Drafting Position Players in Your Daily Fantasy Baseball League

The thought process for position players indaily fantasy baseballis different, but similar in some ways. You will not have a betting line to look at to determine how your player will do. However, you do know who your player will be batting against to start the game. Since pitching is so important, it is a good idea to know who you will be up against, and who will be giving up more fantasy points than others. For this, ERA is a good guideline. You should review the ERAs for the starting pitchers and find the worst and the best pitchers based on the ERA for today's games in yourdaily fantasy baseball. In general, you will want to draft position players who are playing against the pitchers with the highest ERAs, and avoid drafting players who will be up against pitchers with the lowest ERAs. You also probably want to avoid players going against the pitcher that you have on your fantasy team for the same reason. The starting pitcher is the most important factor in determining your starting position players, but several other factors are in play as well, if you want to dig deeper.

1. Streaks

Hot players who have been putting up big numbers over the last couple of weeks are better than cold players.

2. Home Field

Players, in general, play better at home than on the road. Home players will not bat in the bottom of the 9th on average half the time. You are losing about 1/18th of your plate appearances at home. You are actually better off taking position players on the road, unless they are simply poor road performers.

3.Left or Right Matchups

Is your position player a switch hitter? If so, which side are they more productive on? If not a switch hitter, which handed pitchers is your player most productive against? Don't start players who struggle against certain handed pitchers when facing those same pitchers.

4. Cap Values

High cap value players are riskier than low cap value players even though they put up higher numbers in general. If you spend 40 points on a player, they need to put up four points for you to "break even" on the selection, while a 20-point player only needs two points. There is more upside and less downside with low cap value players.

5. New Starters

Utility players who do a lot of filling in early in the season and get promoted to starters later on are usually of good value. Their rank cap value will be depressed by the many partial games played earlier in the season.