MLB DFS Projections: Projected Points for DraftKings and FanDuel

Every daily fantasy baseball lineup you build starts with one number per player: how many fantasy points you expect him to score tonight. That number is an MLB DFS projection, and it is the foundation the rest of your build sits on. Below I walk through how we generate ours at Stokastic, why baseball projections work differently from every other sport, and how to actually turn them into lineups instead of just reading them off a grid.

In Summary (TL;DR)

• A projection is a player's expected fantasy points under one site's scoring. DraftKings and FanDuel score baseball differently, so a hitter can be a value on one site and a fade on the other. We keep a separate projection per site.
• Raw points are not the goal. Value is. Divide projected points by salary to get points per dollar, then build your core from the best values so you can afford the bats and arms you want elsewhere.
• Baseball is the highest-variance DFS sport, so we project a range, not one outcome. Our MLB projections come out of simulation, which is what lets the same numbers feed Contest Sims, Top Stacks and Ownership Projections.
• Stacking is the signature MLB skill. Correlated hitters from one lineup score together, so the projection is only useful once you read it alongside batting order and team totals.
• Projections are a living number. A scratched starter, a confirmed lineup, or wind blowing out at Wrigley can swing a projection in minutes, which is why pre-lock news and late swap matter so much in baseball.

What Are MLB DFS Projections?

An MLB DFS projection is the number of fantasy points we expect a player to score in a given game, calculated under a specific site's scoring rules. That last part trips people up. DraftKings and FanDuel do not score baseball the same way: the point values for hits, walks, runs and stolen bases differ, and pitcher scoring (innings, strikeouts, the win, earned runs allowed) is weighted differently too. The same hitter projects to different point totals on each site, which is why we publish a separate projected-points tab for DraftKings and FanDuel rather than one generic figure.

The reason projections matter is that they collapse a messy slate of pitching matchups, batting orders, ballparks and weather into one comparable number per player. Without them you are guessing. With them you have a baseline you can measure salary against, stack around, and leverage off of.

	DraftKings MLB	FanDuel MLB
Roster	2 pitchers + 8 hitters	1 pitcher + 8 hitters
Scoring style	Different point values per event, includes stolen-base and pitcher win weighting	Different point values per event, own pitcher and hitter weighting
What it means for you	A player's value can differ by site	Always read the tab that matches where you are playing

The takeaway is simple: never use one site's projection to play the other. Pull the tab for the site you are entering.

How Stokastic Builds MLB DFS Projections

We do not project a single outcome and call it a day, because a baseball game does not happen once. Our MLB DFS projections come out of simulation. We model the full range of outcomes for each player, the chance he goes hitless, the chance he has a median night, the chance he runs into two homers, and the projection you see is the average across thousands of simulated versions of that game.

That matters because two hitters can carry the same projected points and have completely different shapes. A high-contact, top-of-the-order bat and a boom-or-bust slugger might both project for the same number, but the slugger's range is far wider. A single average hides that, which is why we read it next to our Boom/Bust ranges and Ownership Projections instead of in isolation.

Because the projections are simulation-based, they feed the rest of the toolkit cleanly. The same per-player distributions power our Contest Sims, where the tool surfaces the lineups with the best win equity across tens of thousands of simulated contests, and they drive the Top Stacks tool that ranks correlated batting-order stacks. The projection is the input. The Sims are what tell you which combinations of those inputs actually win.

How to Use MLB DFS Projections: A Points-Per-Dollar Example

Here is the part that turns a projection into a lineup. I do not chase raw points. I chase value, and the cleanest way to measure value is points per dollar.

The math is projected points divided by salary in thousands. A hitter projected for 9 fantasy points at a $4,200 salary gives you about 2.1 points per dollar (9 divided by 4.2). A more expensive bat projected for 11 points at $5,800 gives you about 1.9 points per dollar (11 divided by 5.8). The cheaper hitter is the better value even though he scores fewer raw points, because he frees up roughly $1,600 in salary to spend on a stud bat or a top arm elsewhere in your lineup.

That is the whole engine of roster construction. You are not trying to roster the highest-projected players. You are trying to fit the most total projected points under the salary cap, and points per dollar is how you find the plays that let you do it. When I open the MLB projections, the first thing I do is sort by points-per-dollar value, flag the best plays at each position, and build my core from there.

Stop reading projections off a page and start building from them. Stokastic+ gives you the full MLB DFS projections for DraftKings and FanDuel plus the Sim Tools that turn them into optimized lineups. New users get a free trial, and code MLBPROJ10 takes 10% off your first payment: Start with Stokastic+.

Stacking: Why MLB Projections Live and Die on Correlation

Baseball is the one DFS sport where correlation does most of the heavy lifting, and it is the reason a projection means little until you read it in context. When a team bats around in a big inning, the hitters who scored did so together: the leadoff man walks, the two-hole doubles him in, the three-hole drives them both home. Their fantasy points arrive in the same frame, not independently.

