There are a ton of daily fantasy baseball games on tap for Saturday on DraftKings, which takes US players and received an exemption under the UIGEA. This is our first DFS baseball column of the season, so let’s begin with a few guidelines that I find helpful in looking to set your lineups.

In GPP lineup construction, I like to go by the following:

– Pay For Pitching: Due to the large number of plays a pitcher is involved in during a game, variance is much lower than it is for hitters. Assuming 4 AB average, a hitter you roster is dealing with less than 1% of his season-long sample in your game. The odds of Clayton Kershaw being his typical dominant self in your game is very high – they odds of Mike Trout putting one over the wall and stealing a base for you today: not so great.

– Anyone will be able to take advantage of the batter’s variance game to game – you will often see a quality hitter get reduced in price after an 0-fer series; that is the time to pounce.

– When choosing hitters in a GPP, always favor a power hitter over a line drive/high average guy. The scoring on DK strongly favors the home run and you will need a few guys going deep in all likelihood to win your tourney. When a line drive slap hitter goes 2-4 with a run scored, it is a very good game for him, but a guy going 1-5 with a HR not only outscores him, but your power hitter doesn’t only hit HRs – they hit singles and doubles too, so low ceiling on the singles hitter is not worth the play.

– Stack, stack, stack. Yes, you can’t roster all power guys, but you are greatly enhancing your chances to take down a large GPP if you roster 4 or 5 hitters from the same lineup. An early order hitter getting on base 3 or 4 times not only gives you some points on his spot, but each guy closely following him in the lineup gets the benefit.

The numbers show that the top average scorer last season by lineup position was the #3 hitter, followed by the leadoff guy. Not surprising. You probably don’t want to look beyond the #7 hitter though, because the bottom of the order are the weakest hitters, surrounded by the other weakest hitters. The #8 guy goes 3-4, but he can still easily not score a run.

– Lefty/righty splits are absolutely crucial. You can dig into individual player stats over a large sample, but there is an extremely strong correlation between handedness and production; avoid lefty hitters facing lefty pitchers – the ones who break that rule are the greats for the most part and you are paying a premium for them as it is.

A righty lineup stack against a lefty starter is additionally immune to the lefty relief specialist, which all lefties must deal with at the plate. A stack of lefty hitters close to each other in the lineup is ripe for a lefty reliever, so keep that in mind even if the starter is a righty.

Let’s look at Saturday night’s primetime matchups and note a couple of things: There are only two lefties starting tomorrow night and their names are Bumgarnerand Kershaw, so it’s probably a nice night to not hunt for the right-handed lineup against the lefty arm.

Remember, pitching is infinitely more consistent than hitting on a per game basis. Resume the search for the righty lineup against the lefty arm on Sunday, however, as it is a great place to start.

While we’re on great places to start, the Colorado Rockies are playing at home. They will, over the course of a season, easily outscore any other offense in DFS. They also will be mass owned, as they usually are at home. What does this mean? Use them and your average GPP score will be higher, but it will be harder to win the tourney, as you will have to be right on every single other player you roster in order to get a big payoff.

Play them in cash games all day, every day at home, but fading in tourneys is the way to go. Let the daily variance of a lineup smack a healthy percentage of your competition. If you fade them and they go off, you will not win, but if you use them and they go off, you still must beat a ton of the field who have the exact same players.

You know that feeling when you are in the top 50 in an NFL tourney with 2 guys left, but every person in front of you has those 2 guys? Welcome to the Rockies lineup. Let’s be alive with decent hitters that few in front of us are using.

Which brings us to the lineup we are targeting on Saturday:

The Orioles stack – home in a great hitter’s park, facing a young starter in Aaron Sanchez who is being stretched out from his former RP role, the Orioles present a nice potential stack play. The Birds have some underrated hitters who can put them out of the park: guys like Steve Pearce, Travis Snider, and Manny Machado are productive and fairly priced enough to get a potential bomber like Chris Davis into your lineup as well. Throw in Everth Cabrera from the leadoff hole, and if you can afford it, Adam Jones in the middle and you might have the super stack that takes the big check home.

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