MLB DFS Glossary: Key Terms to Know

If you have ever opened an MLB slate, listened to someone say they are "stacking the top of a high-total lineup, fading the chalk ace for leverage, and punting catcher to pay up at shortstop," and wondered which of those words actually matter, this MLB DFS terms glossary is for you. Baseball daily fantasy has its own language, and on a packed summer slate the lingo flies fast. The good news is almost none of it is complicated once someone defines it plainly and shows you how it gets used.

I have been playing and writing about daily fantasy baseball for years, going back to the Awesemo.com (now Stokastic.com) days, and the terms below are the ones I lean on every single night. Think of this as a reference you bookmark. Hit CTRL + F, jump to the term you need, read the one-line definition plus a real example, and get back to building. I put the strategy terms that actually move your win rate first, then run the full glossary alphabetically.

In Summary (TL;DR)

• Stacking and correlation are the heart of MLB DFS. Baseball scoring clusters by inning, so rostering several hitters from one strong batting order is how you build a tournament ceiling.
• The terms that matter most for winning money: stacking, correlation, ownership, chalk, and leverage. Learn those cold and most of the rest falls into place.
• Cash and GPPs need opposite builds. Cash games want a high floor and safe production. GPPs (tournaments) want ceiling, correlation, and ownership leverage. Never fire the same lineup into both and expect it to be optimal in each.
• I read ownership, value, and stacks on the Stokastic MLB DataHub, then build and stress-test lineups in the Sims and Lineup Generator so I am optimizing for win probability across thousands of simulated slates, not one projected score.
• The full glossary below covers everything from bankroll to value, each with a plain-English definition and an example wherever one helps it stick.

The MLB DFS terms that actually win you money

Before the alphabetical glossary, these are the baseball-specific terms I would make sure a new player understands first. Knowing what "rake" means is useful. Understanding stacking, correlation, ownership, and leverage is what separates a player who breaks even from one who wins tournaments.

Stacking, mini-stack, and correlation

Correlation is a statistical relationship, positive or negative, between two players' outcomes. Stacking is rostering a group of correlated hitters from the same team to raise your ceiling. A mini-stack (often a two- or three-man stack) is a smaller version you pair with a stack from another team to spread your upside across two games.

This is the single most important construction concept in baseball DFS, and here is the mechanic. When a team strings together a big inning, multiple hitters reach base and score in sequence, so their fantasy points rise together rather than independently. Rostering, say, four hitters from the top of a strong Dodgers lineup means that when Los Angeles erupts for a five-run inning, your whole stack erupts with it. The order matters too, because a hitter only drives in the runners on base ahead of him. Picking which teams to stack and keeping the hitters near each other in the batting order is exactly what the Stokastic Top Stacks tool and MLB Sims handle for you, factoring the batting-order correlation in automatically so your stack does not end up randomly scattered across the lineup.

Ownership, chalk, and leverage

Ownership (or projected ownership) is the percentage of lineups in a contest expected to roster a given player. Chalk is a player, team, or game projected to be highly owned by the field. Leverage is taking a lower-owned option that is close in projection to a popular one, so when your guy hits, you gain ground on everyone stuck on the chalk.

In a tournament your score only matters relative to the field, so ownership is everything. If an ace is in 50% of lineups and throws a gem, you barely gained, because half your competition has him too. If a comparable pitcher is in 10% of lineups and matches that line, you leap most of the field. That is why I never build a tournament lineup without pulling up projected ownership first. The Stokastic Ownership Projections give me the field read so I can decide where to be different, and when I run a build through the Sims, the tool finds which lower-owned pivots actually raise my lineup's win probability rather than just looking clever. Leverage is judged player by player, not "fade all the chalk." Some chalk is chalk because it is genuinely the best play, and you stay on it where it is truly worth it.

GPP vs cash, floor, and ceiling

Cash games (double-ups, 50/50s, head-to-heads) pay out evenly to a large share of entries, often up to half, so you want a safe, high-floor lineup that beats roughly half the field. GPPs (Guaranteed Prize Pool tournaments) have top-heavy payouts, so you want a high-ceiling, correlated, differentiated build. Floor is a player's realistic low end of output, ceiling is the realistic high end.

These two formats need opposite builds, and conflating them is the most common beginner mistake in MLB DFS. For cash, I lean on safe, high-floor bats and a pitcher with a stable workload, and I worry less about ownership. For GPPs, I want stacks, correlation, and leverage off the chalk. The same lineup is rarely optimal in both.

