In the booming industry that is daily fantasy baseball, there exist a massive number of choices for a fantasy player when it comes to where to play.  There are new sites popping up all the time, and we here at DFSEdge provide insight on nine of them.  In traditional fantasy, there are only three legitimate contenders when it comes to sites to play on (Yahoo!, ESPN, and CBS, plus a couple smaller sites like OnRoto and RealTime) and most offer a pretty uniform set of rules.  They each have their quirks, but a player who is valuable on Yahoo! is generally just as valuable on ESPN.  This is not the case when it comes to daily fantasy, however, where roster structure and scoring systems can vary wildly from site to site.  As such, over the next several weeks I’m going to be digging into DFSEdge’s nine daily league sites to determine each one’s individual quirks and what kinds of players are best utilized in each format. Fan Throwdown Profile Uniqueness: 7th (Hitting), 9th (Pitching) Roster Quirkiness: 8th (Tied) Scoring System Quirkiness: 9th (Hitting), 9th (Pitching) Pitching Premium: 7th I’m going to start off with Fan Throwdown because it is one of the most vanilla sites out there.  If it were a woman, it would be the one I’d go for (according to my brother, I’m boring and am only interested in pale, blonde, white women.) Don’t worry about not having any idea what these profile stats mean yet; we’ll get to each individually, and then when they come up again in future installments, you’ll know what's going on. Uniqueness Uniqueness is a measure of how differently players score on Fan Throwdown relative to the average daily site.  Uniqueness serves as a good estimate for how much your strategy needs to change when playing on a given site. (Note: Pitching Uniqueness only includes starting pitchers despite some sites utilizing relievers.)

Site	Hitting Uniqueness
	4.4%
	3.6%
	3.2%
	3.1%
	3.1%
	2.7%
Fan Throwdown	2.5%
	2.4%
	2.2%

As the 7^th and 9^th (out of 9) scores suggests, a special little snowflake Fan Throwdown is not, when it comes to final player scoring.  Uniqueness, at its simplest, explains how player scores vary on a given site relative to all the other sites.  (For a more technical definition, see the bottom of the article.)  In other words, there aren't many players that hold higher or lower value on Fan Throwdown than they do on other sites.  We'll get into specific player types later, but a low Uniqueness score generally indicates that there is no benefit or hindrance to drafting specialized players. Scoring System Quirkiness (Hitting) Scoring System Quirkiness is a measure of how much Fan Throwdown’s scoring system differs relative to the average daily site.  Since sites award points on different scales (i.e. Draft Day gives 20 points for a HR; FanDuel gives 4 points for a HR), category values are listed in relative terms (all relative to the number of points awarded for a Home Run.  So if a Single is worth 1 point and a Home Run is worth 4 points, the value of a Single is said to be 25%.)

Category	Fan Throwdown	Average
1B	25%	26%
2B	50%	50%
3B	75%	76%
HR	100%	100%
H	Not Used	3%
RBI	50%	33%
R	25%	29%
BB	25%	22%
SB	50%	50%
CS	Not Used	-11%
HBP	25%	21%
K	-6%	-8%
GIDP	Not Used	-6%
SAC	Not Used	5%
Out	-5%	-3%

As we’d expect based on the low scores Fan Throwdown garnered in Uniqueness, the daily site’s scoring system is pretty boring, adhering closely to the nine-site average in nearly all scoring categories.  The lone exception here and the site's biggest scoring quirk is that it values RBIs twice as highly as it does Runs Scored.  Most sites value them exactly the same (Fantasy Feud is the other exception, but the extra value placed on RBI is smaller than for Fan Throwdown).  This means that you'd be well-served to target power hitters and any player batting in the heart of the order (3rd, 4th, or 5th) while placing less value on lead-off and number-two hitters.         Scoring System Quirkiness (Pitching) Scoring System Quirkiness is a measure of how much Fan Throwdown’s scoring system differs relative to the average daily site.  Since sites award points on different scales (i.e. StarStreet gives 15 points for a Win; DraftStreet gives just 1.5 points for a Win), category values are listed in relative terms (all relative to the number of points awarded for a Win.)

