For the past four months, Daily Fantasy Baseball has almost exclusively occupied your time.
The everyday process has become routine and redundant: Read articles, sort through player values, check lineups, watch live scores, evaluate results, wake up, and do it again.
It’s an easy schedule and very sustainable, and now that you’ve finally got it down, it’s time to change everything to accommodate football season, which is just around the corner.
Your New DFS Schedule For Daily Fantasy Football
Things are going to change in early September once you’re forced to divide your time between baseball and football while filling out lineups for both sports.
Unfortunately, you’ll need more than the 45- to 60-minute time period you’ve set aside for your baseball lineups. You can either make more time, shortcut your time doing research, or you can drop playing Daily Fantasy Baseball altogether.
Remember, the baseball/football crossover only lasts a month (then hockey and basketball begin), so this is a temporary stretch of double-researching.
But it’s also a chance for you to win more money for two reasons:
- Some Daily Fantasy Baseball players will figure they’re good enough to ignore or reduce their daily research, and you’ll beat them.
- There will be new Daily Fantasy Football players (this year more than ever), so you can take advantage of what should be plenty of “dead money.”
Tuesdays
We’re going to start on Tuesday because it’s the first day of the football week.
You’ll do your Daily Fantasy Baseball research as usual, but maybe you only work on 50/50 lineups, or maybe you only do some tournament lineups. In other words, you might consider dialing back the number of games you play, as well as the amount of money you play each day—especially if your return on investment is relatively low to begin with. (You could find yourself better served by spending that money/time on football.)
For Daily Fantasy Football, read Monday’s recap (even though you likely watched the game) and think about both teams’ upcoming games. Are there injured offensive players you might want to avoid? Are there injuries to key defenders that might make opposing players better in the following week?
Enter your DFS results into a spreadsheet broken down by sport and game type (50/50s, GPP, H2H, etc.), and review where you saw success and failure last week and overall.
Wednesdays
Today’s your first day of checking out what other people are writing about the upcoming week in Daily Fantasy Football. Compare their tips with the players you made notes about on Sunday and Monday. Are there some players they suggest you might not have thought about?
Look at the Vegas matchups to see which games are expected to be the highest scoring of the week. Consider some stacks to play for tournaments. Also, check the biggest underdogs in the lowest-scoring games to figure out some teams/players you might want to fade this week. Make notes!
Thursdays
In Daily Fantasy Baseball, Thursday is “Get-Away Day,” which means there aren’t as many MLB games going on because teams are traveling from one series to the next. It also means there are a lot of day games. So you’ll have to get your DFS lineups in early if you’re wanting to play the entire slate of MLB games.
With Thursday Night Football, traditional league players are accustomed to setting their lineups. But for Daily players, TNF is a different animal altogether. Interestingly, you want to be in at least one low-priced FanDuel game that includes the Thursday night game, because this will show you the ownership percentages for players in Sunday’s games, too.
But in 50/50 games, you’re better off avoiding players involved in Thursday’s games. Being able to see the results of your opponents’ selections, good or bad, will provide you with a strategic advantage and allows you to adjust your strategy as necessary.
Fridays
Here’s a day you can pretty much fully dive into for Daily Fantasy Baseball. All 30 MLB teams are playing, and they’re usually all involved in night games. (From Sept. 4 to Oct. 2, there are only two Friday afternoon games.)
Saturdays
For Daily Fantasy Baseball, it’s business as usual.
Consider this your big day for Daily Fantasy Football. You did the research all week, took notes on who to play, who to avoid and who to fade, and now it’s time to put it all in action.
Fill out lineups in multiple cheap 50/50s rather than just one expensive game. Track down beatable opponents for small-stakes H2H games. Decide which players are better for cash games or tournaments.
Also, make note of major injuries that are going to be gametime decisions and figure out ahead of time how you’ll respond to the news. If they do play injured, are their teammates affected? If they don’t play, does their absence make the opposing defense a much more attractive option?
Sundays
Consider making this day entirely football. Baseball lineups need to be submitted at roughly the same time as football lineups, which is too much to juggle for the typical player.
Turn on your favorite NFL pregame show, open Twitter and begin the process of finalizing your lineups.
Once the games start, get a notepad or open a Word doc and start taking notes, breaking it down by each upcoming game. When you see something interesting during Sunday’s games, write it down in the upcoming games area.
- Did the WR for one team blow up because the other team’s cornerback was injured in the first quarter?
- Was weather a big factor, which is why there wasn’t as much passing in a particular game?
Mondays
For Daily Fantasy Baseball, it’s business as usual.
For Daily Fantasy Football, you’re going to read the recaps from Sunday and take note of some players getting more offensive attention than they used to get.
Also, you can scan the DFS salaries for the upcoming week (they’ll be posted Sunday afternoon). Start making some notes on players/values you like!