What do you do when two pitchers square off? A lot depends on context, of course, but on Thursday two great pitchers square off in a favorable environment. Adam Wainwright takes on Matt Harvey in new York, where it’s expected to be just 64-degrees and with a 17 MPH wind blowing in to third base.

Two good pitchers, both in a friendly environment, but there’s, at most, one win up for grabs. In a daily format like Fangraphs The Game, this doesn’t matter as much, since you’re playing for the long haul and peripheral stats rule the day. But in a daily one-and-done format like DraftStreet, finding that elusive victory is important – they’re worth 1.5 points versus -0.75 for a loss. That 2.25-point swing is equivalent to three extra strikeouts.
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What do you do when the signs point in different directions? In daily leagues, this can be a huge question. Luckily for Wednesday, there are ample options available, but what about on days where there aren’t?

Today provides a good example of these clashing signals that we have to make a decision from. Case in point:

At game time tomorrow, the temperature in Kansas City is expected to be about 89-degrees, which can significantly impact run scoring in a positive way. In addition, they are anticipating an 18 MPH wind out to right field, a ridiculously helpful boost for hitters, especially lefties.

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The trouble with daily fantasy baseball is that on some days, everything looks like a bad option.

Sometimes it finally feels like the smart guys who assign value to players hit most everything, at least for a day. There isn’t a glaring value that jumps out at you, and sometimes — even after further inspection — you’re not sure that you can find a hole in the system to exploit. The options may not all be bad, but they’re at least just “okay” or “average,” and that could keep you from being a winner and just falling into the middle of the pack.

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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 »

20 innings. 18 innings. Wild.

On Saturday, the Miami Marlins and New York Mets played a 20-inning game that saw both teams use a starting pitcher out of the bullpen for seven innings or longer. The Marlins also used six bullpen arms, while the Mets used six as well.

The Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers also played an 18-inning affair, with the Jays using all eight of their active bullpen arms (eight-man bullpen, hey!). The Rangers managed to use just four relievers thanks to Ross Wolf giving them 6.2 before surrendering a game-winning Bert (a Bert is an unearned run – earned runs are Ernies).

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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 »

Last Sunday in this space, I spoke about not being too clever in daily formats. My point was that you have a daily budget, not one that spans a week or month or season. If you think an ace is going to have an ace-like game, then select him, and ditto for hitters. There’s no point in leaving money on the table just to show that you’re clever.

At the same time, it also doesn’t make sense to spend money just because it’s there. It’s certainly possible that what you see as an optimal line-up for the day only fills about 90% of your budget. Consider the following example where you have a $100 to spend on two pitchers.

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If you play in daily leagues, you don’t need me to tell you how important starting lineups are. Annoying, I’ve gotten burned not once, but twice, over the last week, catching Alex Rios and Andrew McCutchen on days they weren’t playing after setting my lineup around noon. I don’t care how good the rest of your lineup is, a guy sitting on the bench is a big goose egg. If you’re like me, and set your Draftstreet lineups early in the morning; be sure to log back in around 6 PM (or in the next couple of hours today!) to make sure the guys you are paying for will see the field. For those who play in leagues with daily moves and game caps, it’s also a wise strategy to physically move guys out of the lineup who aren’t starting. Three pinch hit AB’s from your LF still count as three whole games on the stat sheet. Friendly reminder: be sure to click on “scores” on the Fangraphs menu bar for starting lineups essentially as soon as they are posted. Here’s the link for today.

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I absolutely love it when prospects get called up. LOVE IT. There’s nothing more exciting than infinite possibility. It’s what makes the first day of the regular season so special, and the first day of the playoffs, and, I dunno, it helped make Star Wars pretty cool.

It can also make your fantasy teams complete disasters.

I’m as guilty of it as anyone — oftentimes I’ll run a team of highly-touted prospects out there when creating a fantasy squad, and when they invariably take their lumps, I cringe, see my team fall in the standings, and really wish I had drafted Aramis Ramirez instead of, say, Brett Lawrie last year.

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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 »