DFS Strategy: Targeting Bullpens to Increase Lineup Upside

Maximizing the upside of your lineups is crucial to having success in DFS tournaments. Oft-discussed strategies like stacking and targeting home run hitters are important for upside, but another strategy is to target bad bullpens.

Usually, when deciding on a team to stack in DFS, people look at the opposing starting pitcher and stack against a pitcher they believe will have a poor performance. This is a good strategy and obviously has a huge impact on scoring potential. However, there is an inverse relationship between the quality of a starter’s performance and the percentage of the game that they pitch. In other words, when a starter does poorly, they get pulled from the game earlier, which means the opposing team’s bullpen comes in earlier.

This is all common sense, but it’s often ignored when considering DFS stacks and lineups. When we enter DFS tournaments, we’re aiming to place in the top 1-5% of all lineups, which means we likely need our stack to not only hit the starter well, but continue hitting once the bullpen comes in.

When looking at projections, bullpen quality has the greatest impact not on average runs scored, but standard deviation (and by extension, higher percentile projections). A bad bullpen, particularly a bad back of the bullpen, has a significant effect on the tails of the distribution, because the below average relievers come into the game more often when the team has given up a large percentage of runs.

We can use SaberSim game projections to see this effect. First, take a look at the projection for the Orioles @ Yankees game today, specifically the stats for the Orioles:

Now, compare the Orioles projection to that of the A’s, who are projected for about the same number of runs:

If you look at the StdDev row for the Orioles and A’s, you can see the A’s have a higher standard deviation for runs scored than the Orioles, even though they are projected for slightly fewer runs — and importantly, far fewer home runs. This is likely due to the high quality of the Yankees bullpen (3rd best FIP in MLB) compared to the low quality of the Rays bullpen (3rd worst FIP). There are obviously many factors that go into the standard deviation of a runs scored projection, but bullpen quality very likely has a significant impact here.

As stated above, the opposing starting pitcher is still hugely important for choosing a team to stack — however, that’s also how everyone else is deciding which batters to play. Looking at bullpen quality (including not just current season results but also Steamer/ZiPS, which is how SaberSim comes up with the above projections) can give you that extra little edge to hit the highest upside possible in large DFS tournaments.

On to the day’s projections…

DFS Projections: Overall Offenses

Top Offenses

1. Rockies (vs ATL – Foltynewicz) 6.02 r/g
2. Red Sox (vs MIN – Duffey) 5.54 r/g
3. White Sox (vs DET – Pelfrey) 5.38 r/g
4. Tigers (@ CWS – Shields) 5.23 r/g
5. Braves (@ COL – Bettis) 4.98 r/g

DFS Projections: Batters

Top Batters by Avg Projection

1. Carlos Gonzalez 11.06 DK; 14.81 FD
2. Charlie Blackmon 10.88 DK; 14.16 FD
3. Nolan Arenado 10.83 DK; 14.47 FD
4. Giancarlo Stanton 10.76 DK; 14.61 FD
5. Freddie Freeman 10.60 DK; 14.10 FD
6. Mookie Betts 10.38 DK; 13.49 FD
7. Miguel Cabrera 10.30 DK; 13.75 FD
8. David Ortiz 9.85 DK; 13.23 FD
9. Jose Abreu 9.76 DK; 12.94 FD
10. Starling Marte 9.69 DK; 12.38 FD

DFS Projections: Pitchers

Top Pitchers (Avg Projection)

1. Stephen Strasburg 22.47 DK; 40.25 FD
2. Francisco Liriano 19.41 DK; 36.30 FD
3. Adam Wainwright 17.28 DK; 32.60 FD
4. Jerad Eickhoff 16.33 DK; 31.26 FD
5. Julio Urias 15.44 DK; 29.62 FD
6. CC Sabathia 15.16 DK; 29.74 FD
7. Sonny Gray 14.69 DK; 28.73 FD
8. Matt Moore 14.37 DK; 28.38 FD
9. Steven Wright 14.31 DK; 29.28 FD
10. Tom Koehler 12.94 DK; 26.49 FD

Top Pitchers (95^th Percentile Projection)

1. Stephen Strasburg 42.85 DK; 69.00 FD
2. Francisco Liriano 39.80 DK; 65.00 FD
3. Jerad Eickhoff 36.60 DK; 61.00 FD
4. Adam Wainwright 36.55 DK; 60.00 FD
5. Steven Wright 35.80 DK; 60.00 FD
6. Julio Urias 35.05 DK; 60.00 FD
7. CC Sabathia 34.90 DK; 59.00 FD
8. Matt Moore 34.50 DK; 57.00 FD
9. Sonny Gray 34.25 DK; 58.00 FD
10. Andrew Cashner 32.55 DK; 55.00 FD

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. You can view the updated projections as well as DFS point projections by clicking here. Good luck!