Last Sunday evening, Major League Baseball presented the first game of the American League Championship Series (ALCS). The Texas Rangers travelled to Minute Maid Park to battle the Houston Astros.
The focus of this article is to evaluate this baseball game from a fantasy baseball/DFS perspective. More specifically, I discuss my thought process on constructing multiple lineups for a FanDuel MLB Single Game Contest. As I discuss my detailed DFS thought process, I will elaborate on my player selections and correlate that relevant information to the ASL Optimizer.
When playing any DFS slate, regardless of the sport, understanding the rules for the specific contest is vital to winning. This individual MLB slate is certainly no different. Having stated that, let’s briefly review the rules for this FanDuel single game slate. The rules for the FanDuel single game contest are rather simple. You have $60,000 to utilize on five players from either team. However, one of those players will be designated as your team MVP. The FanDuel MVP accumulates 1.5 times the standard FanDuel points value.
*FanDuel does not include starting pitchers in the player pool for a MLB single game slate. This means the hitters are the players for us to focus on this slate.
The remaining four players in your lineup will receive the standard FanDuel points value. Having stated that, it is highly important for you to identify the correct player for your MVP position if you hope to win a FanDuel single game.
What did we learn from the rules just presented relative to lineup construction for a FanDuel single game MLB slate? I learned that it is highly important for the DFS player to identify the batters on any given MLB single game slate that have the most upside with regard to overall fantasy points. Remember, the MVP obtains 1.5 times the standard FanDuel points.
Before we dive into my DFS process for constructing multiple FanDuel lineups for tonight’s American League Championship series, let's quickly review the scheduled starting lineups for both teams. I have noted the starting lineups for the Astros and Rangers in the illustration below.
Now that we have determined the rules for the FanDuel MLB Single Game contest and reviewed the starting lineups for game one of the ALCS let’s shift our attention to our lineup construction. My first step in the DFS lineup construction process is to ascertain which players in the starting lineups mentioned above have the best chance to post the most FanDuel fantasy points in the game.
Let's utilize the ASL optimizer to construct 100 lineups for a large field 150 max GPP (guaranteed prize pool) contest with $0.05 lineups. I have presented a screen shot below of the ASL optimizer main screen below:
Upon accessing the main page of the optimizer my initial goal is to identify my potential MVP candidates:
You can clearly see in the photo above that Adolis Garcia and Corey Seager are projected to have the most FanDuel fantasy points. Due to that fact, I am going with Garcia and Seager as my lead MVP candidates.
My next step is to control the amount of exposure I have to my top two MVP candidates. I complete this task by clicking on the Set Pro Options tab on the top left-hand side of the photo above.
Having clicked the Set Pro Options I am presented with multiple options that can have an impact on how the ASL Optimizer selects players for my 100 FanDuel lineups. The image below illustrates the projected minimum and maximum MVP ownership on the right-hand side for both MVP and flex plays:
On the left-hand side I have noted specific requests of minimum and maximum MVP ownership for Garcia and Seager.
Now that this task is completed, I run my ASL optimizer request of 100 lineups and upload them into the FanDuel site. Then I wait for the completion of game #1 of the ALCS to evaluate my performance.
How did my 100 lineups perform? The photo below provides my top finishers:
It should be noted that this large field FanDuel GPP contest had 11,976 entries. Having stated that, my best finishing lineup of 472nd is not bad relative to the field of the contest.
Why did my core lineups struggle? Frankly, it was my two main MVP selections. Adolis Garcia and Corey Seager combined hitting statistics for the game: one hit in eight at-bats. That’s not good enough production from your designated MVPs.
In summary, always remember the high variance that comes with playing fantasy baseball. So there is no guarantee on one try that you will win. However, if you utilize a good DFS process on a consistent basis you will eventually succeed. Trust me. Until next time, good luck!
