DFS Projections: Context and Lineup Strategy

SaberSim Daily Projections

Daily projections require a great deal of context in order to project each specific game. SaberSim daily projections account for lineups, starting pitchers, and bullpens, as well as more nuanced factors like weather, umpires, park effects, home/away, handedness splits, and more. Even within these specific factors, there’s a tremendous amount of detail involved, and constant room for tweaks and improvements. For instance, the park effects are not applied broadly, but rather based on how they affect each individual outcome (BB, K, 1B, 2B, 3B, HR) for left-handed and right-handed batters.

These factors are all thrown into a play-by-play baseball simulator, resulting in context-specific projections for each player and game. This is just a bit of what goes into the projections, and we’ll continue to detail more of how they work in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here are some ways to utilize SaberSim projections, also found here on FanGraphs, to build/adjust your daily and season-long fantasy lineups.

DFS Projections: Hitters

Top Projected Offenses:
Nationals vs Mike Leake (5.13 R/G)
Blue Jays vs CC Sabathia (4.80 R/G)
Red Sox vs Jonathan Gray (4.67 R/G)

Top Projected Clusters of Players:
Blue Jays – Bautista (3rd), Donaldson (4th), Encarnacion (9th)
Nationals – Harper (1), Murphy (15), Werth (19), Revere (20)
Astros – Altuve (6), Springer (8), Correa (22)
Brewers – Braun (10), Villar (13), Carter (25)

DFS Projections: Pitchers

The top projected pitcher is Jose Fernandez, who faces Drew Smyly and the Rays in Tampa Bay. Fernandez is the highest priced pitcher on DraftKings and FanDuel, and is projected for significantly more DFS points than any other player. Gerrit Cole is the next best projected pitcher, facing Patrick Corbin and the Diamondbacks at home. Drew Smyly, Lance McCullers, and Kevin Gausman round out the top five, though it’s worth noting that the gap between #1 and #5 today is so large that Jose Fernandez’s 50th percentile projection is almost equal to Kevin Gausman’s 75th percentile projection.

Potential Conditionals

(Conditionals allow DFS players to optimize lineups for when specific events happen. They are particularly useful for large field tournaments, where differentiation is key. By optimizing for specific events, a player can achieve differentiation in a way that maximizes upside when those events occur. Read more here.)

CC Sabathia gives up at least 5 runs
The Blue Jays have the top projected offense for the day, making CC Sabathia a solid target for a Conditional. If we add a Conditional of Sabathia giving up at least five runs, the optimizer returns the following lineup:

Freddie Freeman scores at least 21 DraftKings points (his 90th percentile projection)
The Braves don’t have a very good offense, but Wily Peralta is a subpar starting pitcher, so this Conditional is worth exploring, particularly given the fact that the Braves are unlikely to be high owned in DFS tournaments. When Freddie Freeman achieves his 90th percentile DraftKings point projection, the optimizer selects the following optimal lineup:

Gerrit Cole scores fewer than 25 DraftKings points (his average projection)
Cole is an elite pitcher going against a weak offense (the Diamondbacks) at home in a small slate of early games. For this reason, it’s very likely that he will be highly owned in DFS. To increase lineup upside in a large scale tournament, we can set a Conditional that forces the optimizer to only use simulation results from games in which Cole pitched worse than his overall average projection. The Conditional of Gerrit Cole pitching worse than his average projected performance produces the following optimal lineup for the DraftKings early slate:

Though Arizona is not likely to score many runs, the ~50% likelihood that Cole underperforms his projection gives the batters enough of a boost to make them great values for their price tag. This also allows us to fit in the two other top pitching options and the high-priced Harper.

Starting Pitcher Streams for Friday

Matt Shoemaker (2% Y!) – 0.35 W, 3.30 ERA, 5.12 K
Michael Fulmer (12% Y!) – 0.43 W, 3.77 ERA, 4.58 K

Conclusion

There are countless ways in which you can create DFS strategies using SaberSim projections and tools. In addition to Conditionals, there are also features that allow you to exclude players, adjust exposure, and much more. To keep you fully informed on all the possibilities, we will continue to explore more strategies in the coming days and weeks. Also, remember to check back for updated projections throughout the day. As teams release official lineups, SaberSim automatically updates accordingly and reruns simulations in order to stay as current as possible.