With a Stokastic+ membership, you’re tapping into top-notch advice and strategies straight from the pros, like our perennial winner Steve “dacoltz” Buzzard and the rest of the Stokastic crew. Plus, you’ll be part of our Stokastic Discord community, where our users and pros bounce DFS advice and questions off of each other. It’s not just MLB DFS pick advice we’re talking about here. We’re diving into all things fantasy, with insights from the minds who’ve hit the big bucks.
Every Thursday, Steve will hold court on Discord, ready to tackle your burning DFS questions. Whether you want to dive deep into strategy, explore our tools or fine-tune your game, he’s got you covered. Here we will cover some of the best DFS discussions and advice from this week’s Office Hours.
Discord Office Hours Recap – Expert MLB DFS Pick Advice & Strategy
Steve “dacoltz” Buzzard is a name you frequently see at the top of the leaderboards in all sorts of DFS sports, and he is one of the masterminds behind Stokastic Sims. He has weekly Office Hours on Discord to answer questions and give expert MLB DFS pick advice, whether it’s about any slate past or future or advice on how to use our tools and content.
Below are some of the best questions and answers from this week’s Office Hours with Steve “dacoltz” Buzzard.
MLB DFS Strategy: +EV Ownership Strategy
einsteinium asked: When navigating MLB slates and trying to identify plays for pitching specifically, I find myself often going to offenses that I identify as potentially going over-owned against pitchers who don’t necessarily grade well because of the matchup, so they come in under-owned. Do you think that line of thinking is correct? Or is there another way I should be going about it?
dacoltz: I think that is a pretty good long-term strategy, especially in the biggest contests of the day like the Relay Throw on DraftKings or Rally on FanDuel. When those pitchers do well, you get some big leverage by eliminating 20% of the field or whatever from people playing that stack. It might not be quite as advantageous in smaller contests like the Monster since you don’t need as much of an outlier score. Also note that this is going to cause more variance in your results because most of the time those pitchers don’t work out and the stacks do well. But I think over the long run this is probably a +EV strategy if you play it well. Like, don’t play some $8,000 pitcher projected for 12 points in Coors just because the Coors team is stacked a lot.
One of our best deals here at Stokastic is our MLB Lineup Generator sale. For a limited time, you can get seven days of MLB Lineup Generator for just $3 when you use the promo code MLBLGWEEK!
The MLB Lineup Generator is one of our easiest-to-use but also most effective tools we offer. All you need to do is select the DFS site and slate you plan to play, choose your stack type, the level of ownership you want from your lineups (chalky, contrarian, balanced or all) and players you wish to lock in. Once you’re satisfied, Lineup Generator will churn out high-ROI lineups and give you the information to determine how you want to proceed.
Check out the included screenshot for an example of a lineup that we generated for a DraftKings weekday main slate.
MLB DFS Strategy: Stokastic Sims vs. Lineup Generator
BTFU1989 asked: I have had no luck using the Sims but do great just utilizing the Lineup Generator. Is there a setting I can use in the Sims to populate more lineups similar to what the Lineup Generator produces?
dacoltz: That’s an interesting thought. My guess is that it is mostly variance between the two, as they should both be producing similar types of lineups, although I am guessing that the Sims probably err a little closer to the “contrarian” ones in the Lineup Generator if you are picking balanced or chalky instead in Lineup Generator. If you are doing that and want more balanced ones, you can sort by some other metrics within the Sims as well instead of just ROI like cash rate, for example. These will likely give more consistent good results but might not win quite as often.
MLB DFS Advice: How Sticky Are Recent Statistical Trends?
einsteinium asked: How large of a sample size would you need for MLB to consider it a trend? For example, Seattle’s struggles with striking out or the Cardinals being absolutely awful to start the year — even Shota Imanaga pitching the way he has to start his rookie year. Do you always just rely on the historic results?
dacoltz: That’s a good question. It really depends on what the stat is. Striking out like Seattle has been doing stabilizes pretty quickly, and you should be able to rely on that fairly quickly. A team being awful has a lot of other factors like BABIP, opponent strength, etc. Even the White Sox won a few games in a row this month. I think that our projection model does a really good job of figuring out how “sticky” a stat is, i.e. how likely recent performance will translate into future performance or how much it will regress to some average. Strikeout rate is pretty sticky. BABIP isn’t very sticky at all.
So in general, I think you can rely on our stats, which is our goal, so you don’t have to make those assumptions yourself.
MLB DFS Strategy: How Contrarian Should I Go in Smaller Contests?
GeauxTigers8 asked: is it better to go completely contrarian in smaller MLB contests in the Sims, as in 30% to first for contests like the MLB qualifiers on FanDuel?
dacoltz: I don’t know if I would say “completely contrarian;” I think you should always include some of the chalkier plays with your contrarian plays or you just won’t have a projection that is high enough. But if you have, say, two players that are under like 3% owned, you probably don’t need to fill out the rest of your team with under-3%-owned plays. But don’t necessarily fill it out with 30%-owned plays. Just create a good balance of players in your lineup that are contrarian and chalky. But for those top-heavy contests like qualifiers, you should definitely err towards the more contrarian side since you want a lineup that is able to beat everyone; finishing second isn’t worth much of anything!