Variance, FPTS, and process over results

FPTS is fantasy points, the score your lineup accumulates under a site's scoring system. Variance is the swing in outcomes baked into baseball, and MLB is one of the highest-variance sports in DFS.

This is the term new players underestimate most. A pitcher can be cruising and give up a three-run homer on a routine fly that just carries out, and a stack can leave nine runners on base. The best pre-lock lineup can still finish near the bottom on any given night. That is not a flaw in your process, it is baseball. The way I stay sane is to judge myself on process over results across a large sample, size my entries so a cold streak does not bust my account, and let the Sims show me the full range of outcomes for a lineup instead of one point estimate.

Want the vocabulary to actually do work for you? Stokastic+ is the toolkit behind everything above. The MLB Sims run your contest tens of thousands of times to build lineups by win probability, the Lineup Generator mass-produces lineups with exposure controls for multi-entry tournament play, and Top Stacks and Ownership Projections hand you the stacking and leverage reads this glossary describes. New players get a discount on the first payment with code MLBDFSTERMS10 for 10% off. Start with Stokastic+.

MLB DFS glossary: the full list of terms to know

Everything below is alphabetical. These are the MLB DFS terms to know, each with a definition and an example wherever an example makes it stick.

A to C

Bankroll. The total money you have set aside to play DFS. The number one rule of staying in the game is to only play with money inside this bankroll and to size each entry as a small fraction of it.

Batting Order. The sequence in which a team's hitters come to the plate. It is central to MLB DFS because the top of the order gets more plate appearances and drives in the players ahead of them, which is why stacks usually target slots one through five.

Bullpen. A team's relief pitchers. A weak or overworked bullpen is a reason to like the opposing hitters late in a game, since a deficit and tired relievers can turn into a big inning.

Buy-in. The cost to enter a contest. Also called the entry fee.

Cash Game. A contest that pays out evenly to a large portion of entries, often up to half. Double-ups, 50/50s, and head-to-heads are cash games. The goal is a safe, high-floor lineup that beats roughly half the field, not a tournament-winning ceiling.

Ceiling. The realistic maximum FPTS you can expect from a player. The driver of tournament rosters.

Chalk. A player, team, or game projected to be highly owned. Example: an ace at home against a strikeout-prone lineup with a low Vegas total is usually the chalk pitcher, so he lands in most lineups.

Confirmed Lineup. The official batting order a team posts before first pitch. Until it is confirmed, you are guessing at who hits where, which is why I wait on confirmed lineups before locking my MLB stacks.

Contrarian. A play that goes against the field, a hitter or stack the public is overlooking that projects low in ownership. Contrarian stacks are how you differentiate in large tournaments.

Correlation. A statistical relationship between two players' outcomes, positive or negative. In MLB it is strongly positive within a batting order, which is the foundation of stacking.

D to L

DFS. Daily fantasy sports. You will see this everywhere.

DK Points. DraftKings points, the FPTS scored under DraftKings' default MLB scoring system.

Double-Up. A cash contest where you roughly double your entry fee by finishing in the top half.

Exposure. How much of a given player you hold across all your lineups, expressed as a percentage. Example: "I am at 30% exposure to that leadoff hitter tonight." Controlling exposure is the whole point of the Lineup Generator's exposure settings.

Fade. To roster a player, team, or game less than the field does, whether for matchup, leverage, or a read on the spot.

FDPs. FanDuel points, the FPTS scored under FanDuel's default MLB scoring system.

Field Size. The number of entries in a contest. Bigger fields mean more variance and a more top-heavy payout structure.

Floor. The realistic low end of a player's FPTS. The driver of cash-game rosters.

FPTS. Fantasy points. The score your lineup accumulates, calculated from real stats (hits, runs, RBI, strikeouts for pitchers, and so on) under the site's scoring rules.

GPP. Stands for Guaranteed Prize Pool: a tournament where the operator commits the total prize pool in advance and pays it regardless of how many entries come in (even adding money if the contest does not fill, which is Overlay). Payouts are top-heavy, so you want a high ceiling and a differentiated, stacked build.

Hitter-Friendly Park. A ballpark whose dimensions and conditions tend to produce more runs and home runs. Example: Coors Field in Denver plays as the most hitter-friendly park in the league, which is why stacks there draw heavy attention.

Late Swap. Swapping players into or out of a lineup after the slate's first game has locked, as long as their game has not started. This is the highest-value in-slate action there is. If a hitter is scratched or a batting order shifts, late swap lets you react. I keep the MLB DataHub and Stokastic's Live Before Lock show open right up to lock for exactly this reason.

