Fantasy Strategy Clinic Round 19: What to Do When You Can’t Check Lineups

By: The Fantasy Physician

Round 19 Big Questions – How Do I Pick a Team When I Can’t Check Lineups

For American readers of the Fantasy Strategy Clinic, a holiday weekend approaches, but MLS continues.  What are your plans?  Backwoods camping?  Out-of-town wedding? A long flight somewhere?  Logging-off for a digital holiday?  Some weekends, if not this one, you just can’t figure out how you are going to check lineups.  Within the FMLS community, we have a large and growing list of players who live around the world; some of them wake up at odd hours to set and adjust teams, but sometimes the need to sleep trumps the need to see lineups.

With this week’s article, we turn our attention to the problem of picking your squad’s lineup when you can’t (or don’t want to) check MLS lineups in real time as they come out.

Strategies for Playing When Disconnected

Strategy #1 – change your plans and check lineups.  This is a serious consideration.  Top managers check lineups regularly for three main reasons.  First and foremost, if a player is not on the field in MLS, he can’t score FMLS points for you. Second, seeing the MLS team around a player you are considering for your squad and the team lined up against him can influence your plans.  Third, if you are using one of the important bench strategies eg the autoroo, switcheroo, or keeperoo, you need to identify players not playing to trigger the scores you want off your bench.  

So when the going gets tough, the tough get creative.  Whether you are in a restaurant, invited to dinner at a friend’s house, or playing in a real live soccer game of your own (maybe better at halftime), sometimes you need to use the bathroom.  Go to the bathroom and check lineups.  No one can raise an eyebrow about two trips to the bathroom during one dinner.  In a restaurant, you are allowed at least one trip to “walk around and take in the décor” in addition to your bathroom trip.

Perhaps fortunately (or not) we live in an age in which juvenile geekery is somewhat tolerated and even modestly encouraged in adults.  Try the direct approach:  “I know we are eating this beautiful meal together, but I need to excuse myself for a few minutes. I am an avid MLS Fantasy Player and write an internationally read weekly column on the game, and to maintain standards, I need to check some MLS lineups.  Be right back!” or “I am an avid MLS Fantasy player and – believe it or not – I currently have one of the top 15000 teams worldwide; I just need to check lineups for a second to preserve my gangbusters season.  Can’t let that slip away! Be right back.”

Some of my best memories with my kids involve camping trips, and most camping-permissive weekends in California happen during the MLS season.  Fortunately, two of my three children are FMLS managers and none of us is too sentimental about “powering down” or “getting off tech” on our camping trips.  The bigger issue is cell phone signal.  On many if not most of our family camping trips, we just jump into the car and drive into town or out of the canyon to get to the place with enough signal to see lineups.  Then we drive back to our tent and hope for the best.

In September of 2021, well into that season in the middle of the COVID pandemic, my family was invited to some dear friends’ wedding, a swanky affair in the New York Public Library.  Early in the game week I hit paydirt with Brooks Lennon on the bench and a differential captain in Ezequiel Barco.  I knew I had a chance for a big week.  But how could I be on my phone checking lineups during the ceremony?  With a big score on the line, I wrapped the program around my phone and checked lineups – while the bride was walking down the aisle – to see that Hany Mukhtar, Ricardo Pepi, and everyone in my Seattle triple-stack were playing.  Yes, I got a dirty look from my wife, but was it worth it for the immortality that comes with a worldwide Week Rank #1.  Absolutely!

Ok, sometimes you are just not going to check lineups

Strategy #2 – set up a team of lineup-proof players 

Here’s the prescription for putting out a reasonable team when you cannot check lineups

1. Formation:  go with the 5 defenders on the field with two scrubs autoroo set-up (click here if you need to refresh your memory on how autoroos work).  Put three attackers on your bench (either two midfielders and one forward  OR  two forwards and one midfielder).  If you question a player’s availability in the least, put him on your bench.
2. Put the goalkeeper you like best on the bench and a known goalkeeper scrub on the field.  Sure, you could just put your first choice on the field, but it’s wise to keep options open (see strategy # 1 in which you decide to check lineups anyways).
3. Scour the internet for player availability information. If it’s out already, consult the Player Availability Report, which you can find posted in the MLS Fantasy Boss Discord Injuries and Absences tab. If it’s not out by the time you are going off the grid, look at last week’s report and steer clear of any players who were injured and be suspicious of anyone who was on international duty last week (eg Canadian players) or still is (eg US Men’s National Team Players).
4. Choose players from teams with steady lineups and avoid teams that rotate a lot.  From within those teams, pick players who are “The Guy” on their team.  When in doubt, pick “The Guy” on another team over a lesser second or third lesser light from a team you favor.  Emphasize availability and ongoing quality over matchup factors or home-and-away issues.
5. Once you have a working draft of a team, click on each individual players’ stats and check that he played all or nearly all of the last game and that he rarely misses games.
6. Look at published lists of players’ 2025 playing time like this one at FBREF  (scroll down to player stats and click on column headers like “Starts” or “Minutes Played” to reorder the lists by those stats) and see players who almost always play.
7. Go with known safe defensive scrubs in an autoroo:   See the section of the 2025 Mega-Reference that lists and updates safe scrubs, ie players who cannot play because they have a long term injury, are loaned out, or are no longer under contract with the MLS team in the FMLS game.
8. As your captain, pick a good player on a good team and be sure it’s someone who plays a lot and has no recent injury issues.

Alternative to Strategy 2:  Play with no autoroo (or just the goalkeeper autoroo).  Put your best team on the field (with no scrubs) in the following configuration:  three defenders, five midfielders, and two forwards, and with any remaining budget pick the best bench (two defenders and one forward) you can find with emphasis on likelihood of playing.  This strategy sacrifices the use of the bench to maximize scoring chances among three attackers in the autoroo set up, but it increases the chance that you will have get 10 scores from your field players.

Week 19 Lineup-Proof Squad Selection

Let’s map the above strategy on Game Week 19.  All thirty teams are playing this weekend, so you cannot count on any bye team for scrubs.

Set up a five-defenders-in-the-back configuration, including two players guaranteed not to play:  Adam Pearlman from Toronto and Kieran Sargeant from Houston.  Use Hunter Sulte of Portland as a goalkeeper scrub.  Pick a steady goalkeeper who has no rival, eg Dos Santos or Frei.   Ignore timing in selecting players.  Pick defenders like Chris McVey (San Diego), Michael Boxall (Minnesota), or Kai Wagner (Philadelphia), all of whom always play and have no recent injuries. Stick with high-minute, high-quality midfielders like Carles Gil, Hany Mukhtar, Anders Dreyer, Evander, and Christian Espinoza, and likely pick your captain from among these players.  Pick among forwards who are clear starters on their teams, avoiding forwards who platoon like Kelvin Yeboah or Tani Oluwaseyi from Minnesota.  Avoid minutes-risk players like Marco Reus and Martin Ojeda.  Before you head to your unplugged yoga retreat, check to see if Lionel Messi has traveled to Montreal; he is one player back from international duty whom you should consider, and he always has to be in the captain conversation if he’s healthy.

It’s a long season and sometimes you just need a break from the hurly-burly of lineup drops and nervous rejiggering of your squad. Frontload the research, set-it-and-forget-it, and who knows, your imperviousness to lineups just might land you some high-performing differentials.  At the very least, you can put out a decent team and limit the downsides of declaring independence from lineup-checking for a weekend.

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The “Fantasy Physician” is Ron Birnbaum, @Half Century City on  Discord 
The “Fantasy Therapist” is Mike Leister, @Kenobi on  Discord