Daily Fantasy Strategy – 6/7/13 – For Draftstreet
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.
The sample includes all hitters with 300+ PA against both LHP and RHP since 2011. I used wOBA to compare the splits.
| Name | L/R/S | wOBA v. LHP | wOBA v. RHP | wOBA Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mike Napoli | R | 0.36 | 0.405 | 0.045 |
| Adam Jones | R | 0.32 | 0.362 | 0.042 |
| John Buck | R | 0.266 | 0.307 | 0.041 |
| Marco Scutaro | R | 0.32 | 0.345 | 0.025 |
| Elvis Andrus | R | 0.299 | 0.319 | 0.02 |
| Adrian Beltre | R | 0.369 | 0.388 | 0.019 |
| Miguel Cabrera | R | 0.422 | 0.437 | 0.015 |
| Chris Johnson | R | 0.315 | 0.326 | 0.011 |
| Ben Revere | L | 0.292 | 0.281 | 0.011 |
| Dan Uggla | R | 0.32 | 0.329 | 0.009 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | L | 0.294 | 0.286 | 0.008 |
| Aaron Hill | R | 0.334 | 0.34 | 0.006 |
| Josh Willingham | R | 0.361 | 0.366 | 0.005 |
| Paul Konerko | R | 0.36 | 0.365 | 0.005 |
| Dustin Ackley | L | 0.29 | 0.287 | 0.003 |
| Mark Reynolds | R | 0.341 | 0.344 | 0.003 |
| Mark Trumbo | R | 0.341 | 0.343 | 0.002 |
| Cameron Maybin | R | 0.298 | 0.298 | 0 |
| Ian Desmond | R | 0.325 | 0.324 | -0.001 |
| B.J. Upton | R | 0.316 | 0.315 | -0.001 |
| Albert Pujols | R | 0.363 | 0.361 | -0.002 |
| Jhonny Peralta | R | 0.337 | 0.334 | -0.003 |
| Alcides Escobar | R | 0.295 | 0.292 | -0.003 |
| Michael Morse | R | 0.372 | 0.362 | -0.01 |
| David Wright | R | 0.371 | 0.358 | -0.013 |
| Alex Rios | R | 0.334 | 0.321 | -0.013 |
| Starlin Castro | R | 0.333 | 0.32 | -0.013 |
| Austin Jackson | R | 0.345 | 0.33 | -0.015 |
| Reed Johnson | R | 0.344 | 0.328 | -0.016 |
| Name | L/R/S | wOBA v. LHP | wOBA v. RHP | wOBA Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matt Wieters | S | 0.423 | 0.299 | 0.124 |
| Shane Victorino | S | 0.396 | 0.312 | 0.084 |
| Neil Walker | S | 0.274 | 0.348 | 0.074 |
| Jimmy Rollins | S | 0.273 | 0.342 | 0.069 |
| Cliff Pennington | S | 0.243 | 0.298 | 0.055 |
| Mark Teixeira | S | 0.39 | 0.336 | 0.054 |
| Danny Espinosa | S | 0.343 | 0.293 | 0.05 |
| Coco Crisp | S | 0.291 | 0.34 | 0.049 |
| Carlos Santana | S | 0.383 | 0.337 | 0.046 |
| Alberto Callaspo | S | 0.335 | 0.306 | 0.029 |
| Nick Swisher | S | 0.377 | 0.349 | 0.028 |
| Jed Lowrie | S | 0.347 | 0.325 | 0.022 |
| Ben Zobrist | S | 0.368 | 0.348 | 0.02 |
| Chase Headley | S | 0.344 | 0.361 | 0.017 |
| Angel Pagan | S | 0.307 | 0.324 | 0.017 |
| Erick Aybar | S | 0.306 | 0.323 | 0.017 |
| Melky Cabrera | S | 0.366 | 0.35 | 0.016 |
| Justin Smoak | S | 0.294 | 0.308 | 0.014 |
| Jose Reyes | S | 0.348 | 0.359 | 0.011 |
| Carlos Beltran | S | 0.366 | 0.375 | 0.009 |
| Dexter Fowler | S | 0.364 | 0.366 | 0.002 |
| Jemile Weeks | S | 0.303 | 0.302 | 0.001 |
| Asdrubal Cabrera | S | 0.336 | 0.336 | 0 |
| Emilio Bonifacio | S | 0.311 | 0.311 | 0 |
| Maicer Izturis | S | 0.296 | 0.296 | 0 |
The Daily Five
James Shields, $16,292
This is your bi-weekly reminder to spend big on pitchers. They score more points, so you want to spend more on quality pitchers to give yourself the best chance at having one of the highest point scorers. Of the expensive starters today, Shields has the best matchup against Houston with maybe the exception of Matt Harvey against the Marlins. But I’m going with Shields because I like Harvey’s opponent.
