RotoTalk: Field Size and Player Selection

by Kevin Dahle (rotokevin) Last Updated 2012-05-01 18:50:43

Hey gang, welcome to RotoTalk. Every week (or so) I’ll be covering some daily fantasy strategy. Some days it will be focused specifically on a particular game format, but more often it will be general strategy that is applicable to all walks of daily fantasy life. Since I’ve been playing on Daily Joust a ton since MLB started, let’s take a closer at how field size should drive the profile of the players you select when playing in anything from a Solo contest all the way up to Tournaments with 100+ entrants.

Field Sizes

Daily Joust offers the unique aspect of running contests with a field size of 1. Just you and your team against a fixed target. There are no competitors to put up monster numbers to ruin the profitability of a solid team. On the other end of the spectrum, are the industry’s bread and butter – guaranteed prize pool tournaments, often featuring 100+ entrants. So yeah, there is a range on what a player needs to overcome to win depending on format.

Going Solo

To illustrate strategy at varying field sizes, let’s start at one extreme and make our way toward the other. As mentioned, a solo contest has a fixed target for points to accrue to trigger a victory. In baseball, if you get to 60 total points, you get paid. It’s important to understand Daily Joust’s scoring before really breaking down how to attack a solo.

Scoring

There, now that we understand the scoring, what does it take to crack the 60-point level? Not much, actually:

8 hitters: 10 hits, 15 total bases, 5 runs, 5 RBI
Pitcher: 6 IP, 6 hits, 3 walks, 2 earned runs, 4 strikeouts, win

If you add that up, your hitters deliver a little more than one hit each and average 1.5 bases per hit. That isn’t so bad. Putting together this line will earn you 45 points from those wielding bats. The pitching line appears equally pedestrian and something that you or I might be able to accomplish against the injury-riddle Phillies or the goodness-deprived Padres. That stat line is worth 16. 45 + 16 = 61 = sweet cash money in your account.

The point here is that your players don’t have to go crazy to win a solo. In a solo contest, your primary concern should be about limiting risk and taking hitters that are likely to put the ball in play and generate a bit of offense. Clearly a home run does wonders for a solo, but you don’t need it. A guy like Ichiro Suzuki is what you should be targeting here. He rarely strikes out (protection from negative points) and is no stranger to multi-hit games. Most of those hits will be of the single-base variety, but they add up. The same goes for pitchers. The best approach is to target the most likely win on the board as those 7 points go a long way.

So, when it comes time to allocate your cap space, spending on a pitcher is a good idea as the consistent, high-floor/low-ceiling type hitters often won’t cost a ton. You should be able to secure an upper-level starter likely to get a win and several mid-grade high contact hitters that will carry you to victory.

Go Big or Go Home

So, how do things change once you get to a large field with 10s if not hundreds of competitors? You’ve gotta swing for the fences. While 60 points will always win a solo, you’ll often need 90 or 100 or more to ship home a GPP, and more for the $50 daily freeroll. The only way to get to those numbers is to take on more risk. Think Giancarlo Stanton here. He’s a dude with a ton of power that can just as easily hit two home runs (very nice!) or go 0-4 with 3 strikeouts (not so nice). That boom/bust potential is what you need, though, as a basket of singles and runs won’t get you to 90 points or more.

On the pitching side, you’re looking for value more than boom/bust potential. You definitely still want the win, but it is really hard to get a high total when spending 300k or more on your SP slot as high-ceiling hitters tend to carry a premium in the Daily Joust marketplace. So basically, you’re looking for a reclamation project. Try to find a guy who has struggled a bit and thus has a depressed price, hopefully coupled with a tasty matchup. Really, a perfect scenario would be to get 25-30 points from a pitcher priced under 200k. That would leave you ample cash to spend on hitters with 15+ point upside. If you find a couple of those bats and a value SP, suddenly you’re in the 50-60 range with 1/3 of your team. From there, victory may just be in your sights.

Linear Interpolation

For illustrative purposes, we focused today on the extreme ends of the spectrum, but there are several levels in between. Basically, you can apply these principles in a linear fashion across the levels in between. Less risk should be taken in smaller pools, but gradually ramp it up as your field of contestants expands.

And now, a lineup…

Every week we’ll close with a Daily Joust lineup for the day. Today, I’m going to attempt to conquer the $500 guaranteed King James tournament with this beauty. If you’re new to Daily Fantasy, you could try a lineup similar to this out in the Daily Freeroll on Joust. There’s also a 40% Deposit Bonus on your first deposit.