Today’s preamble to the daily picks section of this post falls squarely in the “may not mean a damn thing” category. But I was running various subsets of players through the Draftstreet scoring system and eventually just decided to run the numbers so far this year for all hitters and all starters through the system. What I found was that hitters have combined to score 21,118 points this year, and starters have combined to score 5,993.6. When you divide those numbers by the nine hitter slots and three pitcher slots in a Draftstreet salary cap lineup, you see that hitters are averaging 2,346.44 points per slot, and starters are averaging 1,997.86 points per slot. If you add those two numbers up, you’ll see that hitters look to be responsible for about 54% of points, and starters are responsible for 46%.

This makes me wonder if 54/46 is a good split for how much money to spend on hitters and starters. It probably means nothing, but I’d be curious if any of you guys have any thoughts on the best split for your money or any way that might be good to research that issue. Ultimately, I think it just depends on where the value lies on a given day. Some days there are cheaper pitchers that are good value plays, and I can split my spending 60/40 for hitters. Other days I don’t feel safe with any starter under 15K, and I have to spend at least half my money on pitching. But I just thought the 54/46 split was interesting even if it probably doesn’t mean a damn thing.

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In the preseason I used Zach Sanders’ method for deriving fantasy value from roto category statistics to see how the Steamer projections valued players from a fantasy perspective. The system essentially compares each payer’s production in each category and assigns standardized values for each player in each category. When you add those numbers up, you get a player’s fantasy value above average. After a quick adjustment for positional scarcity, you’ve got fantasy value above replacement (FVARz). In the preseason this was helpful to get an idea about who might be over or undervalued. Now I’ve taken the Steamer rest of season projections both to see whose value has changed the most in the month or so since the season started and to potentially help with making trades.

Today I want to highlight a few players that were not included in the original Steamer projections. Next week I’ll take a look at the players whose value has increased the most since the start of the season. Read the rest of this entry »

Process, not results.

We all know this axiom. It applies to front offices and fantasy baseball players alike. It’s especially important for daily fantasy players to stick to the process and not get caught up in the results. There will be stretches where you find it difficult to cash, and there will certainly be stretches where you’ll find your bankroll stagnant. During those stretches it’s important that you not question your process. Stick with it, and over time you’ll see that bankroll grow.

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Let me start by saying I’m making an assumption that most of us form our basic opinions of a player’s fantasy value with categories in mind. By that I mean most of us play in yearly roto or H2H formats that use categories. Some people play in points leagues, but from what I can tell, points leagues make up a fairly small percentage of yearly leagues. And not all points leagues are the same. My guess is that whatever your opinion is of a player’s value, it’s somewhat based on categories.

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On Mondays I write about daily fantasy strategy. On Wednesdays I’m supposed to write about closers. To be frank, I enjoy the topic I have been assigned for Mondays much, much more. I despise chasing saves (as I discussed a couple of weeks ago), and the guys doing the Bullpen Report really have relievers covered. But a commenter on one of my recent daily fantasy strategy posts asked me a question that involved both daily fantasy strategy and closers. The commenter wanted to know how viable it is to use closers in daily contests.

Closers are usually the cheapest players available in daily contests. In today’s contests on Draftstreet, the 34 cheapest players are relievers and only 2 relievers have a price tag above $3,000 when the average salary of all non-relievers is just over $6,000. The obvious reason is that relievers are the only players that we don’t know whether they’ll play before their game starts. That uncertainty drives the price down and is why I’ve ignored using closers to this point. But I may have been doing it wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

The platoon advantage is a huge part of picking hitters for daily lineups. But just because a hitter doesn’t have the platoon advantage does not always mean you shouldn’t pick that hitter on that day. Some guys are good enough against same-handed pitching. Some guys have reverse splits. And then how do you handle switch hitters who always have the platoon advantage? Which side are they better from?

Below are a couple of charts. The first shows the guys who either have reverse splits or don’t have much of a platoon split. From what I can tell, Draftstreet does factor in whether a player has the platoon advantage when calculating his price for the day. As a result, the guys in the first chart could be values on days they face same-handed pitching. And the second chart shows how switch hitters fare from both sides of the plate. It might be handy to bookmark this post if you need to look up a switch hitter’s splits as opposed to looking up their player page each time you’re thinking about using them.

