As some of you may know, the DFS Playbook here at Fantasy Alarm is not some fly by night DFS product. I, along with my radio show partner Ted Schuster have spent the last three years perfecting the formulas that produce the DFS Playbook. We were among the first to believe in, play and promote DFS both on the Fantasy Alarm website and on our SiriusXM show.
At this point I believe our success at DFS and the success of those who have learned from and continue to use the DFS Playbook speak for themselves. Four live final events, a Playboy Baseball Championship, a Kentucky Derby VIP trip and a half a million in winnings, I would put our record and that of the DFS Playbook up against just about anybody in DFS.
Unlike a lot of DFS players who pretend to be analysts, we genuinely want you to win. If you use our information including our Optimal Lineups to tie or even beat us then so be it. Our primary goals are to educate, inform and assist DFS players. We recognize that for many of you, playing daily fantasy sports is a brand new experience. There are a lot of misunderstandings out there regarding DFS and we fully intend to break them all.
Although the DFS Playbook here at Fantasy Alarm has been around since 2013, we officially launched our DFS Playbook PRO early in 2015. We know that this is the only service you will ever need to learn, play and win at daily fantasy baseball, basketball and football. We also provide special DFS Playbooks for PGA, NASCAR and other occasional specialty sporting events.
Although most of you realize that the DFS Playbook PRO is an abundant service, some of you have asked about how is actually best to use it. Thus, I have prepared this tutorial for those of you who have already subscribed and those of you who are considering it.
As you know, if you have any questions about DFS or otherwise you can ask me in the comments section of ourarticles or on Twitter (@Jeff_Mans).
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You Choose The Experience
Although DFS players come in many shapes and sizes, I have found that we all usually fit into one of two basic categories. Either you want to learn how to become a better player by doing most or all of the work yourself, or you want somebody to do the heavy lifting for you because you just don’t have the time. Either way, the DFS Playbook PRO supplies everything you need now matter which experience you are looking for.
Step 1: Research DFS Strategies
Perusing our DFS strategies is always a good place to start your research. We add new articles about three times per week with topics ranging from which stats to look at for starting pitchers to bankroll management. Here is the place where you will decide if stacking in tournaments or paying up for power is really the best strategy for you.
Step 2: Utilize Stats City
We’ve built one of the most vast MLB statistical engines known to man. Best of all, this statistics engine is the first ever to actually incorporate DFS specific factors such as multi site salary, individual site scoring and points per dollar. We allow you to select which site you want to begin your research on. There are seven currently and we are adding more periodically throughout the season.
Stats City also provides you the ability to sort each stat category by just about any timeframe you want. This way you can find which hitters have been on fire over the last week or two or see who owns the best career numbers against left handed pitching. This is the place to begin your DFS research each and every day. If you can’t find it here, you don’t need it to win at DFS.
Step 3: Sort Through Our Daily Projections
Every day throughout the MLB regular season we will have our staff’s projections posted by 10 AM ET. These projections cover all major DFS sites including salaries and points per dollar. You can sort these by stat category and by position, which will greatly help you uncover those under the radar sleepers each and every day. If you are do-it-yourselfer, you can download these projections everyday into an excel spreadsheet and maneuver them however you like.
Step 4: Get Familiar With Our Sortable BvP Page
Batters versus pitcher stats are a hot button issue for many DFS players and analysts. To be honest with you, I cannot trust anyone that says that BvP isn’t at least somewhat useful. Sure, you cannot properly analyze any matchup based solely on eight or ten at bats. But every once in awhile we will find an outlier such as Paul Goldschmidt’s 15-28 (.536) with 7 HR against Tim Lincecum which is impossible to ignore. This page allows you to sort through all of the days matchups and find the outliers to have in your lineups tonight.
Step 5: Read Daily Trends
Every morning Ray Flowers writes shares his innermost thoughts with us via his Daily Trends article. These are not always DFS intensive but Ray is the absolute king of deciphering what the latest trends are among players and stats. He has an uncanny way of taking the numbers that we wrote down from Stats City and putting them in the proper perspective for us to digest.
