It’s very important that you remember that the same approach for drafting a team in a season long fantasy league for MLB cannot be used effectively when you’re playing in a one day league. Daily fantasy sports have different scoring methods than season long leagues, and while you might think that a star player is a star player no matter what, the translation doesn’t work well between the two. To be good at one requires a different method than being good at the other. The trick with a season long league is to find players that are going to contribute over the long term. These are the players that will have good numbers at the end of the season, not on a given day. The secret to success in daily fantasy leagues has nothing to do with long term success, and it even goes beyond statistics in general. The secret here is to start with the salary cap that you are given, and find the best way to squeeze every fantasy point you can get out of it.
The way things are structured doesn’t allow you to draft a team full of stars. You can get a couple or sometimes even three big names, but then the rest of your roster will be filled with players that only will contribute on a fluke. Instead, look at the salary that is being offered by the site you play at, and figure out what the athlete you are looking at is really worth. So, if you have determined that Mike Trout is worth $8,500 because of his projected stats, but the site is charging you $9,000 to draft him, then he is overpriced and will not add enough value to your team to be worth picking him up. This is true even if he is one of the top outfielders for the night in question. Your money would be better spent on a B-level player that you are underpaying $500 on. This will help you to stretch your dollar power out a lot further and find more points per dollar. Spread out over your entire team, this gives you far more potential for winning your league. Repeat this process night after night and suddenly you have a hugely profitable daily fantasy approach.
The problem arises because you are overspending by $500, and that $500 could be better used elsewhere to add extra points in some other way. It doesn’t matter how many points one player on your team adds, what matters is your total points scored at the end of the night, and one player alone will not create a win for you. In order to win consistently, you need to make the best use of every salary dollar you are given, and spending too much–even if it is on a star like Trout–takes away from your total potential because it could have been used somewhere else to further your points scored at the end of the night. To be successful with this takes some subtlety when drafting your team and some research, but looking at projected stats–based upon expert opinion and your own observation–will get you a step closer to understanding this. In turn, you will learn how to dominate the one day leagues in a way that season long experts simply cannot do.
