It is time to continue our MLB DFS Lineup Study For DraftKings series! To deliver a long-term positive return, lineup study is crucial. Seeing what winning lineups looked like and how top players built their lineups compared to the average player is what elevates DFS players to the next level.
That’s why we’ve built the post-contest Sims at Stokastic. Each day, our post-contest Sim updates with the previous night’s results. Users are able to compare their own lineups to others and see how lineups graded out. Consistently building positive ROI lineups will lead to better profits in the long run.
In this analysis, I look to highlight the main factors of the top-3 lineups in the $300K Bat Flip($100k to 1st) contest on DraftKings. Some points I will be looking for when breaking down these lineups is what kind of stack used, the average ownership percentage, highest-owned players, and the amount of lineups the user entered. We are searching for any patterns within these individual lineups in an attempt to apply certain tactics when building our next pool of lineups.
MLB DFS Lineup Study
User: Legit-Storm
Finish: 1st
Stack: 3-3-1-1/ARI,SF,COL,CLE
Amount of lineups entered: 150
Average ownership: 69.4%
Highest owned player: Merrill Kelly 22.7%
User: wioux
Finish: 2nd
Stack: 2-2-2-1-1/LAD,ARI,MIA,OAK,TB
Amount of lineups entered: 4
Average ownership: 114.6%
Highest owned player: Nick Pivetta 75%
User: carney259
Finish: 3rd
Stack: 5-2-1/SF,LAD,SD
Amount of lineups entered: 150
Average ownership: 77%
Highest owned player: Nick Pivetta 43.3%
Analysis
Starting off with the first place lineup, we see that legit-storm was very spread out in his player ownership with his highest owned player being a 22.7% Merrill Kelly. Overall, his strategy of not making a stand on any particular player worked out in the end by landing 4 out of his 150 lineups in the top 50, of course one of those lineups being first place.
Despite legit-storm being spread out in his ownership, I want to highlight his San Francisco Giants exposure.
The Giants provide a great example of how to use our Top Stacks tool in other ways besides looking for the highest rated stacks for the night. San Fran had the highest leverage percentage for any stack at 1.8% with opposing pitcher Joe Musgrove pulling 10.4% ownership. We can see how important the leverage of SF was by looking at the average ownership of the two Giants stacks.
We find that there was 45% and a 37% differential compared to a stack with some of the more popular teams like ARI and LAD. Though both ARI and LAD had great plays, the low ownership and discounted prices of SF allowed for these lineups to have chalky exposure tied in with low owned/high leverage plays.
Wrapping up this analysis, the Giants reinforce the idea that leverage plays a huge role in lineups when trying to take down a large field GPP. We point out one way we can find this leverage by looking at the leverage% column in our Top Stacks tool. Once again, it is perfectly fine to have healthy exposure to chalky stacks.
Just make sure to follow it up with high leverage/low ownership players to maximize ROI%.