Category	Fan Throwdown	Average
W	100%	100%
Outs	14%	13%
K	25%	28%
ER	-25%	-31%
H	-6%	-9%
BB	-6%	-9%
HBP	Not Used	-8%
SV	Not Used	33%
BS	Not Used	-9%
CG	25%	23%
SH	Not Used	13%
L	Not Used	-14%
No No	Not Used	19%
PG	Not Used	6%

As with hitting (and pretty much everything freaking else), Fan Throwdown treads close to industry standard category valuation.  It doesn’t stray more than 6% from any of the six most common categories.  Since they don’t use relievers, there are no points awarded for saves or blown saves.  Of the lesser-used bonuses for starting pitcher accomplishments, Fan Throwdown uses the most common, Complete Games, and ignores the rest. Their biggest quirk (which I couldn’t settle on a way to work into Quirkiness Score) is not awarding points for fractional innings pitched.  That is, if a pitcher throws 5 2/3 innings, instead of getting credit for 17 outs, he only gets credit for 15 (as if those last two outs never happened). This makes pitchers on teams with managers who have a quick hook and bad relievers less valuable.  I don’t have any examples for you here yet, but this will likely get an article unto itself sometime in the future. Since the fairly common hit-by-pitch (6 of 9 sites) isn't used and strikeouts are slightly less valuable, you could give a small boost to pitchers with mediocre stuff and good control, but the practical use of this is small. Roster Quirkiness Roster Quirkiness is a measure of how the roster structure of Fan Throwdown differs from the average daily site.

Position	Fan Throwdown	Average
C	1	1
1B	0	0.3
1B/DH	1	0.6
3B	1	0.9
1B/3B	0	0.2
2B	1	0.9
SS	1	0.9
2B/SS	0	0.2
OF	3	3.0
U	0	0.7
SP	1	1.2
P	0	0.6
Total	9	10.4

When it comes to roster structure, Fan Throwdown is nearly as vanilla as it is when it comes to its scoring system.  It strictly adheres to the (relatively) standard “one player per MLB position” rule, going as far as to ignore the Utility spot entirely (not an MLB position but a common fantasy inclusion) and using just one pitcher.  The majority of sites use two or three pitchers, which gives Fan Throwdown its biggest roster quirk, although it’s a tame one compared to some of the other sites out there. Nothing much else to really see here.       Pitching Premium Pitching Premium is a measure of how valuable each pitcher spot is relative to each hitter spot based on each site’s scoring system. So for Fan Throwdown, the average pitcher is 47% more valuable than the average hitter.

Site	Pitching Premium
	76%
	75%
	71%
	62%
	56%
	49%
Fan Throwdown	47%
	34%
	25%

Because you use fewer of them and because they are more involved with the outcome of the game, pitchers are always going to be awarded more points than hitters, but how many more varies wildly from site-to-site, as you can see.  Fan Throwdown is on the low end of this spectrum—one of its most noteworthy characteristics. Because pitchers aren’t given much of a bonus over hitters, it becomes less important to focus on picking the absolute perfect pitching matchup.  If your pitcher tanks in Fan Throwdown, you aren’t necessarily guaranteed a loss that day if your hitters play well.  If you have limited time to pick your team, focus your attention on the hitters.       Methodology for Creating Each Stat If you’re like me and want to know what goes into the sausage, here is how I arrived at each stat that I created.  If you don’t care, then you’ve reached the end of the article.  You are now free to leave. Uniqueness is calculated by first looking at how every player scores in each of the nine systems.  They are then re-calculated on an index scale, comparing each player to the site’s average player so that all sites are using the same scale.  Then a new average is created for each player of his score on each of the nine sites.  We examine how far each site’s score is from the nine-site average as an absolute value.   When we average these out for all players for all sites, we get an estimate of each site’s “uniqueness.”  I used full-season data for all hitters with at least 300 PA all pitchers with at least 10 Games Started in 2012. Scoring System Quirkiness is calculated by first putting all stats on the same scale (relative to Home Runs for hitters and relative to Wins for pitchers).  I find the nine-site average value of each stat, compare how each stat’s scoring varies from that average, then average out all the categories for each site (with each category weighted the same). Roster Quirkiness is calculated by finding the nine-site average of how many players are required at each roster position, then compare how each site’s roster structure varies from that average, and average out all the roster spots for each site. Pitching Premium is calculated by first scoring out the average daily line for all hitters with at least 3 PA in game (a proxy for starting the game) and all starting pitchers for each of the nine sites.  I then compare how much more valuable pitchers are than hitters.  I used data from a recent six-year stretch of games.