background

Although some of my advice is applicable to any type of contest, you'd like to play in MLB DFS (be smart with your money, only play contests you are successful in), I am going to start venturing more into my area of expertise: Single entry and 3-max tournaments. I play these mostly at DraftKings but this advice can be applicable to Fanduel as well. To be a successful tournament, one has to consider more than just trying to guess who is going to score the most fantasy points in a given evening. A couple of layers will get peeled back in this article.

General Tournament Strategy:

When I first started playing DFS, there was an ongoing debate in the community around stacking players: is it better to stack players or not in tournaments. It was several years ago and it feels like a lifetime ago.

The good news is the debate is over.

In a perfect world my Tournament lineups, assuming a slate of 7 or more games, would have:

1. A full-stack from one team (5 batters on DraftKings, 4 batters on Fanduel)
2. Two pitchers with strikeout upside (DraftKings. On Fanduel, it's a pitcher with a good chance to get the win and strikeout upside)
3. Another stack (3-batter stack on DraftKings, another 4-batter stack on FanDuel)

Unfortunately, due to pricing and such, this combination cannot always happen, and therefore compromises need to be made. Perhaps instead of a small stack, it's a pairing and a one-off, or instead of two strikeout pitchers, it's one strikeout pitcher with another pitcher that will minimize damage.

How do I choose my stacks, pitchers, and make trade-offs? It all depends on what type of contest I am playing in.

Single Entry Tournament Lineup Creation Strategy:

Single-entry tournaments are my favorite contest for MLB DFS and it's my bread and butter. What I find is the game is very chalky and with a high variance sport such as MLB, it's really easy to take advantage of fading the chalk so to speak. In some tournaments this year, I have seen some chalky pitchers go over 60% and 70% owned and some stacks have been around 30% owned.

Successful tournament players create from the bats and fill in the pitching. This is a contrast from cash games where people build from the pitching first and then fill in bats. In single-entry tournaments, fantasy players are more risk-averse and typically throw in their best-projected tournament lineup into the contest. In the $12 and less tournaments, ownership is not a significant factor to a majority of the players. This is evident when ownership in these tournaments reaches cash game ownership levels.

How do I attack? Where do I start?

I create lineups that have virtually the same amount of projected points but at much lower ownership. This is slate-dependent and identifying can change from day to day. Betting markets have an impact on ownership in DFS. If you find the games with the highest total, typically that is the most popular team to own. What most don't realize: baseball is such a high variance sport that projected runs scored aren't vastly different from game to game.

For example, let's say the Yankees are going to Camden Yards and are projected in the betting markets to score 5 runs. And then let's say there are four other teams that are projected for 4.5 runs on the same slate. Generally, the Yankees (especially in a single-entry tournament) are going to have the most ownership.

What do I do? I look at one of the teams that are projected for 4.5 runs in a matchup that I like. If I could predict ownership perfectly, I would want one of the teams projected for 4.5 runs with the lowest ownership.

From there, I try to see if I can fit a 3 man stack (if on DraftKings, 4 on FanDuel) from another one of those 4.5 run games or perhaps I take it from the 5 run game. I then, fill in with pitching that I like.

The obvious, yet under-discussed aspect of tournaments is that when I am taking 8 bats in a lineup, I am projecting for the upside. I am trying to win a tournament with the bats and hope that the pitching is either "good enough" or surprises relative to their price.

Pitchers I generally want to roster have high strikeout upside and a strong chance to win the game. Because I differentiate my lineup with my bats, I sometimes eat a little more chalk with my pitching because often my bats are "different enough". Pitching is high variance, but not as high variance as the bats. The key is to eat good chalk. There are times where a chalk pitcher is not a good one to own, but it's the only way to make that 5 run stack work and people roll the dice. I fade that kind of chalk all day long.

For example - I will roster a deGrom or Scherzer chalk all day. I will fade a chalky Brad Keller all day. Context matters. Not all chalk is good.

