On the Importance of Randomness in DFS

The past few months have brought a lot of debate about whether daily fantasy sports are a game of luck or skill. It’s a complex question from a legal standpoint, but from a purely logical and statistical standpoint, it’s fairly clear that both are involved. In fact, much of the skill portion of DFS relates to understanding the luck portion, and utilizing strategies to take full advantage of it.

We can better understand the importance of luck or randomness in daily fantasy baseball through the use of projection distributions, rather than means or averages. When we project Mike Trout for 10.5 DraftKings points on a given night, we’re not predicting that Trout will score 10.5, or even saying that 10.5 is the most likely point total. We’re simply saying that the average of all possible projected point totals for Trout is 10.5. Because of the small number of plate appearances any player gets in a given day, the range of possibilities and effect of random variation is very large.

This is an important point for DFS, because despite the full range of possible outcomes, only one will occur in any given day. Therefore, our focus in building lineups should be on those distributions, on the outcomes that could *possibly* happen, and how those potential outcomes would affect the other players in the game, and the composition of your lineup.

More specifically, SaberSim — the projection and analytics site that I run — allows us to focus in on more specific portions of player distributions, moving us away from averages and allowing us to capitalize on the noise inherent in baseball. Conditionals on the lineup creation tool can be used to tell us how to build our lineup so as to best take advantage of instances in which someone like Trout has a huge game. We can focus in on all simulated games in which Trout scores more than one run, or gets more than 25 DraftKings points, thereby increasing the projected scores of his teammates, and increasing our chances of a big return *if* the condition happens to hit.

DFS Projections: Batters
The early simulation results have most teams averaging moderate run totals, with only one team projected for more than 5.00 r/g and no team projected for less than 3.00 r/g. The Red Sox have the best offensive projection and the Padres have the worst, so there’s nothing unexpected on the extremes.

Top Offenses
1. Red Sox (vs Tyler Wilson) – 5.75 r/g
2. Nationals (@ Erik Johnson) – 4.89 r/g
3. Orioles (@ Eduardo Rodriguez) – 4.76 r/g
4. Yankees (@ Kyle Gibson) – 4.52 r/g
5. Dodgers (vs Junior Guerra) – 4.51 r/g

The top three of the AVG projections and the 95th percentile projections are identical. Past that, they differ as Joey Votto and Xander Bogaerts drop out of the top ten and Jay Bruce and Edwin Encarnacion join it. Furthermore, Adam Jones and Mark Trumbo slot higher in the 95th percentile projections. Bruce, Encarnacion, Jones, and Trumbo are all players who are projected for high home run totals today, and the upside of high-point events factor strongly into greater 95th percentile projections.

Top Batters by Avg Projection
1. Bryce Harper 11.97 DK, 16.21 FD
2. Mookie Betts 10.48 DK, 13.61 FD
3. David Ortiz 9.88 DK, 13.24 FD
4. Manny Machado 9.65 DK, 12.73 FD
5. Joey Votto 9.38 DK, 12.50 FD
6. Adam Jones 9.24 DK, 12.02 FD
7. Xander Bogaerts 9.16 DK, 11.94 FD
8. Hanley Ramirez 9.13 DK, 12.10 FD
9. Andrew McCutchen 9.10 DK, 11.88 FD
10. Mark Trumbo 8.99 DK, 11.99 FD

Top Batters by 95th Percentile Projection
1. Bryce Harper 30.00 DK, 40.90 FD
2. Mookie Betts 26.00 DK, 34.70 FD
3. David Ortiz 26.00 DK, 34.90 FD
4. Manny Machado 26.00 DK, 34.40 FD
5. Adam Jones 25.00 DK, 33.90 FD
6. Mark Trumbo 25.00 DK, 34.60 FD
7. Jay Bruce 25.00 DK, 34.10 FD
8. Edwin Encarnacion 24.00 DK, 31.90 FD
9. Andrew McCutchen 24.00 DK, 31.90 FD
10. Hanley Ramirez 24.00 DK, 31.90 FD

DFS Projections: Pitchers

Today’s slate of pitchers presents limited options as far as big performance potential. For the most part, the point projected point totals are fairly low. J.A. Happ is by far the best value option. He is projected for the 3rd best point total on DraftKings and possesses the 11th highest price.

Top Pitchers (Avg Projection)
1. Scott Kazmir (vs MIL) – 20.72 DK, 37.64 FD
2. Blake Snell (vs SEA) – 20.17 DK, 36.86 FD
3. J.A. Happ (vs PHI) – 18.89 DK, 34.78 FD
4. Aaron Nola (@ TOR) – 18.81 DK, 34.15 FD
5. James Paxton (@ TBR) – 17.90 DK, 33.46 FD

Conclusion

There are many ways to create DFS strategies using average and percentile projections. SaberSim also offers other tools for lineup creation, so players can optimize lineups to have maximum potential in DFS tournaments. As usual, we will continue to explore more strategies in the coming weeks in order to keep you up to date on DFS cash game and GPP strategy.

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.