Leverage. Taking a lower-owned player close in projection to a popular one, so when your guy hits you gain ground on everyone stuck on the chalk. Judged player by player, not as a blanket fade of all chalk.

Lineup Generator. A Stokastic tool that mass-produces lineups based on your rules, projections, stacking settings, and exposure caps. It is core to multi-entry tournament play, generating large lineup sets under your constraints. See the Stokastic Lineup Generator.

Lineup Lock. The moment lineups freeze for a slate. After lock, your only lever is late swap on games that have not yet started.

M to R

Mini-Stack. A smaller stack, usually two or three correlated hitters, that you pair with a primary stack from a different team to spread your tournament upside across two games. Example: a five-man stack from one high-total team plus a three-man mini-stack from another.

MME. Mass Multi-Entry, the strategy of entering the maximum allowed number of lineups into a contest. MME players lean on bulk tools to build, diversify, and manage exposure across hundreds of lineups. The Stokastic Lineup Generator is built for exactly this.

Multi-Entry. Entering more than one lineup into a contest. Always check the contest's entry limit before you commit.

Ownership. The percentage of lineups in a contest expected to roster a given player. Reading projected ownership is how you locate chalk and find leverage in tournaments. The Stokastic Ownership Projections give you the field read.

Park Factor. A measure of how much a given ballpark inflates or suppresses run scoring relative to average. It feeds your stacking and pitching reads, since a pitcher in a pitcher-friendly park and a stack in a hitter-friendly park both gain value.

Pivot. Switching from one player to a similar-priced alternative for a reason, usually to gain ownership leverage. Example: pivoting off a high-owned shortstop to a lower-owned one in the same price tier to get over the field.

Platoon Split. The difference in a hitter's or pitcher's performance against left-handed versus right-handed opponents. A right-handed-heavy stack against a struggling lefty starter is a classic MLB DFS angle.

Punt. Rostering a cheap, low-salary player with a real but unlikely path to a usable score, in order to free up salary for studs elsewhere. Example: punting a minimum-priced catcher who just moved into the starting lineup so you can pay up at two other spots.

Quintuple Up. A contest that pays five times your entry fee to everyone who cashes.

Rake. The cut the operator keeps from a contest's entry fees. Example: if entries total 4,000 dollars and the contest pays out 3,600 dollars, the rake is 400 dollars. Lower rake is better for your long-term return, which is why contest selection matters.

Regression (to the Mean). The tendency for an over-performing or under-performing player to drift back toward their true expected level over time. A core reason I trust projections over a hot or cold streak.

ROI. Return on investment, your profit relative to the money you put in. The number that actually grades your DFS year.

Roster. As a verb, to put a player in your lineup. "I am rostering that shortstop in my main stack tonight."

S to V

Salary. The price a site assigns each player, charged against a fixed salary cap (for example $50,000 on DraftKings). Lineup building is the puzzle of fitting the best correlated production under that cap.

Salary Cap. The total salary budget you have to fill a lineup. Every roster decision is a tradeoff against it.

Sims (Simulations) / Contest Sims. Stokastic's simulation engine. The Sims run a player pool through thousands of simulated outcomes to build lineups by win probability instead of one projected score. Contest Sims go further, simulating the actual contest field tens of thousands of times to surface the builds with the best chance to win. Contest Sims are a tournament (GPP) tool: they model a top-heavy field and your chance to take it down, so use them for GPPs, not for cash games, where a floor-based build from projections is the right approach.

Slate. The set of games available to build lineups from. MLB offers everything from a small two- or three-game slate up to a full main slate of a dozen or more games.

Stack. Rostering a group of correlated hitters from the same team to raise your ceiling. Example: rostering four or five hitters from the top of one strong batting order so that when the team has a big inning, your whole stack scores together.

Studs-and-Scrubs. A construction style that pairs a few expensive stars with several minimum-salary players, as opposed to a balanced mid-priced build.

Tilt. The frustration that follows a bad beat, which often leads to undisciplined play. Example: after a stack gets shut out, a tilted player chases by jamming more entries than their bankroll should allow. Recognizing tilt and stepping away is bankroll management.

Tournament. A multi-player contest with scaled, top-heavy payouts. Synonymous with GPP in most DFS usage.

Value. A player whose production should outpace their salary based on matchup, role, or opportunity. Finding value, such as a cheap hitter who just moved up the order, frees up salary to pay up for a premium stack or ace elsewhere.