Next level tip - if I am entering multiple single-entry events, I throw a different lineup in each of the single-entry contests. This gives me multiple chances to win a tournament on a given night. Yes, if I end up winning a $3 and not the $12, it's less money, but winning a tournament is a boon for the bankroll and that's the goal with tournaments: winning. If you hope to min-cash, then you're doing it wrong.

3-Max Tournament Strategy

My 3-max tournament strategy is not that much different from my single-entry strategy. One thing I never do unless it's a short slate or the slate is terrible: have 100% exposure on a player.

To create my lineups for 3-max, I pick the 3 main stacks I really like. I try to pair each lineup with a different SP1 (or SP on FanDuel). The ideal world is I have 3 stacks I like, 3 different SP1 types I like, and then 3 different SP2 types that I like. Unfortunately, most slates don't lend to this way of lineup construction.

If I can't find three stacks I like, I probably wouldn't play the 3-max. The only time there aren't three I like, is if it's a short slate (six games or less). If it's a 12-15 game slate, with 24-30 teams going, I can usually find three that I like. Often what I am doing is if there are five or six stacks I like, I will create my lineup with what I think will be the three lowest-owned stacks from the five or six. Often times it will be my stacks ranked 4-6 or 3-5 because in my process it is much easier to identify which stacks will be chalk on a given slate.

It feels strange to fade the Dodgers in Coors, or a Yankees in Camden yards (usually the chalk on a given night), but one has to realize that tournaments are more about ownership than predicting the game. I would much rather have exposure to 3 teams in very similar spots at a fraction of the ownership, I have more pathways to the top. If I roster the Dodgers or I roster the Yankees in those spots and one of those stacks "hits", I will min-cash, but it's pretty hard to think that my lineup will have a pathway to the top spot. If I have a 5% owned Twins against the Mariners and that stack "hits", it's a much easier pathway to the top.

On the pitching side, it's tough to find six different pitchers I love (on DraftKings, three on FanDuel). If that is the case, I will limit myself to 66% exposure. If I can fit a deGrom in my lineups, I would roster him in two of the three, but not all three. This helps keep at least 1 lineup live in the event deGrom has a bad start, leaves a game early, or gets unexpectedly rained out.

I never, and I mean never, lock in a stack. Baseball is a high variance game, however, every batter has a floor of zero. Even the great Mike Trout will have his 0-4 games. The chances of a stack with a projected high total getting limited to a couple of runs isn't as rare as you think.

Locking in a single pitcher or a single stack across multiple lineups is a bad process. It can work for a given evening but in the long run, you will not do well.

Leverage Play

For those that have been nodding along the whole time, here is a move you can make and you will want to incorporate with your stack selection that has helped me win tournaments and place really high.

If there is a chalky starting pitcher that is in that $6-$7k range that most are going to roll with, stack against that pitcher. Most pitchers are priced in the $6-$7k range due to their blowup potential. They are certainly capable of having a good game, as anyone in the major leagues is, but they have their risks. The range of outcomes on the middle and low-priced pitchers is much larger than the range of outcomes against a $9k pitcher or above.

A tournament player should take advantage.

If there is ever a time a pitcher is going to be 20%, 30%, or even 40% owned in that $6-$7k range, one of my lineups stacks against that pitcher. If that pitcher blows up, you are going to knock 20%-40% of the field out of the tournament, and you will gain points in the standings at their expense.

Final Thoughts

Creating tournament lineups is more about ownership than predicting what will happen in a game. It is much better in a tournament to own pivots at SP or pivots off of the chalky stacks to give yourself more chances to win. If you roster the chalk and it hits, it is very difficult to have a lineup that will differentiate you from the pack. If you are not putting your tournament lineups in a position to win, you are going to have a negative expected value in the long run.

The biggest improvement someone can make in tournaments is to pay attention to ownership and get better at noticing/predicting it. This is a game against opponents, not against the website. Your goal is to beat who you are playing against.

Make sure you check back next week as I continue this series of DFS strategy articles that I will be doing here at RotoBaller! Good luck and play smart!

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