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Step 6: Take A Break
If you are doing all of your own homework then you have had a busy couple of hours combing through all of our DFS tools mentioned above. Take a little break, get yourself a coffee or something to eat and let the information settle in a bit before diving back into it. Trust me on this folks, this is a veteran move that truly works. Take this opportunity to go to the gym or oogle some lovely ladies on the internet. May I suggest Blake Bortles ex-girlfriend perhaps? You can ask anybody who knows me personally and they will tell you that at some point in the early afternoon I head over to my local Dunkin Donuts and grab myself a medium coffee (usually iced). It’s delicious and it helps my brain catch up to all of the stats and information that I have just went through.
If you are not doing all of your own investigation then you really haven’t missed anything yet. What we have done so far is simply lay the foundation of which players are in good and bad spots heading into today’s action. There is still awhile to go before we settle on a final lineup to roll out into our contests though.
Step 7: Review The DFS MLB Rankings
Every single day throughout the MLB regular season we are providing the top 10 (less when there are smaller slates) overall plays by position in DFS. These rankings serve a few very important purposes. First of all they give you an idea of how a large amount of players have graded out according to our DFS MLB Playbook formula. These rankings also are the first step in whittling down the massive player pool that we enter with every single day in daily fantasy baseball. The DFS MLB Rankings also give you a side by side comparison of players at each position that includes both their salary for the day and their average points per game.
Perhaps the most useful aspect of the DFS MLB Rankings is for when you have already build your lineups but need a last minute swap due to weather, injury or any other concern you may have. The rankings make is quite easy to simply go in, find the next best player in the required price range and plug them into your lineup. The rankings are a feature you will likely find yourself coming back to a few times each day. These are the perfect starting point for those who don’t want to do any of their own statistical research and would rather rely on our team’s efforts.
Now some people ask me about our methods for ranking players for DFS each day. Let me just express to you that this is indeed a fairly complicated process that the staff here is trained to do. We have a Playbook formula that provides us the base levels for all players each day. Then we have to build on that by identifying other underlying statistical outliers, potential narratives (former team, etc) and any potential weather issues that may arise. Then we sort through all of those players to uncover the players who have the most expected output (fantasy points) for their current salary.
Thus, the order players are placed into the DFS MLB Rankings are based on the entirety of their value which makes them better or worse plays in DFS that day. The higher the ranking the more sure we are of their expected output and thus the more likely those players should be in your DFS lineups that day.
Step 8: Use The DFS MLB Playbook
When I came up with the concept of the DFS Playbook back in 2013 , all I was trying to do is to create something that made it easy for people who were on the go and still wanted to play daily fantasy sports. It’s evolved into one of the most successful DFS tools around and it is also the single most important component of the DFS MLB Playbook PRO. In a nutshell, the DFS MLB Playbook takes all previous components that we’ve talked about and blends them in to the absolute final group of players to consider using that day in DFS.
Although we have many formulas and statistical models that help us sort through the players each day, it is our staff led me myself and Ted Schuster that create the final blend of players for each days Playbook. For the most part the top players from the DFS MLB Rankings wind up in the Playbook each day. But in order to accommodate our customers who use different or multiple DFS sites, we have to mix the best overall players with the best values from each of the DFS sites we support (currently Fanduel, Draft Kings & Fantasy Aces).
The DFS MLB Playbook is the final pool of players that you will build your lineups from each day. Players are sorted by position and listed in order of preference. On most days it will be almost impossible to use each top selection but that is where you as the user have the final say so and control of your DFS destiny.
Step 9: Use The Umpire Reports
Now that you have a strong group of players to select from, we need to hunt for which of those players indeed are in the best possible situation to succeed. Our Umpire Reports rank each matchup by the home plate umpire and his tendencies. You’ll notice how some umpires extend the strike zone and thus are very friendly to pitchers. Others won’t give a strike on either corner and thus allow hitters to have more favorable counts and more bases on balls.
I have to admit that I have only begun using umpire data this season but the results have been absolutely amazing. It is no secret that we used umpire data heavily in our Fanduel Playboy Baseball Championship victory when we stacked Reds against Andrew Cashner. Never before had I seen a home plate umpire have a greater effect on an outcome of a DFS contest then in that instance. I never make my final starting pitcher selections without using our guy Austin Taggart’s Umpire Report.
