DFS 101: How to play Dream11 Baseball Contests

The arrival of KBO and CPBL baseball contests on Dream11 has introduced a new group of daily fantasy players to the sport. If you fit into that group, this article is for you. Below, I'll go over the basics of joining daily-fantasy baseball contests on Dream11 as well as explain my thought process for making lineups on that site. I'll give some basic daily fantasy baseball tips and will also point out some tools we have at RotoWire to help you build your lineups.

Joining Contests on Dream11

Joining a baseball contest on Dream11 is very straightforward. Simply select "Baseball" from the dropdown menu and you'll see a list of games across the top of your screen. Along the left, you'll see a number of different contests for each game, with varying entry fees and sizes. Some contests will be marked with an "S" for "Single Entry," indicating that you can only enter one lineup. Others will be marked with an "M" for "Multi Entry," indicating that you can enter multiple lineups.

Dream11 Roster Rules

All baseball contests on Dream11 include players from just one game. You'll have a 100-credit budget with which to fill out your nine-man roster, meaning the average cost for a player on your roster will be no higher than 11.1 credits. Your roster must include one pitcher, one catcher, at least two infielders and at least two outfielders. (Between infielders and outfielders combined, you'll select exactly seven.) Additionally, your nine-man lineup must include at least three players from each team.

Dream11 Scoring

The full scoring system for Dream11 baseball contests can be found here. For those coming to Dream11 from other sites, the scoring system is relatively standard, but with one exception: pitchers don't get points for wins like they do on most other daily fantasy sites. That means you won't have to be concerned with the run support your pitcher will be provided by his teammates.

Basic Daily Fantasy Baseball Tips

Here are a two things to consider when building your lineups:

Prioritize hitters who bat near the top of the lineup. These players will on average receive more chances to hit (and thus more chances to record points) than hitters who bat near the bottom of the lineup, and they're also more likely to have opportunities to drive in runs and be driven in themselves, as they're surrounded by better teammates.

Prioritize the platoon advantage. In baseball, left-handed hitters have a small advantage against right-handed pitchers, and right-handed hitters have a small advantage against left-handed pitchers. This happens primarily because hitters can see the ball slightly sooner out of the hand of an opposite-handed pitcher, and because most pitches move in such a way that they dive away from hitters who hit from the same side. (Switch hitters, who can bat from either side, have this advantage against all pitchers.)

Building a Dream11 Lineup
In contrast to other platforms, every contest on Dream11 includes players from just one game. Dream11's rules require you to pick at least three players from each team in your nine-man lineup, which places you in the slightly awkward position of needing to select hitters who will be batting against your selected pitcher. To minimize at-bats where your players are competing against each other, you'll want to select five hitters from your pitcher's team and just three from his opponent.

That means your pitcher is key to determining the shape of the rest of your lineup and should therefore be the first player you select. Consider the pitchers' talent levels, their prices and the lineups facing them. You'll always want to select one of the game's two starting pitchers--it's theoretically possible for both to finish with negative points, but that's quite unlikely, and there's little way of knowing which pitchers will follow them before the game begins.

After selecting your pitcher, you'll want to grab five hitters on his team if possible. Try to grab as many of that team's top hitters as you can, prioritizing those who bat in the first five or so spots in the lineup as well as those who will get the platoon advantage against the opposing pitcher.

Complete your roster by filling in your remaining three spots from hitters on the other team. You probably won't have budget space left for this part, but that's to be expected. If you had thought this team's best hitters were going to have big games, you wouldn't have selected the opposing starting pitcher.

A quick note on catchers: catcher is the most important defensive position on the field (not counting pitcher), so catchers are typically weaker offensively. I'll typically use catcher as a spot to save credits and to fill one of my three spots from the team that I expect to lose, though I'll make an exception if one of the league's few elite offensive catchers will be playing in the game.

Finally, select your captain and vice captain. The pitcher you selected should nearly always be in consideration here, as a good pitching performance will nearly always be one of the highest-scoring performances of the game. The best hitters on your pitcher's team should be in consideration as well. It makes little sense to select a pitcher and a hitter on opposite teams as captain and vice captain, as it's quite difficult for them to both have strong games, but if you're expecting a particularly high-scoring contest, it's potentially justifiable to select two hitters from opposing teams.

Multi-Entry Contests

Many contests on Dream11 will allow you to enter multiple lineups. The best approach to these contests depends on how confident you are in one team winning the game. If you're quite confident in one side, go with multiple lineups that all have that team's pitcher and five of their best hitters. You can vary which hitters to select between those lineups, but typically there will only be a small handful of configurations which make sense. Thankfully, the captain and vice captain spots provide you with the opportunity to shake things up. You can submit a handful of the same or very similar lineups but switch up your captain slots in order to have a good chance at putting up a top score regardless of who exactly puts up the best performance, as long as that team does in fact win. 

In contrast, if you expect the game to be quite close, it makes sense to try at least one lineup focused on each team. You won't be able to cover nearly as many combinations from any one team that way, but you'll have a chance in the contest regardless of which team wins.

RotoWire Tools

RotoWire offers the following tools to help you construct your lineups:

Lineup Optimizer (KBO only): With projections for every player in every game, the Lineup Optimizer can generate one or hundreds of lineups for you. Play around with including or excluding various players until you find a lineup you're happy with. You can also use the Optimizer to generate stacks of players from specific teams to target an exploitable matchup.

Daily Lineups (KBO only): This page will show the expected lineups for every game. Once lineups have been confirmed (which typically happens roughly an hour before first pitch), this page will show confirmed lineups.

Injury Report (KBO only): A self-explanatory list of players you'll want to avoid. This page lists each injured player in the KBO as well as their expected return date.

Game Previews (both KBO and CPBL): We write up previews for every baseball contest held on Dream11. These include projected starting pitchers and lineups, our top picks, captain recommendations and team recommendations. KBO game previews can be found here. CPBL game previews can be found here.