Some teams just match up extraordinarily well against certain-handed pitchers, and it’s high time that we took advantage of that in our daily fantasy games. By now we’re all aware of the platoon advantage, and like to use favorable handedness matchups to ruin our foes and predict which hitters will struggle (or succeed) against either left-handed or right-handed pitching.
I’ve gotta do things a bit different today. I’m gone for the weekend so I’m writing this on Friday morning, which means two things: I am dealing with way less certainty surrounding weather and line-ups, and I’m getting prices off of a file I believe to be correct from DraftStreet but really don’t know.
I realize that most daily leaguers don’t have the option to set a daily roster in advance (for the record, I don’t either, and am just making recommendations and not playing this weekend), but the following tips will hold for those times you can manage to set a line-up late the night before or early the day of, without the benefit of waiting for less volatile weather or line-up guess work.
And that word is key in times like this – volatility.
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 »
I’m going away for the weekend. Normally I cover the Saturday and Sunday daily fantasy posts, but this weekend I’ll only be handling Saturday’s edition, and I’ll be writing it Friday morning. The blurb that day will be about taking safer players with assured playing time when you set a daily roster that far out.
All of that is to say, I might have a tough time being in the money on the weekend, so there’s added pressure to go HAM on today’s daily fantasy and really cash in. Let’s swing for the fences, folks. It’s just too bad we don’t have Jeff Francis to pick on today.
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There’s more than one way to skin a cat is a saying that exists. Why the heck that’s a saying, or how it came to be one, is beyond me, but it’s worth keeping in mind when it comes to daily fantasy leagues.
Case in point: when I first started playing DraftStreet, I wanted the glory and the big gains. Entering the “standard” format pools where only the top few performances are paid out, I was getting a little frustrated that finishing, say, 10th out of 100 people wasn’t upping my bankroll. After all, being consistently near the top is probably more impressive than occasionally being the top performer.
So I lowered my cash out expectations and switched primarily to the “double-up” pay-out format, whereby the top 50% of players get paid out double their entry fee. The gains are much smaller, but in the long run it’s probably a better strategy for me since I’m confident I can continue to beat half the field.
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Today is a really fun day for baseball-watchers, as we’re treated to two really interesting doubleheaders in addition to our regular spate of baseballing action. Not only are there seventeen games of MLB action today (barring weather issues), but each of those doubleheaders will feature a debuting top prospect. Wil Myers is prepped to make his major-league debut in the first game of the Rays-Red Sox double-bill in Boston, while Zack Wheeler will start for the Mets in the second game of a New York-Atlanta twofer.
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 »
I had a bad day in this space yesterday. I admit it. I have bad days, sometimes too often. Sometimes I get in the zone and roll off a few good ones in a row. Such is life in the fantasy world, and it’s why a lot of people prefer the long-game of seasonal leagues. In those leagues, some of the daily variance goes away because there are far fewer decisions to be made.
Daily leaguers, though, crave that renewed challenge every morning to try and beat the system and beat each other. It’s a part of what makes formats like DraftStreet or Fangraphs The Game so fun and addicting – if you win, you feel the high and want to keep rolling, and if you lose there’s a chance to bounce back the next day.
In that way, daily fantasy leagues are a lot like actual baseball, though it’s certainly much more difficult than “you throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball.” Those who avoid daily leagues? Lollygaggers.
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Chris Sale struck out 14 Houston Astros yesterday and took the loss. He gave up just two runs in eight innings and, because it’s worth repeating, he struck out 14 batters. And he took the loss. Ugh.
So is this a lesson that we should throw up our hands at pitcher wins? Well, yeah, that’s been the case for some time. But they matter in fantasy, particularly in daily leagues – in DraftStreet, a win is worth 1.5 points and a loss is worth -0.75. Sale was a huge point getter last night, but he could have got an additional 2.25 if the Sox could, you know, hit.
So what’s a daily leaguer to do? You could avoid pitchers on bad teams altogether, skipping White Sox pitchers, Angels pitchers, Astros pitchers? No. You just can’t limit your player pool like that. And a guy like Sale was still worth a heck of a lot.
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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 »