DraftStreet's Rosters Separate from the Pack
Ok guys, this blog post is going to be a little bit different than the regular lineup or sleeper blogs of the past. Instead, today I’d like to take a few minutes and give my opinion on the clear distance in the Daily Fantasy game that Draftstreet is creating from their competition in baseball, largely due to their unique roster requirements.
I realized when DraftStreet first came out that the expanded rosters were much better than the standard stuff we were used to seeing, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized just how much better they actually were. Here’s a quick look at DS roster compared to the daily fantasy leader Fanduel:
| DS | C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 3 OF, 2 U, 2 SP, 1 RP, 1 P | 14 starters |
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| FD | C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, RF, 1SP | 9 starters |
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First off that is 5 extra starters in the DS game. That’s huge. It’s huge for everyone in fact. New players who are just playing for the entertainment have 5 extra players to watch on TV or online and it ups their excitement level a notch. Also 5 extra players is a great edge for the ‘grinder’. How many times do you do your research during the day and then go fill out your team only to be stuck with incredibly pressing decisions like Pujols or Fielder versus bad pitchers? You stutter: “Which one do I take!?” It could be a big money decision as on any night either one of them could go for double digits while the other sits on a zero. Well in the DS format you don’t have to stress over those decisions as much. You can fit all your big studs on there if you want. And although I am not necessarily a fan of the low pitcher scoring on DS, I absolutely love that they give you a chance to get 3 starters on your team. If one guy flames out it is not the end of the world as it is on other sites.
How else does this expanded roster help? Glad you asked, so here is one answer: The new strategy of selecting a team comprised of an “all-one, MLB squad”. On Fanduel you are really limited on the majority of occasions by position limitations and lack of a utility spot, making selecting 8 players from the same team very simple. On most teams you cannot field a roster of an entire team. You’re left deciding between Adrian Gonzales and David Ortiz at first base. Posada or Russell Martin? , Ryan Roberts or Gerardo Parra, etc…On DS these problems don’t exist with their roster size.
I have also noticed that roster variance in the GPP’s on Draftstreet are pretty high. With 14 players and such a different salary level that is accurately and readily adjusting to recent performance, it is very difficult to duplicate a competitor’s roster. On the other hand I was playing Fanduel’s $10 GPP recently with an all Yankee lineup (or as close to an all Yankee as you can come with the position problem), and halfway through the night I looked at the scoreboard and noticed I was in 50th place. The top few guys in the tournament had all Yankees also. However the “leftover” positions were filled with guys I didn’t have. Then I started glancing through the lineups in that tournament. I looked through the first 100 teams entered and to my utter horror and dismay this is what I saw: Out of the top 100 teams in that field, 41 teams had a primarily Yankees lineup! By primarily, I mean at least 6 of the Yankees that you could use at the 8 hitting positions. 41% of the top 100 teams were separated by only a couple of random hitters! That is sick, and not good for the game. The smaller rosters are bunching up the GPP’s way too much. Props to Draftstreet for realizing this issue ahead of time, and setting the trend with the expanded rosters. It won’t be too much longer and I wouldn’t be surprised to see their site catch up to Fanduel.
Lastly, the real reason I am writing this blog is because I find myself growing increasingly frustrated with the industry leader (FanDuel). The majority of the action is on Fanduel. The traffic is there. However, after reading that the only change in the upcoming football season was an added .5 per reception, I was highly disappointed. I thought the majority of the players who give a lot of big action made it clear they wanted some sort of expanded roster, but that didn’t happen. I write this in hopes that by the time next April rolls around and baseball season is upon us again that Fanduel decides to make some necessary changes. It is long overdue. If you want to compare, use RotoGrinders exclusive Deposit Bonuses, by checking out the FanDuel Review and DraftStreet Review.
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About the Writer: Fantasy Sports has always been a part of headChopper’s life and for the last 12 years he has been playing high-stakes, season-long fantasy leagues. In 2008 his passion for fantasy sports evolved when Snapdraft introduced him to the world of Daily Fantasy Sports. Since then, headChopper has been dominating the competition! He spent much of 2009 near the top of both FanDuel and SnapDraft’s leaderboards. In addition, he specializes in four different sports and is notorious for his knowledge in Daily Fantasy College Football. headChopper has been ranked as high as #3 in the RotoGrinders Overall Rankings, and is starting to earn a role as a Large-Field expert with eight wins of $400 or more since January 2011.
