Daily Fantasy Strategy – 8/9/13 – For Draftstreet

On Monday I took a look at Paul Goldschmidt’s strange home/road splits. Despite a basic park factor of 105 in Arizona in addition to a 105 factor for home runs for right-handers, Goldschmidt has been noticeably better on the road. And as I was trolling around looking at numbers this week, I came across Joey Votto who has also been quite a bit better on the road despite a very favorable home ballpark.

So I decided to see what other players were seeing some backwards home/road splits. I took all players with 600+ PA both at home and on the road since the beginning of 2011. And I only included players that called the same ballpark home for that entire span. Below is a list of the players whose home wOBA is lower than their road wOBA despite their home park having an above average basic park factor.

Name	Home wOBA	Away wOBA	% Diff.	Home Factor	% Diff
Elvis Andrus	0.298	0.324	-8.0%	106	0.14
Miguel Montero	0.334	0.35	-4.6%	105	0.10
Joey Votto	0.402	0.428	-6.1%	102	0.08
Adam Dunn	0.316	0.326	-3.1%	104	0.07
Nick Markakis	0.33	0.339	-2.7%	103	0.06
Derek Jeter	0.333	0.345	-3.5%	102	0.05
Alcides Escobar	0.281	0.291	-3.4%	101	0.04
Robinson Cano	0.377	0.382	-1.3%	102	0.03

Andrus comes in as the guy with the strangest split. His production at home is 8% worse than it is on the road despite the fact that his home park factor indicates that his production at home should be 6% better than on the road. As you move down the list the dip in home production becomes less significant, but this is just a notice that there are a few guys who aren’t producing better at home like you might expect. As a daily contest player, I’ll be careful not to overvalue these guys when they’re playing in their favorable home ballpark, especially Andrus and Votto.

The Daily Five

Matt Garza, $16,889 – The “start pitchers facing the Astros” advice is well traveled territory at this point, but you can’t pass up a good pitcher when facing the team with the 2nd worst wRC+ against right-handed pitching (84) and the highest strikeout rate against them by more than 2.5%

Jake Peavy, $15,977 – Kansas City is one of the warmer major league cities without a roof, but game time temperature will only be in the high 70’s today. And even if it was warmer with the wind blowing out, Kauffman Stadium would still be a far more pitcher-friendly park than Fenway. So I like Peavy against the Royals who have the 5th worst wRC+ against right-handers.

Rick Porcello, $10,688 – If you took out Porcello’s two starts against the Angels in which he allowed 16 runs in just five innings of work, his ERA would be 3.21. I understand that you can’t just take those starts out, but you have to give Porcello credit for taking care of everyone but the Angels who happen to have the third best offense against right-handers according to wRC+. And today he’s hardly facing the third-best offense. No, he’s facing the Yankees who are tied with Astros for the 2nd worst wRC+ vs. RHP. But make sure you check the weather close to game time as their is a 50/50 chance of rain at the time of this writing.

Philadelphia left-handed hitters, varying prices – The Phillies will be facing right-hander Dan Haren and his 1.69 HR/9 with a wind blowing out to right field at 10 mph. Sounds like a pretty good home run situation for lefties like Chase Utley ($8,648), Domonic Brown ($8,527), Jimmy Rollins ($5,983), a switch hitter who is better from the left side, and Cody Asche ($4,797). I particularly like Rollins and Asche because of the below average cost.

Jeff Baker, $6,606  – Baker and the Rangers will face left-hander Erik Bedard today. As you can see below, only Miguel Cabrera has a wOBA higher than Baker against left-handed pitching.

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