A quick look at a popular boom/bust strategy employed by Daily Fantasy players.
Welcome back, today we'll focus on a common strategy used in Daily Fantasy: lineup stacking. By rostering a slate of players from the same team, you can take advantage of a statistical compound effect, wherein players' fates become interlinked.
Let's look at the anatomy of a successful stack I deployed last Tuesday (FanDuel scoring & pricing):
Player | Salary | Stats | Points |
3,200.00 | 2 HR, 2 R, 5 RBI, BB | 15.5 | |
2,400.00 | 1 2B, 3 1B, 2 R, 1 BB, SB, 2 RBI | 11.75 | |
2,500.00 | 1 HR, 1B, 2 R, 1 RBI | 7.25 | |
2,900.00 | 2 1B, 3 R, 1 BB, SB, HBP | 8.5 | |
TOTAL | 11,000.00 | 43 |
The White Sox were playing the Rockies at Coors with two lefties on the mound, Franklin Morales and Jose Quintana. I- along with many others- anticipated a high scoring afternoon. But instead of loading up on Rockies I decided to play it contrarian, stacking the "lesser" offensive team. In the top of the 7th, Adam Eaton led off with a HBP, which Marcus Semien followed up with a single: 2 points. Then, Jose Abreu launched a 3-run home run, scoring both Semien and Eaton and pushing the inning point total to 11. By stacking three players at the top of a high scoring lineup, I was able to parlay their success into even greater success.
Also of note, in this particular lineup I had enough salary remainder to upgrade from Alexei Ramirez to Troy Tulowitzki, or Marcus Semien to David Wright (who was 0-ferred courtesy of Aaron Harang). As I mentioned last week, one of the most common mistakes I see folks make is falling for the salary trap; don't worry about leaving money on the table.
The downside of the stack is obvious: sometimes the pitcher you target as the day's piñata does his best Walter Johnson impression (see the aforementioned Aaron Harang), leaving you barren in tears with a blanket. The tactic is decidely boom or bust, but if the game you pick explodes, you have an excellent shot at raking in the dough.
Here is a look at some potential games to target tomorrow (Tuesday):
Tuesday: Blake Beavan throws a BP fastball with two well below average off-speed pitches to along with it. He squares off against the Rangers in Arlington. Prince Fielder and Shin-Soo Choo will both be good and highly owned. An under the radar play may be Leonys Martin. Other pitchers to target are Phil Hughes at the Blue Jays (Colby Rasmus, Melky Cabrera, Jose Bautista, Brett Lawrie), Erik Johnson at Fenway (A.J. Pierzynski, David Ortiz), and Lucas Harrell versus the Royals (Eric Hosmer, Salvador Perez, Norichika Aoki, Alex Gordon).