Taking Advantage of Site Specific Scoring Rules

by waiverwire Last Updated 2010-07-30 20:44:40

In addition to a full time job as a software product manager, Alex Zelvin works part time for Fanduel.com (Zoobird on FanDuel) and co-owns Dailybaseballdata.com

On the surface, it seems obvious that you should know the rules of any game that you’re going to play. It also seems obvious that your strategies should seek to take advantage of those rules. A surprisingly large number of daily fantasy contest players don’t thoroughly learn the rules of the games though, resulting in less than optimal performance.

When tailoring your strategy to the rules of the specific site that you’re playing on, the scoring system is going to be one of the primary considerations. To begin with, let’s compare the hitter scoring systems of the three daily contest sites that currently have the most traffic.

On the surface, those look like very similar scoring systems. And in some ways, they are. But even subtle differences, can make a big difference in the value of various players relative to each other.

Basically, the differences boil down to this:

• FantasySportsLive gives two points for each Run and each RBI, while FanDuel and SnapDraft only give one.
• Snapdraft does not penalize hitters for striking out.

The impact of the first difference is minimal. Players in high scoring offenses gain a very small amount of additional value at FSL relative to the other sites. However, the lack of a penalty for striking out is a major difference. On Snapdraft, players like Ryan Howard, Mark Reynolds, Mike Napoli, Justin Upton, and Jay Bruce are far more valuable than they would be at the other sites, where their high strike out rates cost them dearly. On the flip side, low strikeout players like Albert Pujols, Nick Markakis, and Juan Pierre (yes, Juan Pierre) gain value on the other sites. If you’re valuing hitters the same whether you play at Fanduel_, Snapdraft, or FSL, then you’re making some big mistakes. Sometimes those bad decisions will pay off in the short run, but in the long run you’re going to be losing money to people whose selections reflect the differences in scoring systems between the sites.

Arguably, the differences among scoring systems for pitchers are even greater. Here are the point values for the same three contest sites:

It’s a little harder to describe these in simple terms, but here are the most important points:

• The actual performance of the pitcher makes very little difference at Snapdraft relative to whether he gets the win or not.
• Because of the greater penalty for earned runs and the penalties for hits and walks, pitching performance is much more important at FSL than at the other two sites.
• Fanduel is somewhere between the extremes of the other two.

So, there are going to be plenty of days when the best pick at FSL is a top pitcher in a favorable park, going against a weak offense, even if his offense is weak or the opposing starter is very strong. On the flip side, at Snapdraft the best pick will often be someone who may allow plenty of runs, but is heavily favored because of his team’s offense or a weak opposing pitcher.

Also, because FSL penalizes hits and walks, pitchers with good strikeout and walk rates are going to be more valuable there. At FanDuel and Snapdraft you can sometimes do just as well with a pitcher who allows plenty of base runners, but cancels them out with a high groundball rate. With the right match up, Kevin Slowey may be your guy at FSL, but you’ll often be better off with Justin Masterson or Gio Gonzalez at FanDuel or Snapdraft .