There’s an abundance of daily fantasy options across the internet, but the clear leaders of the industry are DraftKings and FanDuel. The two titans agreed to a merger this past November, but they’ll continue to work as independent companies for the foreseeable future, including the 2017 MLB season.
There are three key differences between DraftKings and FanDuel:
- Scoring
- Roster construction
- Pricing
Being aware of what these differences actually mean for strategy is key to DFS success.
First, let’s check out the scoring differences between DraftKings and FanDuel in MLB.
Scoring
Hitting
DraftKings and FanDuel are similar in terms of how they score hitters. Triples and runs batted in are worth a bit more on FanDuel than DraftKings, but everything is fairly close in terms of percentages. Extra-base hits are between 0.5 and 2.0 percentage points more valuable on DraftKings, while walks and RBIs/runs are between 1.0 and 2.1 percentage points more valuable on FanDuel.
Those differences aren’t meaningless, but they also don’t mean much in terms of strategy: RBIs may be more valuable on FanDuel, but targeting RBIs will likely result in targeting players with the potential for power and extra base hits, which are more valuable on DraftKings. As it turns out, the real difference in scoring comes down to pitchers.
Pitching
The difference in pitching scoring between sites is significant. FanDuel scores pitchers for only five statistics, so wins and quality starts are much more valuable on FanDuel than DraftKings. Of course, complete games, complete game shutouts, and no hitters are pretty special, but chasing those events on DraftKings probably isn’t productive.
The quality start on FanDuel is notable. At four points, it’s much more valuable on FanDuel than a complete game shutout is on DraftKings, yet since 2012 there have been way more quality starts than complete games, much less complete game shutouts.
Per Baseball-Reference.com, there have been 12,358 quality starts, 557 complete games, and 278 complete game shutouts since 2012. There are 2,430 total games and thus 4,860 individual starts per season. This means that out of the 24,300 starts since 2012, 51 percent of those games have produced a quality starts, whereas only 2.3 percent have been complete games and 1.1 percent have been complete game shutouts.
It’s pretty clear that attempting to predict complete games and complete game shutouts is difficult. But what about predicting quality starts?
Over the past three seasons, WHIP and ERA have each been strongly negatively correlated (-0.65), and innings pitched and strikeouts have been positively correlated (+0.52). What does this mean? Pitchers with low WHIP and ERA numbers as well as pitchers who throw a lot of innings and strike out a lot of batters have typically had high quality start percentages.
With these correlations in mind, we see that targeting the upper-echelon of pitchers has led to FanDuel value in recent seasons:
Favored pitchers in the 90th percentile in both strikeouts per nine and WHIP have crushed on FanDuel (per our Trends tool). Of course, low-WHIP high-strikeout pitchers who are Vegas favorites have also produced value on DraftKings . . .
. . . but the stud DraftKings pitchers have had slightly lower Consistency Ratings and higher ownership, which Pro subscribers can review in our DFS Ownership Dashboard shortly after lineups lock.
Of course, there’s another key factor to consider when rostering pitchers — the number of pitchers required.
Roster Construction
Both DraftKings and FanDuel require the same number of hitters per lineup. That means one C/1B/2B/3B/SS and three OFs per lineup. However, DraftKings offers positional flexibility while FanDuel does not. If you look in our Player Models you can see which DraftKings players have dual eligibility.
Once again, the key difference between the two sites comes down to pitching. DraftKings requires two pitchers per lineup, while FanDuel requires just one. In theory, this difference can be utilized to your advantage on a slate-by-slate basis. If you have confidence in only one pitcher in a given slate, you could play more action at FanDuel. If you want exposure to multiple pitchers in a slate, you can get that more easily at DraftKings.
There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong way to approach lineup construction on DraftKings and FanDuel, but understanding what the industry offers will help you be a positive expected value FantasyLabs subscriber. Something that impacts roster construction on FanDuel is the platform’s decision to offer late swap:
Late swap allows users to make lineup substitutions for players yet to play even after the slate has started. DraftKings has utilized late swap for years, but FanDuel didn’t allow users to change lineups after lock until this year. It’s another variable to consider when playing DFS, as users should play non-late swap contests on FanDuel if they don’t plan to utilize the feature.
Pricing
Each player is assigned a salary for each slate. Pitchers have traditionally ranged from $4,000 to $15,700 on DraftKings and $3,000 to $13,700 on FanDuel in the past three seasons. Hitters have ranged from $2,000 to $7,600 on DraftKings and $2,000 to $6,2000 on FanDuel. Of course, those figures don’t mean anything without context.
The FanDuel salary cap is $35,000 and DraftKings is $50,000. Because of the different salary caps, a $4,000 salary on one site isn’t the same as $4,000 on the other. This is where Bargain Rating comes into play. Our metric — scaled from 0-100 — helps to identify players who are the cheapest on each site. Strictly targeting players with high Bargain Ratings has led to value on both DraftKings . . .
. . . and FanDuel:
Don’t roster a player simply because of his Bargain Rating, but be mindful of cross-site pricing so you can find the best values at each site. Historically, utilizing players where they are cheaper has led to value. If you could buy a new television for $500 at one store and $300 at another store, wouldn’t you buy it for a discount at the second store?
Conclusion
One day scoring, roster makeup, and pricing might be uniform across the DFS industry, but that day hasn’t come yet. Be sure to appreciate the differences between DraftKings and FanDuel, and leverage the Labs Tools to help you exploit those differences based on your strengths. Specifically, focus on the differences in scoring and roster construction when it comes to pitchers, and pay attention to Bargain Rating to know where each player offer the most value.