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Step 10: Visit The DFS Pitching Coach
We break down hundreds of starting pitcher statistics each and every day in order to build our final list for the DFS MLB Playbook. But just like in real baseball, if you are struggling it is essential to visit with your position coach in order to get back on track. Our guy Howard Bender breaks down the entire slate of starting pitchers each and every day here in the Playbook PRO. Most of the time he is right in tune with the pitchers we have chosen for the Playbook, but often he will have even more statistical evidence to back it up.
There are also times when the DFS Pitching Coach favors a different starting pitcher than we have in the Playbook that day. As with any situation you make in life, it is always a good idea to have all the information possible before you make a final decision. DFS is no different in that way. If you are struggling choosing the right starter or maybe the right mix of starting pitchers on multiple pitcher sites, go visit Howard Bender your DFS Pitching Coach.
Step 11: Visit The DFS Hitting Coach
Just as Howard Bender handles our DFS pitching staff, we have the Ted Williams of fantasy baseball here in Ray Flowers who also just so happens to be our DFS Hitting Coach. The process of taking 350+ potential players each and every day and whittling them down to a mere 15-20 usable ones for DFS purposes is no easy task. That is why we have one of if not the very best statistical analyst in the fantasy industry in Ray Flowers helping you every single day. After all, you can’t go wrong with a Hitting Coach who has been nicknamed “The Oracle” by his legions of followers, right?
Just as in real baseball, there will be days and even weeks where you might go without visiting your hitting coach. But then you hit a rough patch and you wind up living in his office for hours on end each day while you work out the kinks. Well in DFS those rough patches happen fast and furious and thus Ray is here for you around the clock. Each day Ray sorts through statistical groupings for every hitter in MLB, no small feat. Then he digests the data and uncovers those hidden gems that either didn’t make it into the Playbook or are not as recommended as should be.
The Hitting Coach is the place to go when you just don’t like the choices in the Playbook or are looking for a bat at a specific price point that you cannot find in the Playbook or in the DFS MLB Rankings. Ray often has at least one real solid value option in there as well that isn’t on anybody else’s radar. Those value plays are often the keys that unlock big GPP winning lineups.
Step 12: Sort Through The Player Salary Page
If you STILL haven’t found that player who fits your price point on a certain site, feel free to peruse our salary page to find exactly what you are looking for. This is just a simple way to jump from position to position and from site to site seamlessly while trying to settle on a final piece of the DFS puzzle.
Step 13: Check Your Work With The DFS MLB Optimal Lineups
Indeed with your DFS MLB Playbook PRO subscription you will receive a DFS MLB Optimal Lineup for Fanduel, Draft Kings and Fantasy Aces every single day of the MLB regular season. We do this in order to demonstrate just how sure we are in our tools, work and recommendations here at Fantasy Alarm. Unlike many DFS players who are trying to become analysts, we are not afraid to literally show all of our customers the exact lineups we are using across the DFS industry each and every day.
Whether you wish to use our Optimal Lineups as your own or just use them to check your own work is completely up to you. Most of our Optimal Lineups will be recommended for cash games. Sometimes we will get a good read on a tournament lineup and offer that up to our subscribers as well. When posting a GPP or tournament lineup we will always specify whereas when there is no specification that is intended for cash game use.
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So there it is everybody. That is how to utilize the features of the DFS MLB Playbook PRO. I know that it may seem like a lot and that is because it is. We have built a one stop shop of how to begin, learn, play, develop and win at daily fantasy baseball. Remember that your DFS Playbook PRO subscription covers you for all other sports that we do including NFL, NBA & PGA as well.
We are adding new features all of the time as well. But perhaps the most important thing you will get with your DFS Playbook subscription is access to the Playbook staff here at Fantasy Alarm. Myself (Jeff Mans), Ted Schuster, Ray Flowers, Howard Bender, Mark Kaplan, Steve Pimental and Brett Talley are always willing to help you out via the comments section, message boards, Twitter or even email if necessary. Our subscribers have already won over $2 million the past two seasons and we want to keep that momentum rolling along.