Differences in Daily Scoring Systems — Pitchers

On Monday I took a look at how hitters fare under different daily fantasy scoring models. With Draftstreet being bought out by DraftKings, I thought it might be beneficial to note the differences between Draftstreet scoring and a couple of other sites to which daily players might have moved their money. If you don’t want to bother clicking over to read the hitter article, the short version was this: guys who strikeout a lot get a boost on non-DraftStreet formats, and guys whose main skill is contact lose some value. There isn’t nearly as much movement among pitchers, but let’s take a look at how the hurlers are affected.

Not much to see here. DraftStreet penalized pitchers for taking a loss, but DraftKings does not. And DraftKings gives a bonus for a complete game and an additional bonus if the complete game is a shutout whereas Draftstreet only gave a bonus for a complete game. Aside from that, the sites use the same scoring categories.

The main difference between the two scoring systems is how much they reward innings pitched. You probably could have guessed this, but innings are the #1 way pitchers accumulate points. In both systems, innings pitched account for over 80% of a pitcher’s point total. In the DraftStreet scoring system, the pitchers in my sample (the 96 pitchers with 100+ IP this year) accumulated 83% of their points via innings pitched. On DraftKings that number jumps to 85.3%. That may not seem like much, but no other category sees a two percent or more difference bewteen the systems.

But again, the differences are small, and there probably isn’t any value to be found in Wei-Yin Chen on DraftKings that wouldn’t have been there on Draftstreet. Let’s move on to FanDuel.

Ah good, something significant. The FanDuel scoring system is downright minimalistic for pitchers. A pitcher is awarded points for wins, innings pitched and strikeouts, and points are only deducted for earned runs allowed. There are no deductions for hits allowed, walks, hit batsmen or losses.

The list of guys on the left who get a bump on FanDuel is a pretty uninspiring list of pitchers. They’re all sporting a K-BB% below league average. And it would make sense that lesser pitchers would get a boost in a scoring system that doesn’t deduct points for as many negative outcomes. Three of the four are worse than league average in terms of H/9. No deductions for hits allowed helps. Two of the four have walk rates below league average. And three of the four have been lucky in the one department where FanDuel does deduct points, earned runs. All but Verlander have a FIP that is at least half a run higher than their ERA. So this may just be a list of guys who have been lucky and not a window into the types of pitchers that might have extra value on FanDuel.

On the other side we’ve actually got some good pitchers. Beckett and Zimmermann are sporting a K-BB% that is well above average, and Alvarez is working on one of the better groundball slash limiting walks combos in the league (54.5% GB%, 4.3% BB%). Unfortunately these guys tend to be above league average in the categories that FanDuel doesn’t punish. Zimm and Alvarez have super low walk rates, and Beckett allows hits at a rate that is much lower than league average with a 6.79 H/9 compared to the league average of 8.87. As I said Monday, I don’t play much baseball daily on FanDuel (play quite a bit of CFB there), but less talented pitchers might have value there.