Ugh. Four games. Options are obviously limited today. And once you start looking at prices and match ups, the pool of available players shrinks a little more. For example, Cliff Lee will cost you a ridiculous $20,543 today. Paying that price really makes it hard to fill out a lineup full of guys who will actually play today. And Lee’s match up isn’t even that great. The Padres have the 5th best wRC+ against left handed pitching and are only 17th in K% vs. LHP. In fact, there aren’t many good match ups to be found for starters today. Here is a chart showing each probable starter along with the wRC+ and K% for their opponent against pitchers of the same handedness. Read the rest of this entry »

I love to gamble because almost nothing is more fun to me than watching a sporting event and caring about the outcome. I like it when something is at stake. That’s why I play fantasy baseball, and it’s why I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing daily fantasy this season. But I do not like to lose money. This is of course an obvious thing to say. Who does? But I think it bothers me more than most.

I grew up with a very cheap father. Admittedly, we weren’t exactly rolling in dough as he was a high school choir director and my mom worked part-time at a church. But we were much better off than you would presume us to be if you ever saw us out at dinner, which was a very rare occasion. But if we did go out to eat, my dad would blurt out “four waters” before the server had the chance to finish saying, “What can I get you guys to dri…” This was always very embarrassing. I understood that a Dr. Pepper wasn’t an option unless it was my birthday and somewhat respected the reason for that edict. But he could have at least let me order my own water to save a modicum of my dignity. Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Saude has been looking at match up data to forecast strikeout rate. His posts are very advanced, somewhat confusing, and have lots of pretty graphs. You can read them here and here, and I suggest that you do. The main thing I took away was that batters and pitchers contribute equally to the outcome of his expected K% formula. Strikeouts are a big deal when picking daily pitchers, so we should be looking at how much the opposing team strikes out against pitchers of the same handedness to try and pick pitchers’ with high strikeout totals. We all look at a pitcher’s match up, but we should be looking at the K% of the opposing team in addition to their overall offensive performance. Below are each teams K% versus both left and right handed pitching along with their wRC+. Read the rest of this entry »

When picking hitters, the quality and handedness of the opposing pitcher are probably the most important considerations aside from whether the hitter himself is any good and likely to be in the lineup. And it makes sense to be very mindful of the opposing pitcher; the hitter will probably face the starter for most of his plate appearances that day. But starting pitchers are averaging 5.89 innings per start this year, which means that a full third of most games is handled by other pitchers to which we give no consideration. When you consider the fact that most pitchers you choose to start hitters against are below average, the bullpen probably factors into closer to four innings of each game as opposed to just three.

I decided to figure out which bullpens are the most hitter friendly in Draftstreet contests. To do this I had to figure out how many points each reliever has allowed to this point in Draftstreet contests. I pulled all of their batting against statistics, added up all the positive scoring events for hitters and then subtracted all the negative scoring events for hitters. The formula was this: (1B + (2B x 2) + (3B x 3) + (HR x 4) + (HBP x 0.75) + (BB x 0.75) + (R x 1.5) + (RBI x 1.5) + (SB x 2) + (SAC x .75)) – ((K x 0.75) + (GDP x 0.75) + CS). Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve never played a daily fantasy contest, you may be unsure what type of game to play. You have to make a few decisions to find the right game for you.

The first decision is salary cap or pick ‘em. Salary cap is exactly what it sounds like. You have a salary cap ($100,000) to pick your lineup which consists of three pitchers, one player at each infield position, three outfielders and a utility slot. In a pick ‘em contest, everyone picks one player from each tier. Tiers are just small groupings of players.

I prefer salary cap because it requires a little more effort. You have to sift through all the players in a cap contest as opposed to a small number of players in a pick ‘em. If you’re willing to put in the time required to find the value in a cap contest, you may have an advantage. Everyone in the contest may not be willing to take the time to find value. Read the rest of this entry »

The platoon advantage is a well established concept. And it’s one of the most important factors, if not the most important factor, when picking hitters in daily fantasy contests. When I pick hitters, I start at the bottom of the list at each position and scroll up until I find a hitter that is facing a pitcher of the opposite handedness who also happens to not be very good.

The problem with this strategy is that not all hitters have a normal platoon split, and others have about the same level of success against both LHP and RHP. The other issue is with switch hitters. Every day I have to look up a switch hitter’s splits from each side.

Below are two charts I’ve created to make this process easier. The first shows the players who are either better against pitchers who throw from the same side from which they hit or players who have roughly equal success against pitchers of either handedness. The second shows the splits for switch hitters. Read the rest of this entry »

A new month is always a good time to look at splits. Actually, the ‘Last 30’ split available on the site allows you to look at the last “month” at anytime you would like, but there is something arbitrarily pleasing about looking at totals from a calendar month.

One of the more interesting things about May splits is how different the reactions are to stats in the second month of the season compared to the first. For example, there was plenty of concern for Eric Homser, Asdrubal Cabrera and Allen Craig after an April in which they had wOBAs of .288, .288 and .287, respectively. However, there isn’t a ton of panic concerning Justin Upton, Carlos Santana and Starling Marte who all had wOBAs under .300 in May. Read the rest of this entry »

As is the goal in real life, the goal in daily fantasy with pitchers is to avoid giving up hits, walks and runs while pitching deep into the game and striking out a lot of batters. But which of those objectives helps a pitcher earn the most fantasy points per game in Draftstreet’s daily salary cap format? Read the rest of this entry »

If you play salary cap contests on daily fantasy sites like Draftstreet, you are fully aware that starting pitchers are more expensive than hitters. This is quite obviously because the scoring systems are such that starting pitchers score more points than hitters. I’m sure the goal of whoever does the pricing is to make hitting and pitching of equal value. But in my experience I’ve had more success in these contests when I spend more on pitching, which makes me think that’s where the value lies. Read the rest of this entry »

Home runs are obviously the best way to pick up points in a Draftstreet contest. You get credit for a point per total base, so home runs are worth four points. But in reality they are worth at least seven points because you also get a point and a half each for the run and the RBI. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to go for power in every slot on a salary cap team. The guys who hit consistently for power are priced accordingly, and you can’t afford to take a consistent power hitter in each slot.

Find yourself a stud or two with a favorable lefty-righty matchup against a bad pitcher and try to get your power there. But elsewhere, you’re going to have to find points in other ways. And one other way is to identify good situations for base stealers. A stolen base is worth two points, but really it’s worth 2.75-3 points because the player has to walk (.75 points) or get a single (one point) in order to attempt a steal.

Read the rest of this entry »