That is why we stack. Rostering three to five hitters from the same lineup, ideally consecutive in the batting order, ties your night to one offense exploding rather than to nine unrelated players each having a fine game. Projected points tell you which bats are good. The batting order and the team's implied run total tell you which good bats are likely to score in sequence. Our Top Stacks tool ranks those combinations by projected ceiling instead of by individual median points, and the Sims build the correlation in for you so your stack lands near each other in the order rather than scattered.

For pitchers the logic inverts. You want an arm projected for strikeouts and length whose offense is favored, and you generally avoid stacking hitters against your own pitcher, since a big inning for those bats is points off your pitcher's line.

Pair Projections With Ownership and Leverage

If projections were the whole game, everyone reading the same numbers would play the same lineups and nobody would win. In tournaments your score only matters relative to the field, so I never look at a projection without checking our Ownership Projections next to it.

This is where leverage comes in. If two stacks project within a hair of each other but one is going to be heavily owned and the other lightly owned, the lower-owned stack is usually the better tournament play. You are betting on a similar expected outcome while getting over the field on the offense fewer people rostered. In baseball the leverage is amplified, because a chalky stack that goes quiet sinks a huge share of the field at once, and the contrarian stack that erupts lifts only you.

Cash Games vs. Tournaments: Same Projections, Opposite Builds

The projections do not change between formats, but how you read them does.

In cash games (double-ups and 50/50s) you are trying to beat about half the field, so you want the highest, safest floor. I lean on the projections for stable, high-floor value bats and steady arms, take fewer or smaller stacks, and largely ignore ownership. Boom-or-bust dart throws have no place in a cash lineup.

In tournaments you are trying to beat thousands of lineups for a top-heavy prize, so you build for ceiling. Here I take the projections as a starting point and then layer in full correlated stacks, leverage off the chalk, and a few lower-owned bats with wide upside. A bat that looks merely fine on paper can be a strong GPP piece if it sits in a low-owned stack with real ceiling.

Projections Are a Living Number: Confirmed Lineups and Late Swap

A projection is only as good as the information behind it, and baseball information moves right up to first pitch. The biggest swing is the confirmed lineup: a hitter projected for a strong night is worth zero if he gets a day off, and the bat that replaces him inherits real value the moment the card posts. A late scratch to the starting pitcher reshapes both that game's hitter projections and your pitcher pool. Wind blowing out at a hitter's park lifts every bat in it; a cold, damp night does the opposite.

That is why our MLB projections update as lineups confirm and news breaks, and why I never trust a number I pulled in the morning without rechecking it pre-lock. Our Live Before Lock show walks the slate as lineups drop, and the Late Swap tool lets you adjust entries in games that have not started yet. Reacting to a confirmed scratch is one of the highest-value things you can do, because the projection move is real and a large part of the field will not catch it in time.

MLB DFS Projections FAQ

What are MLB DFS projections?

They are the number of fantasy points we expect each MLB player to score in a given game, calculated for a specific site's scoring rules. Stokastic builds them through simulation, averaging thousands of modeled outcomes per player, and publishes separate projected-point tabs for DraftKings and FanDuel.

How do you use projections to build an MLB DFS lineup?

Start with value, not raw points. Divide each player's projected points by his salary to get points per dollar, build your core from the best values, then layer in batting-order stacks, ownership and leverage for tournaments. In cash games you skip the heavy stacking and take the highest, safest floor.

How are DraftKings and FanDuel MLB projections different?

DraftKings and FanDuel score baseball with different point values and roster a different number of pitchers, so the same player projects to different totals on each site. Always use the tab that matches where you are playing, which is why we keep DraftKings and FanDuel projections separate.

How often are the MLB DFS projections updated?

They refresh on a regular schedule and again as lineups confirm and news breaks, such as a scratched starter, a day off, or a weather shift. We recheck projections pre-lock every slate and use the Live Before Lock show and the Late Swap tool to react as cards post.

Why use simulation-based projections instead of a single number?

Because baseball is high-variance. A single projected number hides a player's range of outcomes. Simulation-based projections capture the boom-or-bust shape behind the average, which is what powers our Contest Sims and Top Stacks so you can build for floor in cash and ceiling in tournaments.

Get the Full MLB DFS Projections With Stokastic+

You can teach yourself the points-per-dollar math and the stacking logic from this article, but the projections that feed it are the proprietary part. Stokastic+ gives you the full simulation-based MLB DFS projections for DraftKings and FanDuel, plus the Sim Tools, Ownership Projections and Top Stacks that turn those numbers into optimized lineups. Try the Sim Tools for free and see the live MLB DataHub.

New to Stokastic? It runs tens of thousands of simulations of each slate so you build the lineups with the best shot to win instead of guessing off a static sheet. You can start with a free trial, and code MLBPROJ10 takes 10% off your first payment: Upgrade to Stokastic+. Play responsibly, and good luck on the slate.