Good Things Come In Threes: Play TriplePlay

We’ve become accustomed to certain rules around daily fantasy sports. Usually – almost always – you go to a site, choose players for your lineup based on specific salaries, and hope for the best. Especially in baseball where the season is long, traditional daily fantasy sports can become a daily headache.

Not with DailyMVP’s TriplePlay game though.

How TriplePlay Works

You may remember FASTBREAK, a game where you choose three NBA players – a guard, forward and center – from three different teams with the objective of finding players who will far outperform their projections. Instead of using salaries to find player value, which can make the daily fantasy routine fairly cumbersome, you’re simply looking at how a player will perform. If you believe a guy is going to far exceed his projected score, you select him. It’s that simple.

The new TriplePlay game works the same way. You can quickly and easily set up a contest against a friend or random opponent (multi-player contests are coming soon), and pick three players who look to be under-projected in the system. Once both teams select their players, a Fantasy Equalizer is put in place in order to level out the competition. If my team, for instance, is projected to score 15 points while my opponent’s squad is projected to score 20, my team will begin with five additional points in order to even out the playing field.

The three players in each lineup will then start earning points based on live game statistics, and the high score of the contest wins. And just added to the game is a rematch feature, allowing you to quickly set up another contest with the same opponent after the previous one concludes. You can also invite a friend via text, tweet or through Facebook.

But speaking of earning points, the game’s scoring is pretty straightforward, too, which is nice considering how complex other daily site’s scoring can be. Batters get one point for a single, two for a double, three for a triple, four for a home run, and one point for a run, run batted in and walk. Every stolen base is awarded two points.

For pitchers, a win is worth three points, an inning pitched is a point-and-a-half (half of a point per one-third inning), and a strikeout is one point. For every earned run, the pitcher loses a point.

It’s so clear-cut, and doesn’t deal with fake salaries at all. All you need to do is pick players who are going to surpass their daily projections – projections provided by numberFire.com.

The Unique TriplePlay Strategy

Through playing TriplePlay, I’ve found that the lesser-known players can often times become the day’s MVP. Sure, you could say the same for any daily fantasy site, but with almost every other game, you’re forced to play big name players like Mike Trout, Troy Tulowitzki or Max Scherzer in order to fulfill your salary needs.

But with TriplePlay, staying away from studs becomes even more important. In fact, you should use non-stars in the game. Lesser-known players are naturally going to be projected for really low scores, and if you can pinpoint the guy (or two or three) who ends up blasting a home run after sitting on the bench for most of the season, you put yourself in great shape to win.

That’s why the game really emphasizes the user’s knowledge of players. If a user notices a team like the Pirates is moving to a hitters ballpark like Coors Field, he or she may not want to just automatically choose Andrew McCutchen, because Cutch will always have lofty projections and expectations. Instead, the user may opt for someone like Neil Walker, since his projected totals would inherently be lower.

So while the game is easy to understand, remember that baseball knowledge is needed to win. Knowing the players who can break free and become a star in a single night is more important than remember to slot Hanley Ramirez in your lineup.

You Need to Play TriplePlay

There’s no unnecessary stock market-type watching of player salaries with TriplePlay. There’s no deep lineups that constantly need changed up until the day's games start. It's a lineup of three players - three guys who you think will outperform their projection best.

You can download the app from the App Store, or simply play on the web. It's easy to set up, and the idea behind the game is so simple to grasp as well. But don't take that as easy to win. For folks who really know their stuff - finding the deep value plays on the diamond every day - it's the perfect game to play.