Excellent article headChopper. I agree completely. Hopefully Draftstreet will take this article to heart and adjust their basketball game to an expanded roster as well.
Last season it was a 2G/2F/2C setup which was really vanilla without much strategy with many duplicate players on rosters. Would love to see something like football where they went to a 2PG/2SG/2SF/2PF/2C/2Flex basketball roster. It really does add variation, strategy and entertainment to the game.
Great article.
Excellent work. Draftstreet has become my weapon of choice for the reasons you mention. Not to pile on Fanduel, but its games have grown quite stale. The player pricing doesn’t move enough to really make a difference. Draftstreet’s pricing engine which adjusts for both recent performance and current day matchups is terrific. I think the best example to contrast the two pricing systems was Dan Uggla earlier in the season when he went oh for a million and could be had for near the league minimum on DS, but he was still 3200ish on Fanduel.
Great work again, man. Keep ‘em coming.
I’ve never understood why fanduel is the market leader. To me they have the worst market positioning. DS has awesome functionality for snake drafts and offers tough salary cap games for true “grinders”. FSL has an incredibly simple interface and salary structure which is pretty easy to beat. I don’t know what attracts people to fanduel.
Great post! No doubt DS is constantly trying to improve their product(s) and that pays dividends. More and more people realize, which site offers the best overall experience.
I echo holmfries and while the obvious answer to the mystery is the enormous traffic at FD, with their obstinacy and stubbornness to improve sooner or later they won’t be the market leader.
I would like to also give kudos to Fantasy Factor. Obviously without salaries they are not exactly comparable to FD, DS and FSL; however they have the expanded rosters (14 for baseball), they have by far the coolest software, they have an interesting twist with their “factors”; so for entertainment and fun the features they have are more than sufficient.
Thanks for the kind words guys. This is definitely just the beginning for us. We have a long list of new features, games, and additions we want to add to the site and we will continue working hard to get them done.
Also, I think some of you are underestimating the current action on DraftStreet. We have grown tremendously throughout the course of this baseball season. The size of the GPPs is limited a bit by the 3-entry per user max, but the action in the 3, 6, 10 and 20man leagues makes up for that.
Tippy, our rosters included two utility spots for NBA that you might have forgot to mention. So it was 2G/2F/2C/2U, which I think is pretty large for NBA. Expanding to 10 players, and/or specifying PG/SG/SF/PF would probably work well when there is a full slate of games, but a lot of nights have only 3-7 NBA games where the smaller roster and extra flexibility make the game more competitive and reduce overlap.
Mark, I remember we went round and round about the basketball rosters last season, haha. I remember the 2 utility spots, but always thought the game would be a little better divided out into positions. Maybe it would be a good idea to poll your users to see what they thought? Separating the roster into positions is a way to expand the roster because it really creates a depth that you can’t achieve by lumping PG’s and SG’s into the same class. It’s like lumping WR and TE into the same category and just calling it “R” for receiver. They are two totally different positions with totally different skill sets. Maybe we can pick this up again closer to basketball season!
On a side note, congrats on everything you guys are doing at Draftstreet. It’s becoming a really solid daily fantasy site. Keep up the good work.
Mark, you guys are really kicking ass over there at Draftstreet, that’s for sure. Absolutely love the roster set up for baseball over any other site. Your football rosters are better than anything I saw elsewhere last year also(love 2 QB’s, no K, etc…).
But I would agree with Tippy that for basketball you guys could really separate yourselves from the rest of the pack with doing even more for your basketball rosters. 2 centers and Utility players is a great start, but I think you can go even bigger and dominate the field. Hell I would LOVE, absolutely love, to see a 2 PG,2 SG,2SF,2 PF,2 C,2 Utility roster setup… That would be phenomenal and would really grab the attention of everyone playing.
Let’s be honest, the NBA isn’t playing this year.
Overlap was high in NBA at DS, and comically high at FD though, so I think some tweaks are necessary.