The MLB season officially launched last week, as did the prices of quite a few players in terms of daily fantasy baseball salary. The value algorithms are sometimes just as frustrating as the owners in your season-long league who want to trade you Eugenio Suarez for Clayton Kershaw. The key to any DFS strategy is understanding when to pay and when not to pay for players riding a big wave of production.

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Daily fantasy baseball strategy, tips and advice

Right now, no one is hotter than Rockies shortstop Trevor Story. Add in the Colorado factor, and you have a player up to $4.9K on DraftKings. That’s $100 more than Carlos Correa. Story is a nice young player and could very well have a bright future ahead of him. However, he doesn’t have nearly the same level of talent as Correa, and, therefore, it’s hard to justify his salary this week.

There’s no bigger “Game of Streaks” than baseball, and that goes for the negative side of current, as well. There are some very talented players off to slow starts. In some instances, salaries for these players will be discounted. You may even want to keep them in your lineups (barring weather, negative Batter vs. Pitcher/split stats conflicts) multiple days in a row until you hit pay dirt (or payout).

Best daily fantasy baseball values

Here are some players that fit that mold in Week 2:

Carlos Gomez $3K FANDUEL

Gerardo Parra $3.4K FANDUEL (in Colorado!)

Ian Desmond $3.7K DRAFTKINGS

Yoenis Cespedes $4.1K DRAFTKINGS

At Fantasy Alarm, we offer Optimal DFS Lineups every day that are assembled by some of the best in the business. My personal mission is to discover the value on the board each week. The tool I created to do this is Relative Position Value Per Dollar (RPVPD). It’s a simple equation that quantifies position scarcity and allows you to target a smaller group at each position who are truly worthy of owning on a given night. RPVPD literally illustrates, by percentage points, how much more valuable and cost effective one player is from the next.

Using some RPVPD principles, here’s a quick look at a 50/50 lineup with a high floor/ceiling on DraftKings for Tuesday’s MLB DFS slate:

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Getting the pitching locked down is always paramount in DFS. Rather than pay to the very top of the board for Jose Fernandez ($11.9K) or Cory Kluber ($12.2K), I prefer to save $1.5K and start with the dominant Noah Syndergaard. He’s coming off a brilliant outing where he struck out nine Royals (a team heralded for its contact rates). Syndergaard is a strikeout machine and has been great at home over his short career. Hector Santiago put up nearly 20 points in his first start of the year and was similarly effective over the early part of 2015 before wearing down after the break. The A’s offense is weak and that salary makes Santiago a great option.

Even with Colorado in play, you have to know what side of that coin to be on. Jeff Samardzija was arguably the worst starting pitcher in baseball last year. He gave up the most hits, earned runs and home runs in the American League last year, so the Carlos Gonzalez, Nolan Arenado, Gerardo Parra stack against him just makes sense (Parra being the value play).

Starlin Castro is off to a fast start and his salary has yet to catch up accordingly. Jose Bautista, Matt Weiters, Daniel Murphy and Kendrys Morales are all hitting in the middle of their respective orders and have potential to drive in multiple runs. Bautista, in particular at home, should be at least $200-300 more expensive for his skill set.

This is a “cash game” lineup that should be very competitive. If you’re looking for an alternate “stack” from the Colorado/San Francisco contest for tournaments, Washington at home against the Braves is a great opportunity. There really isn’t much flexibility on the pitching end except for Matt Moore as a contrarian option to Kluber and the Indians. Word to the wise: Tuesday’s slate is not the time to get “fancy” on the starting pitching end.

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Joe Pisapia (@JoePisapia17) is the seven-time best-selling author of the Fantasy Black Book Series for baseball and football. He hosts Fantasy Sports Tonight on Sirius/XM Fantasy Sports Radio and the Dear Mr. Fantasy Podcast.