I should note that I only included players who have at least 450 PA from both sides of the plate since the beginning of 2011.

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There’s nothing I love more than a cliche for the title of a post.

Today I want to take a look at a few of the players who have seen some of the biggest drops in ownership percentage on ESPN.com so far this season. Because we’ve only played a few games this year, determining whether I think these guys should be snatched off the wire comes down to whether I liked them in the preseason. I put hundreds of hours into preseason prep work, so I might as well milk it for all it’s worth while I can.

Dillon Gee — 7-Day % Change: -27.6%

There was a point where four of the five most recent articles that showed up on Gee’s player page were written by yours truly. I loved what he did in 2012 when he saw a big spike in swinging strike rate which pushed his strikeout rate comfortably above league average. He also had a solid ground ball rate just over 50%, and he limited walks. But his ERA was north of 4.00 thanks to a strand rate that was in the lowest quantile among pitchers with at least as many innings as Gee. I was all over the guy with solid strikeout, walk and groundball rates going into 2013.

Gee delivered in a way with a 3.62 ERA last year. But he didn’t do it like I wanted him to. His swinging strike rate and strikeout rate fell back below league average to where they had been prior to 2012. His groundball rate also fell significantly as well, but his walk rate did hold. The main reason he was able to post a sub-4.00 ERA was a reversal of strand rate fortune. His strand rate went from 68.9% to 77.9%. To repeat his 2013 ERA he’ll either have to regain the above average strikeout and groundball rates or get lucky again. The good rates of 2012 seem to be the exception and not the rule, and you can’t own a guy banking on strand rate. Leave him on the wire, and use him as a streamer if the right matchup comes along. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year I took a look at the catchers and pitchers who were the worst at preventing stolen bases. The idea was that you could pick good base stealers when someone in the opposing battery was friendly to steals. Recently a reader asked me to update that study to include 2013’s stats. I was planning on doing just that, but the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s not a strategy you should employ on Draftstreet.

On a quick side note, if I had updated that study, it would have been more beneficial to just look at pitchers. As Blake Murphy pointed out on Thursday, Max Weinstein has recently done some research showing that the pitcher bears more of the responsibility of preventing stolen bases.

But the bigger reason the study isn’t worth updating is because of what I discussed last Monday, lineup stacking. Research has shown that upside increases the bigger your stack, and Draftstreet only allows you to use four players from the same team in a lineup. Research has also shown that downside decreases with each step down from no stacking to four man stacks before it starts to rise. That makes four man stacks an obvious strategy.

In a Draftstreet lineup that has nine slots for hitters, it makes the most sense to use two four-man stacks or three three-man stacks. If you use the three-man stacks, there’s not an extra slot in your lineup into which you can slot a speedster with a good matchup. And if you’re using two four-man stacks, you usually don’t have the flexibility for that last hitter slot to get a speedster into it. You should be picking your two stacks, picking your three pitchers, and then filling your last slot with the most expensive guy that fits in your remaining budget and has the platoon advantage.

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When I did four drafts in three days this past weekend, I did them assuming Bobby Parnell, Jim Henderson, Casey Janssen and Nate Jones would be pitching in the ninth inning when their teams had a lead. Less than a week later, all of those guys aren’t pitching in the ninth for various reasons. Yesterday, Mike Podhorzer looked at what to with Henderson and Jones (short answer: hold them), and Eno Sarris looked at whether age has become predictive of closer changes (short answer: no).

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Welcome back, degenerates.

We covered a lot of ground last year in our first year covering daily fantasy strategy. We covered everything from big stuff like how big of an impact weather has on run scoring to more minutiae-like topics such as identifying hitters who hit specific pitches well with matchups against pitchers who struggle with that particular pitch. But one thing I don’t believe we ever covered was the value of stacking multiple players from the same team in your lineup.

This offseason I read a great daily fantasy strategy book written by Jonathan Bales, Fantasy Football (and Baseball) for Smart People. It’s 120 pages of well researched, daily strategy goodness, and it only costs seven bucks. It’s highly recommended.  In the book, Bales tackled the issue of how to properly use stacks, and the results of his research might surprise you.

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