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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Agenda

1. Snake Bit
2. DFS Picks
3. Monday at Yahoo (and other standard sites)
4. Guess

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Sundays are the best. Not only is the afternoon filled with baseball, today MLB has graced us with a well-staggered schedule, meaning there will be a handful of games on at any given time.

Unfortunately, staggered start times can make daily fantasy plays riskier, because it means less certainty when setting your lineup. Sure, weekdays bring that concern too, but there are normally enough 7 p.m. starts that, if you’re risk-averse in that regard, you can structure your team such that you don’t have roster spots subject to the whims of managers.

Today, that’s less apparent, and zeroes are the worst. But there are ways to work around it.

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Well, last night was a dud. Chris Sale and Jose Fernandez got knocked around a bit. Andrew Cashner was phenomenal, and pretty much everyone I recommended performed rather poorly despite their match-up advantages. Here’s to hoping today is a little more fruitful.

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Agenda

1. 1. Ramiro Pena is not the answer
2. 2. DFS firing solutions
3. 3. Sunday pitchers
4. 4. Das Table

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Agenda

1. Frustration Set In
2. DFS Pitchers
3. Traditional Fantasy Picks
4. That There Table

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It’s ace day! Jose Fernandez (my personal favorite), David Price, Yu Darvish, Madison Bumgarner, Chris Sale, and Felix Hernandez all take the bump today. If none of those guys make you feel all tingly then you can watch one of the other fantastic hurlers (Teheran, Ryu, Cueto, Cashner, etc.) instead. Seriously, tonight is stacked with phenomenal pitching. And I’m not sure about your interests, but pitching is my absolute favorite part of the game.

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Agenda

1. What is an overlay?
2. DFS Picks
3. Traditional Fantasy Friday
4. La Table

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Striekouts rule in DraftStreet. Find a hurler who can rack up 10 punch-outs, and the baseline he needs to reach with the rest of his performance shrinks significantly. Gamble on a power hitter who ends up whiffing multiple times, and you could be looking at a big, money-sucking negative in the points column.

So identifying strikeout potential is key, and once we have a little more data about each team, we’ll be able to attack them appropriately. Strikeout rates cross the 50-percent stabilization threshold (that is, half of future performance can be predicted by performance to date) earlier than any other stat – 60 plate appearances for hitters and 70 batters faced for pitchers.

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Agenda

1. It’s a long season
2. Another split day at DFS
3. Thin Thursday Cometh
4. The Factor Grid

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