“A player on a streak has to respect the streak. You know why? Because they don't happen very often. If you believe you're playing well because you’re getting laid or because you're not getting laid or because you're wearing women's underwear, then you are!”—Bull Durham

I respect the streak, I just am not sure you should pay for it in your DFS MLB games. There are two main problems with streaks as they relate to DFS MLB games. First of all, on nearly every DFS site you have to pay for the streak. Joey Votto costs $5,200 on DraftKings Monday. He cost $4,600 on April 8. The difference is largely the result of the 13 fantasy points per game he averaged through the first 11 games of the season. When he goes into a slump his price will inevitably fall, at least a little bit.

The other problem is there is no way to know if his streak is real. We know some hot streaks are real. Athletes at any level can recall times when they felt especially comfortable or confident and had better results. A hitter may be seeing the ball exceptionally well or have really sharp mechanics and thus truly be playing better for a relatively brief period of time. At the same time, we know some streaks can be mirages. Of course all of the people who picked Joey Votto to bounce back this season feel vindicated at this point in the season, but maybe his hot start is solely the result of his .345 BABIP and 44.4 percent HR/FB rate. Maybe he is the same exact hitter he was last season, and anyone paying $5,200 to get him in a lineup is throwing money away.

For both of those reasons, I tend to stay away from hitters on hot streaks. Maybe Joey Votto is actually hot, and maybe that hotness makes him worth $600 more than David Ortiz Monday. I just have a hard time believing that. I think Ortiz and Votto are probably equally valuable, and I will happily take the cheaper guy. That being said, there are some factors that will lead me to play a streaky player in DFS MLB games.

If David Ortiz and Joey Votto were evenly priced—or close to it—I would pay for Votto. I thought they were about equal going into the season and while my evaluation of their full-season abilities has not changed a whole lot, I would certainly go for Votto over Ortiz right now if given the opportunity.

I also trust streaks more for players who have demonstrated some streakiness in the past. It feels like Justin Upton and Hanley Ramirez have at least a couple of hot streaks every season. When they go on a hot streak I feel more confident it is an actually hot streak and not simply the result of luck. On the other hand, I have no reason to believe in Jose Iglesias’s hot streak. I feel pretty confident he is as terrible a hitter as ever despite his early-season .457 batting average.

It is also important to make a couple of distinctions between DFS MLB games and other games. I do not usually chase streaks in traditional fantasy just like I do not chase wins in traditional fantasy. When I began playing DFS I naturally ignored hot streaks because I was so used to ignoring them in my other games. As I highlighted above, that could be a mistake.

I also approach streaks completely differently in other DFS games. I tend to put a lot more stock in hot streaks in golf and basketball than in baseball. The reason is hot players in those sports have a lot more control over their outcomes than in baseball. Joey Votto could hit the ball hard every single time up and still go 0-for-5. Anthony Morrow may not get to take a lot of shots, but at least we know that when he is hot—like he was after the All-Star break—he will make a lot of the shots he does get.

The same is true with golf. I was happy to pay a bit more for Jordan Spieth last week at the RBC Heritage because he entered the tournament on an awesome hot streak. Luck plays a role in golf too—just ask anyone who watched Spieth’s opening round at The Masters—but not nearly as much as in baseball. After all, Spieth can control his own performance; he doesn’t have somebody 60 feet, six inches away throwing the ball at him. It may not matter how hot a batter is if he runs into a hot pitcher.

I may get into streakiness as it relates to pitching in a future article, but for now let me just say I don’t worry about it as much for pitchers as for hitters. There are still some pitchers who tend to be streaky who I might target, like Ricky Nolasco or Francisco Liriano, but for the most part I just want good pitchers and/or good situations. I’m not playing Edinson Volquez just because he happened to start off hot. I respect his streak, but I don’t have to pay for it.