There’s quite a bit of chaos in the Murphy household at the moment, so I didn’t have time to dive into more stadium-specific wind effects, but look for Wrigley Field data on Saturday.

As for today’s slate, we’ve got an uncharacteristically large player pool to choose from, with 28 teams playing. Usually Thursday’s are heavy on the off days – instead, today’s schedule has six afternoon games. That’s great for viewing but it’s not ideal for daily leagues as you’ll be forced to either set a line-up early or play with a thinner player pool in an evening-only format.

Instead of an environment or league-wide stat focus in today’s preamble, I just want a few extra words on a particular value play among today’s early games.
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One thing I look at when mining for Draftstreet bargains is the “last 30 days” filter on Fangraphs leaderboards. While there has been much work done on the predictiveness (or lack thereof) of “streaks” (for one example, see The Book), you aren’t necessarily falling prey to the Gambler’s Fallacy when looking for guys who have good underlying peripherals. Four weeks is not a long time, but for many players, it may be enough to recognize fundamental shifts in skill (batting eye, contact rate, etc.). More importantly, since  valuation of players inherently is skewed towards counting stats (in Draftstreet’s case, fantasy points per game), you can get a good sense of whether a “hot” or “cold” player’s value has been artificially inflated/suppressed and exploit arbitrages that way.

Some examples of the stats I look at?

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The trade deadline is upon us, and guys are on the move. Yesterday, it was Matt Garza heading to the Rangers. Today, it sounds like it could be Alfonso Soriano moving back to the Bronx.

Daily fantasy, like any other fantasy format, requires us to keep a careful eye on the guys moving from one situation to another. Unlike in most formats, though, we don’t have to play guessing games or acquire a player hoping that his situation will change. All we have to do is read, analyze, and react in daily leagues. So what do we want to keep in mind when a player changes their situation?

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I love the commenters on this site. I write elsewhere, and the audience is more interactive here than anywhere else I’ve seen. And it’s not just that they’re involved; it’s that their they’re smart. I’ve gotten several ideas for posts from commenters, and they frequently point out things that I miss. But I think they may have one thing wrong. Or at least there may be something upon which they’re placing too much weight.

When picking pitchers, the first thing I look at is the quality of the pitcher’s opponent against pitchers of the same handedness. Well, I take that back. The first thing I look at is whether the pitcher is any good or not. But I don’t usually have to look that up. After those initial hurdles are cleared, I look at conditions. I’m looking for cooler temperatures and winds blowing in (with a few exceptions). All of these factors generally go toward run prevention.

But commenters often point out a pitcher’s strikeout ability and/or the strikeout percentage of the opposing team. They note the importance of strikeouts on Draftstreet. I myself used to look at the opposing team’s K% as one of the more important factors, but I seemed to have more success when I placed most of my attention on run prevention. But was I right to favor run prevention over strikeout potential? Or are the commenters right? Is strikeout percentage the most important factor? Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I wrote about some interesting findings regarding how the Rogers Centre plays and how it’s reputation for being a hitter’s park is somewhat misconstrued when looked at on a day-to-day basis. I cut the analysis short because the Dome was expected to be closed (it had stormed all night and was overcast in the morning) but it was open. It was also 75 degrees, with an 11MPH wind blowing out to center, and there was just a lone home run hit. That’s a day after eight (!) were hit on Friday with the Dome closed.

That ultimate small sample might lead one to believe the park plays better closed, but Rob Pettapiece found this not to be true.

Given the past two days and the fact that I’ll be at The Stadium Formerly Known as SkyDome a few times in the next week, I decided to dive in a bit deeper. I pulled weather and scoring data from 2010 to the present and summated it after the jump.
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Rogers Centre is sometimes grouped in with the “joke stadium” crowd for being a park that is very hitter friendly. It sure looked that way on Friday, too, with eight home runs flying out when the Jays and Rays did battle (8-5 final).

However, a recent article by Rob Pettapiece at Baseball Prospectus shed light on an interesting conclusion – Rogers Centre primarily plays “up” in seasonal numbers because the retractable roof prevents games from being played at cold temperatures. It takes any poor conditioned game and makes it 72 and sunny.

This afternoon, the Dome is likely to be closed unless I get a nice change in weather fortunes as I head out to the game. So with Mark Buehrle and Jeremy Hellickson on the mound, is today a good day to pick Rays or Jays?
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In the preseason, I took a look at the pitchers and catchers who are the best and worst match ups for base stealers. Today I want to update that piece. The home run is king in daily fantasy, but steals can help as well. Picking the best base stealers of the day won’t win you a lot of daily contests, but you can’t spend big on power hitters at every position. A steal will get you a couple of points on DraftStreet, plus it comes along with the point from the single or three quarters of a point from the walk that allowed the hitter to reach base.

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The mid-way point of the MLB season is a good time for fantasy players to sit back and take stock of their lot in life. For seasonal players, that means identifying areas of improvement and deciding whether to buy or sell in dynasty leagues.

For those who play in daily leagues, though, there’s a lot less to do. If you’re a DraftStreet or Fangraphs The Game addict, the last four days have probably been excruciating. But just because there aren’t set rosters and waiver wires to scourge during the four-day off-period doesn’t mean daily players can’t do some reflecting and improve for the second half.

Take a look at your bankroll compared to the start of the season and evaluate how you’ve done. If you’re meticulous and keep notes on your selections, see if you’ve been playing better in double-up formats or win-it-all formats. Have days with thin schedules hurt your payouts? It’s never too late to alter a gaming and/or investment strategy.
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I wrote up the home run derby contestants on our sister site The Hardball Times earlier in the day, but I thought I would give you some additional charts in case you were thinking about putting down some gummi bears on the outcome of the home run derby coming up soon. All stats in the charts are current Through Monday, July 15, and the odds come from Sports.Bodog.Eu. It looks like there are two front-runners according to these numbers.

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I’m not sure if there’s value in this, but I’m kicking the tires on making my Sunday Daily Fantasy spot a “week in review” kind of piece, touching on what some of the others looked at, in terms of research, throughout the week. Let’s try it for today and then get to the Daily Five.

Monday: Talley looks at using ROS ZIPS to find value. It’s a long but potentially valuable process.
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