Recently, DraftKings announced rule changes for the upcoming MLB season. Here they are:
- You may roster no more than five hitters on a single team (down from six)
- There is now a Utility spot in the place of the former third Outfield position
- You must include players scheduled to play “in at least two different MLB games,” which is different than last year’s rule of spanning three teams
- Players are no longer penalized for caught stealing
I thought it would be a useful exercise – for me personally, but hopefully you too – to think on these rule changes and how they can/will change MLB DFS game theory.
I’ve mentioned this in a million articles at this point (most recently, in last week’s FL Poll), but I think the best DFS players aren’t the best because they have superior data or information. Rather, I think they have the edge because they 1) best understand and utilize volatility, and 2) they can adapt the best, be it to late news in NBA, changes in game theory, or changes in rules like is happening now.
And on the adaptation note, let me soapbox for one second. I’ve been seeing on the Twitter people talk about whether these rule changes are “good” or “bad.” I think defining them in that way, or even just thinking about them in that way, is a dangerous approach. Because DFS is a zero-sum game, no rules are inherently in either category – it’s all about how you adjust to them. In fact, if you’re a GPP player, the more options available in the player pool, the bigger the edge for you as it increases the number of possible unique lineups. And for cash players, although there are now more unique lineup possibilities, the recent rule changes actually will make things a bit more chalky in the interim, as I’ll explain below.
The point is, though – outside of some extreme example, no rule change is bad or hurts a certain set of players more than others. It’s a zero-sum game – learn the rules, find the edges now available under the current rules, and exploit them to win.
Okay, let’s walk through these rules changes one at a time and see how we can adapt.
You may roster no more than five hitters on a single team
This rule, on its own, isn’t that surprising – stacking has become so popular over the last couple years of MLB DFS that sites were bound to try to deal with it. FanDuel only lets you stack up to four hitters from a single team and now DraftKings is bringing theirs from six to five.
However, despite the fact that it knocks stacking down a peg, this rule will likely make the field even more chalky than in the past. This is obvious, but there’s already a pretty large discrepancy between top and bottom-of-the-order guys.
People know that slope – perhaps they don’t know the exact numbers behind it, but it’s common knowledge that the best hitters are in the 1-5 spots generally. As such, you will see so many stacks that are exactly 1 through 5 of the best teams. This doesn’t necessarily drastically change game theory – people were doing similar things when you could stack six players, but now it’s just a bit harder to be contrarian in a way that is as potentially rewarding.
The reason I think this – and I’m coming at this as a primarily GPP player – is that you really want to roster guys in the 1 spot of the order. This is because nearly 70% of stolen bases last year came from that batting order spot and stolen bases are critical in GPPs, and especially in large-field ones. As such, it seems like it could be a nice contrarian play to just shift your stack and go 2-6, but I generally really want to include that 1-spot player.
Before, you could mix it up a little and go 1-5 and then 7 or even 9, but with only five players in your stack now, it’s now a little less rewarding to do that. With six, you were still getting the full 1-5 (on most teams, but more on that in a second) and then could be contrarian in a way that wasn’t that risky (fading 6 in favor of 7). Now, you’d have to fade potentially 5 in favor of 6, which is just a little more hurtful in terms of leaving value on the table. It’s still probably a good move in GPPs, it’s just a little messier now.
There is now a Utility spot in the place of the former third Outfield position
Speaking of getting chalkier, this rule will exacerbate that further. Last year, there were some DraftKings position quirks that sometimes didn’t allow you to fully stack a 1 through 6 lineup. For example, both Adam LaRoche and Jose Abreu of the Chicago White Sox were listed as “1B” only, which meant that you had to choose between the two. Because of the new Utility spot, you can fit both in your stack, making it much more likely that you’ll have lineup overlap as a result.
One of my favorite contrarian plays last season in that particular situation was fading the guy in the better batting order spot (usually Abreu) and rostering the other guy (usually LaRoche). There was often a huge gap in ownership, and because of the volatility of MLB on a day-to-day basis, it was almost always +EV to make that move in large-field tournaments.
Another of my favorite contrarian plays was using players with multi-positional eligibility to create unique lineups. For example, people stacking the Tigers almost always put Miguel Cabrera (he had both 1B and 3B eligibility) in the 3B spot and J.D. Martinez (eligible at only 1B) in the 1B spot. To get a unique lineup, I would put Miggy in the 1B spot, which would 1) auto-fade Martinez, and 2) give me lineups with both Miggy plus a different 3B, which was generally a very unique lineup.
Now, you can get Miggy, Martinez, and a 3B (or any other player) which makes that contrarian strategy a bit less useful. Of course, a Utility spot means you can select any hitter, so there is still a ton of opportunity to get unique lineups, but there’s now much more room for error in that strategy. Before, you put Miggy in at 1B and then just had to hit on a 3B; now, there are many more options to hit on – this is good in theory, but obviously hard to do in practicality.
You must include players scheduled to play “in at least two different MLB games,” which is different than last year’s rule of spanning three teams
Again, this makes things a bit chalkier – now you can (sometimes) fully stack 1 through 4 from both sides of two games. For example, you can now take the 1 through 4 spots of a team at Coors and find a team whose 1 through 4 fits the holes in your lineup. When that happens, those lineups will be very chalky. Again, the games-instead-of-teams distinction is important – while you can’t just stack 1 through 4 of both teams at Coors, you now don’t have to dip into a third team, which discourages uniqueness.
This will be especially important on short, two-game slates, if those are your cup of tea. Last year, you obviously had to roster a hitter against one of your pitchers. This year, since you only have to play hitters from two teams, you’ll see a lot chalkier lineups as the slates get smaller (that’s a tendency anyway, but it’ll be even more so now) and it’ll be much more rewarding in GPPs to potentially introduce a third team somewhere in your hitters.
Players are no longer penalized for caught stealing
I don’t think this changes much, as it was already really smart and beneficial to target players with stolen base upside. Finding those guys was probably the most underrated edge in GPPs, so perhaps this new rule will encourage users to roster those guys more often, but I doubt it will really be enough to change any existing strategies or game theory. Perhaps it shifts who you target among base stealers (because of the efficiency difference now — volume stealers are the ones to target whereas before you had to care about their success rate, good or bad), but if anything, it probably makes stolen bases more important than ever. However, in my opinion, it shouldn’t drastically change ownership percentages or your strategy of targeting (or fading potentially) those guys as a result.
Of course, game theory is an ever-evolving thing and we could see that some of my guesses/musings are very wrong come MLB season. And that, as I mentioned at the very beginning of the article, is the most important thing – rule changes aren’t that important; how you adapt to them is key.
