Archive for Daily Fantasy Strategy

Last year I took a look at the catchers and pitchers who were the worst at preventing stolen bases. The idea was that you could pick good base stealers when someone in the opposing battery was friendly to steals. Recently a reader asked me to update that study to include 2013’s stats. I was planning on doing just that, but the more I think about it, the more I realize it’s not a strategy you should employ on Draftstreet.

On a quick side note, if I had updated that study, it would have been more beneficial to just look at pitchers. As Blake Murphy pointed out on Thursday, Max Weinstein has recently done some research showing that the pitcher bears more of the responsibility of preventing stolen bases.

But the bigger reason the study isn’t worth updating is because of what I discussed last Monday, lineup stacking. Research has shown that upside increases the bigger your stack, and Draftstreet only allows you to use four players from the same team in a lineup. Research has also shown that downside decreases with each step down from no stacking to four man stacks before it starts to rise. That makes four man stacks an obvious strategy.

In a Draftstreet lineup that has nine slots for hitters, it makes the most sense to use two four-man stacks or three three-man stacks. If you use the three-man stacks, there’s not an extra slot in your lineup into which you can slot a speedster with a good matchup. And if you’re using two four-man stacks, you usually don’t have the flexibility for that last hitter slot to get a speedster into it. You should be picking your two stacks, picking your three pitchers, and then filling your last slot with the most expensive guy that fits in your remaining budget and has the platoon advantage.

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The first weekend of all day viewing is upon us, and it’s only fitting that we’ll have an opportunity to see multiple aces in action.  It’s also fitting, and quite welcoming, that weather forecasts today look fantastic.  The only game with a better than nominal chance for rain takes place in Houston, which has a retractable roof, so yay. And thankfully to the new television rules, you can tune in to any out of area game today on MLB.tv.

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So, Wednesday didn’t quite go as planned, but it was still a moderately successful day. I took a small shot at Aaron Harang, and he subsequently threw 6.2 innings of shutout baseball. I also recommended two Tigers – Miguel Cabrera and Ian Kinsler – because Jason Vargas usually fairs poorly against righties. Kinsler performed well, but other than his home run Vargas outperformed my expectations. Baseball is as unpredictable as ever and I, for one, am glad to see its wonky ways are back in my life.

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On the third day of the season, we’re graced with some fantastic matchups. After two days filled with pitching studs, we’re making our first pass into pitchers that we can expect to give up runs at a higher clip. So long, Justin Verlander. Hello, Aaron Harang.

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Welcome back, degenerates.

We covered a lot of ground last year in our first year covering daily fantasy strategy. We covered everything from big stuff like how big of an impact weather has on run scoring to more minutiae-like topics such as identifying hitters who hit specific pitches well with matchups against pitchers who struggle with that particular pitch. But one thing I don’t believe we ever covered was the value of stacking multiple players from the same team in your lineup.

This offseason I read a great daily fantasy strategy book written by Jonathan Bales, Fantasy Football (and Baseball) for Smart People. It’s 120 pages of well researched, daily strategy goodness, and it only costs seven bucks. It’s highly recommended.  In the book, Bales tackled the issue of how to properly use stacks, and the results of his research might surprise you.

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Yesterday Blake Murphy detailed how some teams are using a lot more players in their lineups late in the season so that we can identify good pitching matchups. More youngsters in the lineups means better stats for pitchers. But young hurlers don’t see as much late season experience because of innings limit concerns. This explains why a large majority of the probable starters today are guys who have been in the majors for most of the season. In my estimation, all but three or four of today’s probables have been around for most of the year.

Today’s probables also happen to be a pretty above average bunch. Below is a chart showing how today’s starters have fared this year compared to league average.

Because there are so many good starters going today, you’re probably going to need to load up on more expensive hitters facing the few bad starters today. To save some money for bats, we’ll pick some of the cheaper starters with at least decent matchups. After the jump there will be a chart showing which of today’s starters you should be stacking up hitters against and how those starters fare against hitters of each handedness, and then we’ll pick some names.

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Are the playoffs here yet? Because I’m a) tired of watching the Rangers lose, b) sweating out the day-to-day fluctuations in my big money roto league, and c) trying to find something new to say in this article twice a week. So after the jump I’m going to repeat a couple of things. First, I’ll have a chart showing how each of today’s probable starters have performed against batters of each handedness this year. And then I’ll pick a few players and recite some familiar analysis alongside them.

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I’m going back to the well and once again providing a chart showing how today’s probable starters have performed against hitters of each handedness this season. After the jump we’ll use the chart to pick a few hitters and a starter or two.

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I did this on Monday as well, but below you’ll find a chart showing how today’s probable starters have fared against hitters of each handedness this year. This chart is something I create in the leaderboard section of the site, and it’s extremely helpful when picking hitters for the day. Unfortunately, the list must be created manually as there isn’t a filter for the day’s probable starters. Because inputting all the names takes a little time, I figure I’ll just do that work for you. After the jump we’ll use the chart to pick some hitters for the day. And we’ll pick a couple of starters, too.

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Unless I’m just missing it, I don’t believe you can create a custom leaderboard of the day’s probable starters here on the site. Other sites might have some data on the day’s starters, but I’m not aware of it. But every time I pick a lineup I want to look at how each pitcher fares against hitters of each handedness and how homer prone they are. So below you’ll see a screenshot of a custom leaderboard I created to help me pick hitters today.

If some other site is already providing something like this, please let me know and I’ll avoid posting something similar in the future. But if this is something you’d like to see again, let me know. And if you have any suggestions about different or additional stats you would find helpful if included, let me know that as well.

After the jump is the chart, and we’ll use it to pick some hitters.

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