Many people wonder whether taking advantage of the different choices in the tournaments matter when it comes to daily fantasy baseball leagues. There are dozens of different variations that you will find in the tournament types, but when they begin is one of the most misunderstood concepts in how it affects your roster. On the weekends especially, the beginning time plays a large role, and once you understand that, your odds of cashing in go up significantly.
For the weekend games, there are three tourney start times: Early, Normal, and Late. Easy enough to understand, right? Not quite.
The Normal leagues do not need an explanation. They begin keeping score at the time of the first game, and stop when the last game for the night is over. These are the all-inclusive leagues that you are used to playing in. However, the Early leagues only take into consideration the games that begin the soonest. Typically, what we see on weekends is that game are staggered in start times, and this category only includes the beginning times. So, you if have games going off at 1, 4, 7, and 10 PM, the early category will only include the 1:00 games. The Late games, then, would only include 7:00 and later.
The complications arise when you begin drafting your team. If you click on the Normal league, there will be no difference in your player selection. You will see all of the players that are up for that day on your available player list and your choices are not impacted at all. If you choose Early or Late, though, you have far fewer to work with.
The big benefit is that your salary doesn’t need to be eaten up in just a few players. It is suddenly very easy not to spend all of your cap. You can draft a winning team and still have a couple thousand left over on a regular basis. That’s a reassuring thing, but you need to remember that everyone else has this ability, too.
To win a tournament like this, or at least finish in the money, you need to take a risk. Your average dollar amount per player will stay the same, but you need to be a little more creative. You are not looking for mediocrity, but rather for the few players that will be most likely to go above and beyond what they do on average. The place where this is most likely to occur in in the pitching session. For example, at DraftKings, where your average per player is $5,000, and you can acquire Mike Trout for $4,800, you can assume that everyone is going to draft Trout. He’s one of the best and most consistent hitters in the game. It’s just too good of a deal to pass by on.
Go to pitching. At DK, the top pitcher in the Early category is Clayton Kershaw at $14,500. He’s definitely a great player, but you will notice a few things if you dive deeper. Look a little down the list and you come across Mark Buehrle. At $7,500, he’s actually a huge value. For the season, he’s averaged 14.8 points per game, but that average is brought down in a big way by his last outing. There, he scored only 6.2 points. But even with that, he was averaging far more over the last 10 games at 18.9. His average was brought down by poor performances earlier in the season, too. In all but a handful of games, he’s been able to pitch at least 7 full innings, his homeruns against number is low, and he’s acquired an 11-5 record so far with 4 complete games.
He’s only the #3 choice for early pitchers, but there’s a ton of upside on him. Kershaw has more average fantasy points at 28.4, but there are several things to consider. One, he’s expensive. Buy him, and you have $7,000 you can’t spend elsewhere. In an early league, this isn’t a huge deal, but it is still a consideration. Two, Kershaw’s been injured and might not be in top form. He is likely to start, but there are many question marks surrounding him. There’s a good chance he won’t last as long as he usually would as management will probably pull him early to keep him from hurting his hip again. Immediately, you are losing points on him per inning as many leagues award an incentive to players per inning. It’s also fewer stats that he can rack up, too. And the last consideration is the fact that he can be hit or miss. He scored 49.5 points in his last outing, but there’s a chance this time that he could go back to his performance level at the beginning of the season. It’s a risk to draft him this soon, and it’s not one that’s likely enough to pay off to be worth the huge price. It only looks attractive until you consider the injury factor.
So, while Early leagues give you more room for a top pitcher like Kershaw, taking a risk on a lesser player in some instances can be worth it. You want consistency, but to win the big tourneys at the early or late entry time, you need to take a risk that will have more of a chance of winning when you consider the available players for that time. Everyone will draft Trout. Not everyone will draft Buehrle, and a good night could make the difference for you.
