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MLB DFS picks for Saturday's DraftKings and FanDuel Daily Fantasy contests

Fantasy, Fantasy MLB

Winning MLB DFS lineups are those that get the most bang out of every DFS buck. ESPN's Daily Fantasy Baseball picks are all about giving you the information you need to set your optimal lineup each and every day. Every morning, come back to find a brand-new DFS cheat sheet tailored to either DraftKings or FanDuel's pricing for that day's contests. With one only one game yesterday, there wasn't a DFS main slate, nevertheless, Lance Lynn would have earned you 36.95 points on DraftKings, while on the hitting side Rougned Odor would have been the top earner with 18 DK points.

These cheat sheets, broken down by position and in order of their salary cap, will indicate whether that player is a good, great, poor or simply average value for the day. It's that simple. Pick the players you like with great value, fill it out with good value from games you like, and avoid the poor picks in any price range.

• On Friday night, "Great" pitching plays Caleb Smith and Mike Fiers both surpassed projections with 24.70 and 23.85 DraftKings points, respectively.

• On the hitting side, "Great" plays from the Angels had excellent nights: Mike Trout (40 DK), Justin Upton (21 DK), and Justin Bour (10 DK).

• With Jesse Chavez's low arm angle and increased sinker usage, THE BAT loved Yordan Alvarez with the platoon advantage in Arlington, and he delivered with 35 DK points at barely 10 percent ownership.

• DraftKings DFS picks for Saturday 

• FanDuel DFS picks for Saturday 

Here's how we help you set an optimal DFS lineup

It starts with identifying the best values of the day, no matter the position or price point. DFS value can be found in a backup catcher just as well as it can be found in the defending AL MVP or NL Cy Young. It's not just a question of identifying platoon splits or picking on a team with a struggling starting pitcher. The obvious choices are obvious, and they are priced that way. Current DFS pricing more often than not reflects the commonly perceived value of a player in any particular series, factoring in the ballpark, the quality of the bullpens and recent hot and cold streaks. (Have you seen the price for Scott Kingery lately?)

Find that one quality lineup: What you need is a tool to look beyond the matchup surface, to cut through the recent noise and to analyze each player's price without bias. That's where Derek Carty and THE BAT come in. Carty's projection system was found to be the most accurate non-aggregate projection system available in a season-long context last year according to multiple studies, including FanGraphs, and it has created scores of profitable DFS baseball players. In cash games and head-to-head settings, winning is achieved not by putting together dozens of lineups, but by meticulously narrowing down options to a single, optimal lineup. In tournaments, finding low-owned values that others are overlooking or are biased against can be a key way to differentiate.

• Large sample size is key. We can help. You can read more about Carty's projection system, THE BAT, if you like, but the TL;DR of it is this: the larger the sample size you look at, the better, and the more significant underlying stats you include, the more predictive the data. THE BAT generates ESPN's DFS cheat sheets to do all the heavy lifting for you, crunching the numbers and evaluating all the important aspects of the matchup -- from basics like opposing hitter and pitching quality to bullpens to umpires to pitch framing to air density and lots more -- to find the best objective values without overreacting to small sample size performance or factors that don't matter.

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