Beginner MLB DFS: Scoring

In daily fantasy baseball, like in most things, getting the fundamentals down is integral toward laying a foundation of knowledge to build from as you progress as a player. For DFS, that means understanding the scoring rules.

Scoring

This is the scoring system for DraftKings daily fantasy baseball. You might find other versions of scoring, but this is a fairly straight forward setup.

Hitters

Single: +3 Pts
Double: +5 Pts
Triple: +8 Pts
Home Run: +10 Pts
Run Batted In: +2 Pts
Run: +2 Pts
Base on Balls: +2 Pts
Hit By Pitch: +2 Pts
Sacrifice Fly: +1.25 Pts
Sacrifice Hit: +1.25 Pts
Stolen Base: +5 Pts

Pitchers

Inning Pitched: +2.25 Pts
Strikeout: +2 Pts
Win: +4 Pts
Earned Run Allowed: -2 Pts
Hit Against: 0.6 Pts
Base on Balls Against: -0.6 Pts
Hit Batsman: -0.6 Pts
Complete Game: +2.5 Pts
Complete Game Shutout: +2.5 Pts
No Hitter: +5 Pts

Strategy

Negative points

First, I like to look for statistics that hurt your score by giving you negative points. At DraftKings, only pitchers face negative point situations, as walks and hit batters knock your score down by -0.6 points. But, for hitters, strikeouts and outs of any kind, do no damage. That automatically gives players toward the top of the order an advantage, as they will get more at bats and not have the risk of going negative.

Home runs

The longball remains king in DraftKings at 10-points per four-bagger. Besides that big chunk of points in one at-bat, your hitter also gets a 2-point run and a 2-point RBI and possibly one to three more RBIs. If triples were more common, they would be a statistic to seek out at 8-points per, but they are just too scarce to worry about. You need home runs, as the next highest scoring possibility for an at bat is a double at 5-points per, which doesn’t automatically come with a run scored or an RBI. A home run is at worst worth 14 DK points and possibly 20. If you want to win tournaments, predicting home runs is a must.

Wins

Wins are a nice chunk of points at 4.5, but they are also hard to predict. A pitcher can easily pitch well enough to win and not get the win based on events that aren’t in his control. Pitchers on the whole are much more predictable than hitters, but wins aren’t the stat to count on when picking your pitchers.

Innings and strikeouts

Both innings and strikeouts are more predictable than wins and make up a big percentage of the DK points your pitcher will score. We want pitchers who last deep into games and consistently strike out the opposition. Yes, that sounds like common sense, but with this scoring it is the backbone of picking pitchers.

Strikeout scarcity

We want pitchers who put up good innings and strikeouts, but we also want to accentuate the statistics/points that are scarce. Innings pitched by starting pitchers aren’t scarce but strikeouts are. Yes, you will need to pay up for strikeout pitchers, but those strikeouts are on average a consistent statistic and even if they come in six innings versus eight innings, you want those Ks more than an extra two innings for your DFS team.