Step-by-Step Guide to Putting Together a Winning MLB Lineup: Part 2 Hitting

Yesterday’s article was part 1 of my step by step guide to picking a successful daily fantasy baseball team. It focused soley on the pitching aspect and the steps you can take that to help you choose pitchers that will score you points consistently. Today is the second half of the guide and will focus on how to choose hitters. Choosing good hitters every day is a much harder task than choosing pitchers, and because of that, you should spend a little bit more time studying hitters than you do on your pitchers. Here are the steps I take each day:

Hitting

1. Weather – The very thing I like to do is to look at the weather. Games get postponed all of the time due to weather, and trust me it’s not fun to have players that get you a big 0. There are quite a few sites to check out weather for MLB games. My favorites are Rotogrinders, DailyBaseballData, and VegasInsider. Don’t be afraid of games that have less than a 50% chance of rain because these games rarely get postponed. But if they do happen to be in the 70-100% chance of rain, then you might want to stay away from players in those games.

2. BVP – The next step I take is to glance over batter vs. pitcher statistics. First check to see if you can qualify for Grinders Incentives on RotoGrinders to get daily reports on not only BVP, but also Left/Right splits and Daily Value picks. Also, a site for these stats is DailyBaseballData. They have a nice format that is easy to read and they post BvP stats days in advance.

3. Gauging Matchups – Once I have made a quick run through of all the days games BvP stats, I like to go through each of the games one by one to determine which players could potentially have a big night. This step is kind of a combination of steps because in order to do this you have to look at batter vs. pitcher stats as well as lefty vs. righty stats. Just take each game one by one and look at the pitcher each team is facing. This step is fairly vague but if you go through the games and see a guy like Dustin Pedroia facing a lefty and he has good PvB statistics, then go ahead and take him. Or if you see a team is facing a rookie pitcher that is likely to give up a lot of runs, make sure to load up on guys from that team.

4. Using the Street’s Software – This step is interchangeable with step number 3. While I am going through the games one by one looking at the BvP stats, I like to pull up my Draftstreet draft screen and click into the team that I am looking at. This lets me see all of the hitters from that team and it makes it easy to see which hitters from that team I would potentially want to use. If a guy has a good matchup and a good salary, then I take him. I continue this until I fill my team. I like to use this approach because it allows me to fill my roster with guys that I want rather than just guys that will fit.

5. Checking Daily Lineups – Once I have my team all put together, the next step is probably the most important. You must check the lineups every day. If you have been playing baseball for a while now, then I’m sure you have already learned this the hard way. Lineups change every day and players are often given the day off. The best place to check MLB Daily Lineups is right here on RotoGrinders. All you have to do is click on the Lineups link at the top of the page and it will show you all of the starters for that day as well as their salaries. Checking lineups on RotoGrinders is also a great way to look for value picks because they have all of the low salary players highlighted in green.

The whole process should take you no more than an hour or so to choose your hitters and your pitchers. This strategy has been working for me so feel free to try it out if you are struggling to put together a good team each day. If any of this is confusing (I confused myself a bit writing this), then just send me a message and I’m more than happy to clarify. Hope this can help some of you.

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About the Writer: Derek ‘Notorious’ Farnsworth has been playing fantasy sports ever since he could walk. He loves sports so much he swears his first words were “Michael Jordan.” He recently graduated with a Master’s degree from the University of Utah and is excited for their entrance into the PAC-12. He was introduced to daily fantasy sports last year by clicking on one of Draftstreet’s famous referee ads, and quickly climbed the RotoGrinders Rankings into the Top 25. He also loves betting on sports and the occasional craps table.