If you are struggling to build winning MLB DFS lineups, the Stokastic Sims are here to help! Most traditional ways of building DFS lineups don’t take into account game theory strategies that are imperative to winning in DFS — simply hand-building lineups with projections or an optimizer doesn’t take into account aspects of DFS like correlation or ownership. Our Sims tool will build and simulate lineups that take every aspect of every slate into account. Let’s dive into how to use the MLB DFS Sims — in this expert strategy guide, I’ll dish out my tips and advice.
How to Use MLB DFS Sims: Expert Strategy Guide, Tips & Advice
Why You Should Use MLB DFS Sims
If you want to be a long-term winner in MLB DFS, you need to be able to estimate players’ ranges of outcomes — along with your peers’ ranges of outcomes. You can do these through a variety of means — fantasy point projections can give you an estimate as to what a player can produce, while ownership projections can tell you who the best contrarian options are.
At Stokastic, we have industry-leading MLB DFS projections and MLB DFS ownership projections. If you want to take things a step further, our top stacks, top batters and top pitchers tools can help you find the best plays with an eye to ownership all on one page. You can also find MLB weather forecasts updated for each slate. These tools are all part of our MLB DFS data package.
But while raw data is useful, it can be difficult to use, especially when other DFS players have more than just the data at their fingertips. DFS simulation tools have become increasingly popular of late, and, with Stokastic’s MLB DFS Sims tool, you can go a step beyond by using our industry-leading data in custom simulations for every DFS contest available. Let’s dive into how to use them.
How to Use MLB DFS Sims & Expert Strategy: Contest Generator
You are going to start building your lineups in the Contest Generator, which looks like this:
To begin, you want to follow these steps: First, select the site and sport you are building lineups for (DraftKings, FanDuel or OwnersBox).
Next, select the slate you want to play
Third, create a pool size that is closest to the number of entries in the contest you are playing in. The options are 250, 500, 1,000, 2,000 or 5,000 lineups. If you are playing in a large-field GPP, you want to select 5,000.
Finally, Click the “Generate Lineups” button.
The purpose of the Contest Generator is to build lineups that are as close to what the field is expected to do as possible. There are settings you can use to customize your contest pool like boosting players, but this should only be done if you think players are going to be higher or lower owned than the Contest Generator projects (the projected ownership is where it says pool exposure). You should not boost players in the Contest Generator if you want to change how frequently they will appear in your lineups. If you want to change your exposure to players, that is best done in the Pre-Contest Sims, which will be covered shortly.
Now that your contest pool is created, press the button that says “Simulate Lineups” — or select “Regenerate Lineups” if you made alterations to the player pool.
How to Use MLB DFS Sims & Expert Strategy: Pre-Contest Simulator
Those buttons will take you to the Pre-Contest Simulator, which looks like this:
The projections you see here are the default Stokastic MLB DFS projections. If you want to alter them, you can either change individual player projections on the page as you see fit or you can upload your own custom projections. To do this, simply upload a CSV with columns labeled player name, projection and ownership. This will automatically load all your projections into the Sims.
Once this step is complete, make sure the settings up top are correct. Double-check that the site and slate you are playing are correct. Then, select the percentage to first in the contest you are playing. This is calculated by dividing the first-place payout by the total prize pool. For example, if you are in a contest that pays $100,000 to first and the total prize pool is $400,000, you select 25% to first. If the exact percentage to first for your contest isn’t an option, select the closest available setting. This will help sort lineups that are best for the specific contest you are playing in.
Next, press the button that says “Run Contest Simulation” on the bottom right of the screen on the MLB DFS Sims tool.
This will kick off the simulations using all the settings that were previously selected. In the simulation, the slate is being simulated 40,000 on a play-by-play basis. This gives us the most accurate overview of the slate as possible, taking into account everything from how batters in the same lineup correlate to the ownership of all the players in the contest. The end result will look like this:
The Sim takes about 60 to 90 seconds to complete. When it’s done, you will see all of the lineups built in the Contest Generator sorted by a metric called Simulated ROI. This is the catch-all metric that ranks your lineups. It represents the average monetary return on each lineup across the 40,000 simulations that were run.
You will also see other data about your lineups if you want more information like how often the lineup won a tournament in the Sims, how often it finished in the top 10, how often it cashed, how many times each lineup is expected to be duped (for MLB DFS this is usually only important for small slates with three games or fewer), how many fantasy points each lineup is projected for as well as the total projected ownership of each lineup. All of this information is taken into account in the sim ROI.
Next, click the button that says “Quick Favorite” and select the number of lineups you are playing.
You do not need to make any customizations to your lineups, but if you do want to, here is how you can force the Sims to give you more or less a particular player or team:
ROI Boost: Boost a player up or down. This will change the Sim ROI for every lineup with the selected player up or down by the percentage boost you select. So if you want to get more exposure to a player, give them a positive ROI boost. Click Boost ROI when finished making adjustments.
Stack Boost: Boost a team up or down. This will change the Sim ROI for every lineup with the selected team up or down by the percentage boost you select.
Exposure Cap: You can set global or individual player exposure caps to prevent your lineups from having too much exposure to any individual players. This is done on the lineups page that shows all the lineups ranked by Sim ROI. Your top lineups will automatically be re-selected after you click on the button that says set exposures and adjust favorites.
Once your boosts are complete, you are ready to reselect your lineups. Go back to the quick favorite button, un-favorite all of your lineups and then re-select the number of lineups you are playing. This will select the top lineups of your specified amount by the top ROI lineups, including any adjustments you made with ROI boosts. You can review the amount of exposure you have to each player and stack in the exposures tab. These lineups are now ready to be exported to the site you are playing on. The MLB DFS Sims tool has done its job — now it’s time to make money!
