Daily Fantasy Strategy — April 17 — For Draftstreet

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April 17, 2014

Anybody had enough rainouts (and snow-outs) yet? Yeah, me too, but hopefully it provided a bit of opportunity in daily leagues for those of you who set their lineups at the very last minute. Those who can’t were likely burned.

If you do have to set your lineup early, DailyBaseballData is always a valuable resource. But guess what? Today it shows zero games with more than a 10 percent chance of rain. So let’s baseball, weather free.

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While we still don’t know a lot about individual players, strikeout rates are beginning to stabilize. The noise present with individual marks means that team marks may be just as noisy – several small, unrelated samples don’t necessarily equal one larger, reliable sample – it’s worth having a look at the early returns for teams. The table below shows which teams are exhibiting platoon splits in the early going, sorted by wOBA drop against lefties.

Team K% v RHP wOBA v RHP K% v LHP wOBA v LHP RHP-LHP K% RHP-LHP wOBA
Cardinals 16.10% 0.324 20.30% 0.231 -4.20% 0.093
Rays 17.80% 0.316 21.10% 0.247 -3.30% 0.069
Indians 14.30% 0.337 19.60% 0.273 -5.30% 0.064
Dodgers 21.90% 0.339 28.60% 0.277 -6.70% 0.062
Marlins 25.30% 0.343 18.80% 0.288 6.50% 0.055
Diamondbacks 20.90% 0.314 18.80% 0.26 2.10% 0.054
Athletics 20.20% 0.328 16.90% 0.278 3.30% 0.05
Royals 13.60% 0.299 19.40% 0.255 -5.80% 0.044
Twins 22.40% 0.333 24.10% 0.294 -1.70% 0.039
White Sox 23.30% 0.347 19.10% 0.311 4.20% 0.036
Brewers 20.90% 0.316 25.30% 0.291 -4.40% 0.025
Blue Jays 17.00% 0.321 20.50% 0.3 -3.50% 0.021
Reds 22.30% 0.324 18.50% 0.303 3.80% 0.021
Yankees 22.40% 0.337 14.60% 0.319 7.80% 0.018
Padres 24.20% 0.286 21.10% 0.274 3.10% 0.012
Mets 24.30% 0.289 29.90% 0.279 -5.60% 0.01
Angels 20.00% 0.325 17.60% 0.322 2.40% 0.003
Orioles 19.80% 0.304 19.70% 0.303 0.10% 0.001
Pirates 23.30% 0.298 27.60% 0.3 -4.30% -0.002
Red Sox 22.30% 0.298 20.10% 0.303 2.20% -0.005
Mariners 24.50% 0.284 22.20% 0.29 2.30% -0.006
Astros 26.50% 0.271 22.00% 0.28 4.50% -0.009
Cubs 22.90% 0.276 27.70% 0.292 -4.80% -0.016
Tigers 18.70% 0.307 19.20% 0.331 -0.50% -0.024
Rockies 19.20% 0.338 14.10% 0.371 5.10% -0.033
Giants 22.80% 0.313 18.20% 0.352 4.60% -0.039
Rangers 18.20% 0.284 18.00% 0.337 0.20% -0.053
Braves 22.90% 0.305 25.80% 0.386 -2.90% -0.081
Nationals 22.90% 0.329 24.10% 0.41 -1.20% -0.081
Phillies 22.00% 0.303 25.40% 0.395 -3.40% -0.092

The Daily Five
Craig Kimbrel – $3,192
I know picking a closer seems strange, and especially recommending one, but I wanted to make sure everyone saw Brett Talley’s piece on why we may undervalue closers for daily leagues. Kimbrel, in particular, seems a safe bet to pitch Thursday, as he had a side session on Wednesday with no discomfort and the Braves draw a Phillies team they’re likely to hold a lead on.

Danny Salazar – $16,714
The Tigers are a dangerous outfit but one that’s missing the left-handed bat of Prince Fielder in the early going. The Tigers have just a .307 wOBA against right-handed pitchers, and Salazar has a pretty nice floor due to his strikeout capabilities. Factor in a 13MPH wind blowing directly in to home plate, and this doesn’t seem too bad a gamble on a day where there are few clear starting pitcher plays.

Rangers stack – I’m picking on Erasmo Ramirez until there’s a reason not to. Not that he’s abjectly terrible or anything, but he doesn’t have an elite groundball rate and doesn’t strike many batters out, which means there should be plenty of balls in the Texas air on Thursday. Ramirez has been slightly friendlier to lefties in his career, too.
Shin-Soo Choo – $7,541
Prince Fielder – $7,510
Mitch Moreland – $5,383

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.

We know you play in all sorts of leagues. So to help you fine-tune the analysis you’d like to read, we’ve added three tags to the categories on the right: Roto, Head to Head, and Daily Fantasy Update. Use these to get the information that is most relevant to your leagues!





 

Blake Murphy is a freelance sportswriter based out of Toronto. Formerly of the Score, he's the managing editor at Raptors Republic and frequently pops up at Sportsnet, Vice, and around here. Follow him on Twitter @BlakeMurphyODC.

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James
10 years ago

Where can I find the wOBA charts you had on here yesterday?

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