Jose Fernandez, $11,899
And Harvey’s opponent is Mr. Fernandez. The kid impressed in his first two starts of the season but struggled in his next few starts. But when the calendar turned to May, he showed improvement. His xFIP improved from 3.84 in March to 3.60 in May, and his K% jumped 1.6% and his BB% fell 1.5%. And he looked great in the first start of June when he held the Mets scoreless with eight strikeouts while allowing just four base runners over seven innings. He’ll face those very same Mets today who are 26th in the league in wRC+.
Alberto Callaspo, $6,132
Callaspo is a swtich hitter who appears in the second list above. He has been quite a bit better against LHP the last few years, and he’ll face one today in Boston, Felix Doubront.
Alex Gordon, $7,457
This is a good opportunity to remind everyone that it’s not a great idea to worry about streaks too much in daily contests. Sure, Gordon is hitting just .184 over the last 14 days, but he has a .379 wOBA against RHP over the last two-plus years. Trust the larger sample size, and start Gordon in a good macthup against bad right-hander Jordan Lyles.
Jedd Gyorko, $6,181
This seems like one of the bargains of the day. Draftstreet is really good about setting prices daily and not letting bargains slip through the cracks. They’re obviously aware of the platoon advantage, and they adjust prices accordingly. They’re also very aware of the quality of the opposing pitcher. But I think they missed this one. Gyorko is only the 15th most expensive 2B despite the fact that he has a favorable platoon matchup against LHP Jorge de la Rosa. And it’s in Colorado. The only thing I can figure is that the Draftstreet pricers see de la Rosa’s 3.10 ERA and assume he is a quality opponent. But I see his 4.52 SIERA and his below average K% and BB% and I know that he’s not a quality opponent. Gyorko’s teammate, Everth Cabrera, is also a nice bargain at SS for $5,495.
Friday SPECIAL for FanGraphs Readers
Daily Fantasy is easy — you pick a lineup that’s good for one night only, and then you’re eligible to win cash. Draftstreet is running a contest this Friday, just for FanGraphs fans.This contest will have GUARANTEED OVERLAY of at least $500 (extra money added to the pot courtesy of DraftStreet). The buy-in is $11 with $1,000 in prizes up for grabs, but there are only 50 spots available so hurry up and join now (maximum of 3 entries per user).
This post, covering one of the leading sites for daily fantasy, is sponsored and made possible by the generous support of Draftstreet. FanGraphs maintains complete editorial control of the postings, and brings you these posts in a continued desire to provide the best analytical information on the latest in baseball.
You can find more of Brett's work on TheFantasyFix.com or follow him on Twitter @TheRealTAL.
your sample sizes are probably too small to matter here. according to tom tango’s work, you’ll need to regress your righties by about 2000 PAs and your lefties by 750 or so (not sure the exact number but it’s somewhere close). you might do better using a stat that stabilizes more quickly, like HR rate.
Not sure I’d go so far as to say they’re too small to matter, but I do take your point. I chose 300 PA because it cleared the stability hurdle for K rate, BB rate, single rate,, ISO, GB and FB rate per Russell Carleton’s work. I certainly agree that a larger sample size would have been better, but if I’d made it much larger, the sample would have been very small. Again, I take your point that these numbers may not be totally reliable. But I just wanted to point out guys that people should be aware of because they don’t necessarily follow the traditional L/R split.
And I understand that clearing the hurdles for those other stats doesn’t have anything to do with wOBA being reliable, but I was just trying to make it simple.
right. i don’t mean to say that the player list is meaningless, just that the wOBA numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.