Vegas Total. The combined runs oddsmakers expect both teams to score in a game. It is one of the first things I check in MLB DFS, because high-total games point to the stacks with the most ceiling.

A worked example: how I use these MLB DFS terms on a slate

Reading definitions is one thing. Here is the order I move through them on a typical main slate, so you can see how the vocabulary connects.

1. I open the slate and check Vegas totals to find the highest-scoring game environments, since those are where my stacks will have the most ceiling.
2. I scan value and pricing to find cheap hitters with a real role, often a player who just moved up the batting order, so I know where my salary flexibility is.
3. I check projected ownership to find the chalk, then look for leverage, lower-owned stacks or pitchers close in projection that I can pivot to.
4. I decide format. For cash, I want floor and safety. For GPPs, I plan a primary stack plus a mini-stack, leaning on correlation and ownership leverage.
5. I build in the Sims and Lineup Generator, which simulate the contest tens of thousands of times and rank lineups by win probability while I control my exposure across a multi-entry set.
6. Right up to lineup lock, I watch for confirmed lineups and news, and use late swap to react to a scratched hitter or a changed batting order.

That loop, run with real ownership and simulation data instead of gut feel, is the difference between speaking the language and winning with it.

FAQ: MLB DFS terms

What is the most important MLB DFS term for a beginner to learn?

Stacking, together with correlation. Baseball scoring clusters by inning, so when a team has a big frame, multiple hitters score at once. Rostering several correlated hitters from one strong batting order is the main way to build a tournament ceiling. After stacking, learn ownership and the difference between cash games and GPPs, because those decide where you can be different from the field and how you should build.

What does stacking mean in MLB DFS and why does it matter?

Stacking is rostering a group of hitters from the same team so their fantasy points rise together when the team scores. It matters because runs in baseball come in bunches, and a hitter only drives in the runners on base ahead of him, so consecutive hitters from one lineup are positively correlated. The Stokastic Top Stacks tool and MLB Sims identify which stacks have the best simulated outcomes and keep your stacked hitters correlated, for example near each other in the batting order.

What is the difference between cash games and GPPs in MLB DFS?

Cash games (double-ups, 50/50s, head-to-heads) pay out evenly to a large share of entries, so you want a safe, high-floor lineup that beats about half the field, and ownership matters less. GPPs are tournaments with top-heavy payouts, so you need a high-ceiling, stacked, differentiated build with ownership leverage. Running the same lineup in both is a common mistake, because the optimal build for each is the opposite.

What does FPTS mean in daily fantasy baseball?

FPTS stands for fantasy points, the score your lineup accumulates. It is calculated from real game stats under the site's scoring rules, for example points for hits, runs, RBI, and stolen bases for hitters, and innings, strikeouts, and wins for pitchers. DraftKings and FanDuel use different scoring, so the same performance can be worth a different FPTS total on each site.

Is MLB daily fantasy skill or luck?

Both. Baseball is one of the highest-variance DFS sports, so even a strong lineup can finish poorly on a given night, a pitcher can get tagged on a routine fly that carries out, and a stack can strand runners. Over a large sample, skill in projections, stacking, ownership, leverage, and bankroll management is what produces a positive return. That is why serious players judge themselves on process over results and use simulation tools to optimize for win probability rather than one projected score. DFS is for players 21 and older where it is offered, and you should only play with money you can afford to set aside.

Bottom Line

MLB DFS rewards players who actually speak the language and use it to build. The terms that move your win rate most are stacking and correlation, ownership and chalk, leverage, and the cash-versus-GPP distinction that decides whether you want floor or ceiling. Learn those cold, remember that baseball is a high-variance game best judged over a long sample, and you are already ahead of most of the field. The rest of this glossary fills in the vocabulary you will hear on every slate.

The faster path is to let the tools do the heavy lifting. The Stokastic+ toolkit is built for exactly the workflow above. The MLB Sims run your contest tens of thousands of times and build lineups by win probability instead of one projected score. The Lineup Generator mass-produces lineups with full exposure control for multi-entry tournament play. Top Stacks and Ownership Projections hand you the stacking, chalk, and leverage reads this glossary just defined, and Stokastic's free Live Before Lock show keeps you sharp on confirmed lineups and news right up to lineup lock.

New players can grab a discount on the first payment with code MLBDFSTERMS10 for 10% off. Browse today's MLB plays free at the Stokastic MLB DataHub, then explore Stokastic+ pricing to start building like a sharp.

If there is an MLB DFS term you want added to this glossary, let us know and we will keep it growing.