Things You Need to Know to Win Your Daily Fantasy Basketball League sample

Streaming

The controversial practice of streaming occurs when an owner cycles players on and off their team on a daily basis in order to maximize the games played. The objective of streaming is to physically beat your opponent to death in all of the counting categories by completing as many games played as possible over the week, resulting in a huge advantage in the number of games over your opponent. Teams that have a weekly transaction cap are not going to be able to stream effectively, but if you play in a daily changes league without a transaction cap, well, the commissioner has just given you an unrestricted access to stream as much as p
ossible.

But first, a warning: You are not going to make any friends with this strategy. In fact, there is very likely that the league will hate you by the end of the playoffs. But as long as it is within the boundaries of the league, then streaming is the easiest way for a team with lesser talent to beat a stronger opponent.

Say No to Injured Players

Injuries are one of the most difficult things to deal with during the playoffs in your daily fantasy basketball league because of the uncertainly that surrounds them.

If you’re currently sitting on an injured player, then you need to evaluate how it will affect your team’s ability to win in the short-term. Can you afford to play a man down and still have a better than average chance at winning the week? The goal during the playoffs is to do everything possible to move to the next round, so a player who is out for the week is basically a dead weight liability to your team. In a weekly changes league, you may be able to sit on an injured player or two, but in a daily fantasy basketball league, you’ll have to make the tough decision whether or not to drop a player who is not contributing to your team.

Shutdown Candidates

Why is it a smart move to drop injured players this time of year? Because nagging injuries often turn into day-to-day for the rest of the season. It is a waste of a roster spot to sit on a player for weeks only to have them eventually be shut down for the season.

Breakout Candidates

Injuries lead to opportunities for others. Every year, there are a few players who go completely out of their minds the last month of the season and usually get drafted way to soon as a result the following season.

Generally, these breakout players are guys who get an opportunity to play because of injuries, or possibly because a bad team out of playoff contention wants to give their young guys some playing time. Someone like Jordan Crawford is a little bit of both. He saw his playing time increase into the mid-20’s a game after a trade to the Wizards, and then a knee injury to Nick Young gave him a starting place in the Wizards’ last game. Crawford played all 48 minutes in that game and finished with 27 points.

If it’s only possible to accurately predict breakout players, I wouldn’t be writing this piece for free. But this time of year, crappy teams will often give extra run to young players. And if a starter gets injured, don’t hesitate to go for his backup even if the injury seems minor.

How to Win in Your Daily Fantasy Baseball League smaple

Through League Selection

I can’t over emphasize the importance of this. Daily fantasy sports are usually played head-to-head against another opponent. There is no set score to beat; you just need to beat your opponent's score. You could be the second worst daily fantasy baseball player in the world and still earn a profit if you go up against the worst player in the world. The second best daily fantasy baseball player in the world would have a losing record if they were constantly matched up against the best. In this regard, opponent selection can even be more important than your own daily fantasy baseball playing skills. Luckily for everyone, there are websites where you can look up info on your opponent. You may not see their complete win/loss record, but you can see how much they have won, which is a decent indication of how good they are. Be smart in choosing your matches and try to get paired up with unknown players or players with a limited track record in daily fantasy baseba l and you are bound to increase your cash winnings and ROI.

Through Team Selection:  Salary Cap Drafts

Before I go deeper fantasy baseball specifically, I want to cover a general concept in salary cap drafts that is sometimes overlooked. You want to try to figure out how many fantasy points players are likely to score (projected to score), but you do not necessarily want to pick the players with the highest projections. What I do is take a look at cost per projected fantasy point that day. For example, a player with a cost of 50 points and a projection of 4 fantasy points is a worse choice than a player with a cost of 30 points and a projection of 3 fantasy points. The 50-point player will likely score more fantasy points, but is overpriced relative to the 30-point player. You want to try to draft the team with the highest projected total fantasy score. And the only way to do this is to minimize the cost per fantasy point that you are paying, while spending the entire cap if possible. So, be careful before selecting that obvious choice that may actually be not quite the best.

Is Your Player Going to Play?

Picking the best possible daily fantasy baseball team will not get you too far if the manager decides to rest your player or the game gets rained out. This is what makes daily fantasy baseball much more complicated than other fantasy sports where rain outs are not possible, and players tend to play every game during the regular season. Below are two things you can do.

1) Verify that your player is in the starting line-up

This can get a bit tough, but in general starting line-ups are announced about 1 hour before game time. If you are on twitter, there are accounts which tweet out the starting line-ups as they are announced, so you should be able to get the lineups for the games starting within an hour of the league's starting time. Try to favor confirmed players if you can. Many starting lineups will not be confirmed in time for the league's start. If you select a player from one of those games, you are taking a decent risk. If you have to do it anyway, try to make sure that your player is not injured and tends to start all games, and then cross your fingers and hope your player actually plays. I tend to select players that are confirmed over players that are not when it is a close choice.

2) Verify the weather

You should check out the game time weather for the games your fantasy baseball players are playing in. Again, there are sites that have a pretty nice summary of the weather and chances of rain, so I would use that rather than trying to look up the weather forecasts for each stadium yourself.