I feel like all I ever talk about when writing about daily fantasy is platoon splits. Last week I talked about the best and worst starters against batters of each handedness, and today I want to mention a few teams that have some weird splits.

No team has a bigger difference in their performance versus left-handed and right-handed pitching than the Braves who are 30% better than league average against left-handed pitching and 22% below average against right-handed pitching. To be fair, we’re still dealing with some really small sample sizes. Justin Upton and Evan Gattis are leading the way against left-handed pitching as they each have a wRC+ vs. LHP north of 300 but each have less than 50 PA against LHP. That can’t keep up, and the gap will certainly narrow as the season goes on, which is something that can be said for any teams discussed below. But only pick on the Braves with right-handed pitchers.

The Cubs are another team you might like to pick on, but they’ve got a wRC+ of 112 against left-handed pitching. Against right-handed pitching, they’re the worst team in the league with a wRC+ of 73. The Phillies are also much worse against righties. As are the Rangers. In years past you were probably avoiding the Rangers offense on most days, but right now you only need to avoid them with left-handers.

On the flip side, the Indians and Dodgers are tied for the fifth best wRC+ in the league, but they’re doing their damage against right-handed pitching. If you’re going to dominate pitchers of one handedness, right-handers are the ones to dominate since about two-thirds of pitchers are right-handed. But avoid them the third of the time when they face lefties. The Reds offense is another that might have been avoided in the recent past, but they’re the fourth worst offense in the league according to wRC+. You can use pitcher’s of either handedness against them, but their 71 wRC+ vs. LHP is the worst in the league.

Read the rest of this entry »

We all know how important the platoon advantage is to daily fantasy. It can be important for those who platoon slots on their roto rosters as well, but it’s a part of almost all decisions made in daily fantasy. We almost always want our hitters to have it with the exception of the elite hitters who can handle pitchers of either handedness and a weirdo here and there with reverse splits like Adam Jones. There are also some pitchers who have reverse splits, and there are some pitchers who follow the traditional split to an exaggerated degree. Below is a chart showing the best and worst pitchers against batters of each handedness from 2012 to May 31. After the chart and the jump I’ll discuss some of the names.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s talk about the fact that Draftstreet doesn’t allow late swaps. In a minute, how to prepare for it, but first, how to potentially take advantage of it.

On weekends and on travel days there are usually early contests encompassing all games and late contests that only consist of the late games. In the early contests, rosters lock when the first game starts. When someone in your lineup playing in a late game isn’t in the lineup, there’s nothing you can do about it. As a result, I’ve generally tended to avoid early contests all together and just play the late contests so that all lineups are usually posted before rosters lock. Or if I play in early contests, I’ll skew towards teams playing in the early games and avoid stacks for teams playing late games.

Yesterday I did things different. I entered the early contests and used plenty of hitters and stacks in late games because I liked the matchups and values, the A’s and the Dodgers in particular. In the GPP I entered, the four Dodgers I used all had an ownership percentage of 3% or less, and Josh Donaldson was the only Athletic that was widely owned.

I have the suspicion that this is partly due to other players sharing my aversion to the risk of using players that can’t be confirmed in their team’s lineup before rosters lock. It’s also possible that enough people just didn’t think the Dodgers/A’s stacks had as much upside and/or value as I did. But I’m thinking this may be a situation where you can zig when everyone else zags. And zigging with good players is a strategy I can get on board with.

If you’re going to use players in late games, you’ve got to do all you can to avoid players who are left out of the lineup. First things first, avoid any guys who have any sort of injury concern at all. I usually just check each player on the ESPN fantasy page and see if any recent updates mention anything about an injury.

Second, you should be aware of how teams use platoons. Some players are obviously part of a platoon and should be avoided in matchups where they don’t have the platoon advantage. But teams often order players differently against lefties than they do righties. Be aware of that when using stacks so you can be reasonably certain that the players you stack will be hitting next to or at least near each other in the lineup. The best way to see how teams usually order their lineup is to take a look at their most recent lineups, which can be found at MLBDepthCharts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since we’re past the point in the season where most pitchers have faced enough batters of each handedness for us to give some weight to their strikeout and walk rates, my plan was to take a look at pitchers who struggled against hitters of the opposite handedness last year to see if any had made any improvements so far this year. But in that pursuit I got completely sidetracked when I found a couple of guys who surprisingly had a reverse split in K-BB%. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve mentioned this before, but each week I take the updated Steamer rest-of-season projections and run them through the Draftstreet scoring system to get per game projections for each player. Every day I’ll compare those projections to cost to determine value plays for the day. After the jump I’ve embedded a couple of charts with the updated per game projections for the rest of the season. When preparing each day, you can export the prices from Draftstreet and put them in a column next to each player’s projection (use the vlookup function in Excel to do this). Then just divide cost by points, and you’ve got value for all players.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the preseason I hypothesized that Brett Lawrie was not going to be a post-hype sleeper. This past week one of my best Twitter friends, Moe Koltun (@moeproblems), asked if my thoughts on Lawrie had changed from the preseason. Seeing that I needed something to write about for my regular Wednesday post, I thought I’d answer Moe’s question with 1,000 words or so. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve got a really short slate today with only five games going on. I’m guessing this may have have been discussed at some point since these posts started last year, but I wonder if it’s a good idea to invest as much on a short slate day as you normally would. Or is it even a good idea to play at all on short slate days?

My thought is that because the options are fewer it’s harder to gain an advantage. More people are going to use optimal plays simply because there aren’t as many players to choose from. It’s a lot easier to pick the three best pitchers of the day when there are only ten to choose from as opposed to thirty. Easier sounds like a good thing until you remember it’s easier for everyone. If you fancy yourself good at this game, it makes more sense to put your money in, or at least more of your money in, when it’s harder for everyone else to pick the optimal plays.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a question I’ve asked myself several times this year when preparing for daily fantasy contests. My assumption was that run scoring in doubleheader games might be lower because of fatigue and because it’s not uncommon for teams to start bench players in one of the two doubleheader games. But after a little digging, I found that assumption to be incorrect. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve mentioned this before, but whenever I’m doing my daily prep I use some baseline projections I calculate from the Steamer RoS projections. Every Sunday I take the updated Steamer RoS projections, run the relevant statistics through the DraftStreet scoring system, and then cut them down to a per-game basis. I use these per-game projections to help me determine value. For starting pitchers, I make daily adjustments for matchups and then compare the adjusted projections to salaries to determine the best value. For hitters, I look at opposing pitchers and Vegas game lines to see which teams might have the best offensive days, and then compare the RoS projections to salaries to determine the best value.

If you’d like to use these projections in the same way, I have provided them after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I took a look at the three hitters who were not included in the initial Steamer preseason projections who are now projected to be above average fantasy players for the rest of the year. Today I want to look at the hitters who were included in the preseason projections who have seen their projected value increase the most one month into the season. I explained the methodology in the last post, but the short version is that each player is assigned a standardized score for each roto category (using z-scores) and when those are added up and an adjustment is made for positional scarcity we get a number called fantasy value above replacement (FVARz). Full disclosure: I’m using the numbers I calculated using the rest-of-season projections on April 29. I didn’t have time to re-run the numbers for this post, but that shouldn’t have a huge effect. Read the rest of this entry »