This article is part of our Ask the Shark series.
It has been well documented on my podcast and Twitter stream how much I despise playing high-priced, goal-dependent forwards in cash contests. It must have come as quite a shock then to many who saw a $10K Diego Costa sitting in one of my forward slots on this past Saturday's Premier League slate. Did I have a change of heart? Did I hit the wrong button? Was I on drugs at the time?
The answer to all of these questions is "no." The reason I chose Costa was because the texture of that specific slate allowed for that type of player selection to be reasonably safer than other options. While six-to-eight-game slates typically favor rostering "accumulators" over goal-dependent scorers (as opposed to small slates where this may not be the case), sometimes the player pool includes enough underpriced value and you can splurge on one of these forwards and still be in good shape even if he doesn't score.
Be aware, though, that splurging for forwards with high goal-scoring odds in cash contests is not done to capitalize on the player's upside, but rather as a probabilistic advantage, or what I call "paying up for certainty." You're essentially betting that this forward has more of a chance to earn 12 fantasy points with a goal than a similarly priced less goal-dependent player has to accumulate the same points via peripherals. On slates that don't feature many top midfield options in positive matchups, this can end up being the case.
While
It has been well documented on my podcast and Twitter stream how much I despise playing high-priced, goal-dependent forwards in cash contests. It must have come as quite a shock then to many who saw a $10K Diego Costa sitting in one of my forward slots on this past Saturday's Premier League slate. Did I have a change of heart? Did I hit the wrong button? Was I on drugs at the time?
The answer to all of these questions is "no." The reason I chose Costa was because the texture of that specific slate allowed for that type of player selection to be reasonably safer than other options. While six-to-eight-game slates typically favor rostering "accumulators" over goal-dependent scorers (as opposed to small slates where this may not be the case), sometimes the player pool includes enough underpriced value and you can splurge on one of these forwards and still be in good shape even if he doesn't score.
Be aware, though, that splurging for forwards with high goal-scoring odds in cash contests is not done to capitalize on the player's upside, but rather as a probabilistic advantage, or what I call "paying up for certainty." You're essentially betting that this forward has more of a chance to earn 12 fantasy points with a goal than a similarly priced less goal-dependent player has to accumulate the same points via peripherals. On slates that don't feature many top midfield options in positive matchups, this can end up being the case.
While this situation may not come up as often for larger slates as it regularly does for smaller ones, it's definitely something to consider when there's a slate with forwards at 60%+ goal-scoring odds, and especially when the player pool has several excellent value plays at other positions.
Onto this week's question!
Other than some rare GPP instances, there is no qualitative reason to favor rostering "early" players over "late" players or vice versa in DFS. The start time isn't going to affect the player's projected performance, so what difference does it make? Build the best lineup you possibly can.
The one caveat comes with soccer (and maybe NBA as well) and it revolves around starting lineups being released only about an hour before kickoff. Especially for midweek slates when sides will often rotate their squads, you may not be completely certain which players will even start in the later games until after the earlier games have already locked. On FanDuel, this situation can be even trickier to navigate since, unlike DraftKings, there's no late swap.
Due to the discrepancy of having incomplete information when there are staggered start times, be more inclined to go with what you know versus what you don't ("paying up for certainty"), especially for cash contests. The value play that's 50/50 to start in the late game may not be there when the time comes, and if you've focused your entire lineup construction around that player, you're likely going to be put in an immensely suboptimal situation. This doesn't mean to *never* roster a late game player, as the healthy studs from that game are usually very safe since they'll start nearly all the time.
For GPPs, you can be a bit riskier and bank on the potential value plays from the later games. Even in doing so, always have a backup plan. Go through the motions of what your lineup would look like in the case your planned pick is not starting. Who do you pivot to in that sole slot? If you have two-to-three players rostered for that game, what combinations of players could work within the cap for those slots? Sometimes you find that you're just $100 short for the best pivot, and maybe you need to leave that extra salary on the table for the worst-case scenario.
Lastly, always make sure that your utility slot is filled with the player that has the latest starting time, when possible. This gives you full ability to pivot that non-starting player to one from any position. There's nothing worse than having the cap space to pivot to a great replacement and end up having to roster a substitute because you put that third forward-eligible player from the late game in an forward slot instead of the utility (and yes, even I've accidentally done this before).
If you would like to submit a question for this weekly column, feel free to either post it in the comment section below, tweet it to me @blenderhd, or email me at jordan@fantasyflush.com.
