Archive for Daily Fantasy Strategy

Yesterday, June 19, was the 13th anniversary of Mandy Moore’s self titled album. While this album was released my freshman year of high school, Mandy Moore was one of my earliest celebrity crushes, going back to her debut. I am not embarrassed (you should all know by now I have no shame) to say her track Crush resonated with 14-year-old and (very) awkward me.

On today’s agenda:
1. Zack Wheeler’s dominant start
2. A setback for Jedd Gyorko
3. Thoughts on Danny Duffy
4. Mookie Betts watch
5. The daily five

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It’s Chris Sale day. Jeff Sullivan had a post about him the other day. Spoiler: he’s fantastic. Here are some of the highlights from said piece:

For Sale, there are a few goals. One, he wants to keep himself healthy and able to pitch. Two, adding a better changeup should allow him to be effective longer within games. And three, Sale indicates that the changeup helps him keep his mechanics consistent. These things always sound good in theory, but Sale’s gone beyond theory, to the point where he’s genuinely executing. He’s dramatically cut down his slider usage. By our data, he’s increased his changeup usage by 12 percentage points, the biggest hike in baseball. According to Brooks, he’s actually second toHenderson Alvarez, but by the same source Alvarez used a changeup often in the past, so at least for Sale this is significant and new.

And Sale owns a career-high strikeout rate. He owns a career-low walk rate. Since he came off the disabled list, he’s posted a league-leading K% – BB% of 33%. Sale’s gotten better against both lefties and righties, and for an idea of the confidence he’s developed in his change.

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For another glimpse at how Sale has kind of phased the slider out, here are his rates of strikeouts for which the slider was responsible:

2012: 58% strikeouts on slider
2013: 52%
2014: 22%

Sale’s slider is still good. It’s still Chris Sale’s slider. This season it’s been knocked for all of three hits. But Sale hasn’t needed to rely on that pitch, as his changeup has been knocked for just 11 hits despite a large gain in frequency. The one Sale changeup hit for extra bases so far wasn’t even a bad changeup; it was a good changeup thrown to an amazing hitter. Otherwise, the changeup has gotten 20 strikeouts and ten singles. Righties have struck out against the changeup 17 times; they’ve struck out against the slider six times. Last season, those numbers were 34 and 79.

Mr. Sale will be going against the NL ERA leader, Tim Hudson, today; should be a dandy.

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After yesterday’s somewhat abbreviated slate of eleven games, we’re back at full strength today. Fifteen games, and outside of the midwest, the weather looks great. The following games might have some weather issues; listed in chance of precipitation from most likely to least likely: San Francisco at Chicago (AL) [40%], Kansas City – Detroit [30%], and Cincinnati – Pittsburgh [30%]. There are a couple more games that have a 20% of precipitation, but those forecasts typically don’t end up ruining much of anything. I’m not purposely avoiding any game today, except for maybe San Francisco at Chicago; that game does have some nice matchups, though, if you’re willing to roster the players involved.

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On Friday Dave Cameron had an excellent piece detailing how good rest-of-season projections are at, you know, projecting what will happen in the rest of the season. In the piece, Dave cited the work of Mitchel Lichtman at length. Go read the piece and you’ll see convincing evidence that if you want to know how a player is going to perform from here on out, you should just go look at his rest-of-season projections. Throw out what the player has done so far this year. Just look at the projection.

This topic is one of the utmost importance to daily fantasy players. This research tells us that, on the aggregate, the projection systems can tell us with virtual precision what’s going to happen the rest of the way. How is that not valuable to a daily fantasy player? The problem is, of course, that little qualifier I used: on the aggregate. The projection systems can take a group of players and tell us what they’re going to do on the whole. They can’t tell us which players are going to over-perform and which are going to under-perform so that the group reaches the expected average. And they certainly can’t tell us what each player will do on each specific day along the way. But the good news is that if you trust the system throughout, you’ll receive the positive results along with the negative results to bring you to the expected result, which is what you wanted all along.

I’ve mentioned several times that I use rest-of-season projections as the basis of my DFS system. I use the knowledge I have that the projection system doesn’t from time to time, but for the most part I just go with what the numbers tell me. And the evidence tells me that’s a good idea.

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Today is the the 26th anniversary of “Bull Durham” being released. The “I believe” speech is a pretty great rant (warning: language), even though I personally like the designated hitter.

On today’s agenda:
1. Jake Peavy’s strong start
2. The return of A.J. Ellis
3. Some (very) early thoughts on Eugenio Suarez
4. The daily five

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Andrew McCutchen is really good. Groundbreaking stuff, I know. McCutchen gets a ton of a press; he did win the MVP last year, after all. Despite that, it feels like we don’t talk about the things that make him so, so good enough.

So far this season, among qualified batters, six batters have walked more than they’ve struck out. Those batters are: Victor Martinez, Jose Bautista, Coco Crisp, McCutchen, Kurt Suzuki, and Carlos Ruiz. Martinez has accomplished this feat by only striking out 6.6% of the time; Suzuki has taken that same path, striking out 8.1% of his plate appearances. Bautista has done so by slashing his strikeout rate, while also upping his walk rate a little closer to his unbelievable 2011 campaign. Crisp and Ruiz have been able to keep the scale in their favors by walking at a career high clip. As for McCutchen? He’s maintained his contact rate, while chasing even fewer pitches out of the zone. Only seven qualified batters have chased a fewer percentage of pitches out of the strike zone.

In 2012, McCutchen slashed .327/.400/.553, good for a 158 wRC+; 2013, .317/.404/.508, 155 wRC+. This year, his line is: .321/.435/.550, 177 wRC+. McCutchen’s hitting for the same amount of power he did in 2012 (.229 ISO versus .226), while besting his career high walk rate by more than 3%. Andrew McCutchen is an incredible player, and he’s currently maxing out every portion of his offensive profile. It’s a thing of beauty.

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Hooray, we survived a full moon on Friday the 13! I consider myself lucky, particularly considering we also made it through Y2K and the Mayan 2012 end-of-the-world scenario.

On today’s agenda:
1. Thoughts on Juan Francisco
2. Oscar Taveras down to Triple-A
3. Return of Mat Latos
4. The daily five

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C.J. Wilson is taking the ball for the Angels today. I’ve written a little about him before, but yesterday I was fooling around with the pitch value leaderboards after reading Dave Cameron’s post on Johnny Cueto, and noticed something that I found pretty neat: Wilson has three pitches that have been top 10 offerings this year. His fastball, slider, and change-up have all graded out phenomenally. He’s facing the Braves tonight, a team that has hit left handed pitching very well, so it’s a very interesting matchup. And speaking of the Braves, Julio Teheran also has three pitches in the top 10 (fastball, curveball, change-up). Adam Wainwright comes close; his curveball currently sits twelfth, but his fastball and cutter are firmly planted near the top. Side bar: Please be ok, Adam.

There are a lot of fun ways to grade out pitches. Whiff rates are my favorite, and we all know they’re Eno’s favorite. The pitch values are also fun though, because it’s always nice to know how these pitchers come to their over numbers. Most of the time, at least to me, the parts that make up the whole are more interesting when they’re viewed as separate entities.

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Quite possibly my favorite sporting event — yes, perhaps even above baseball — kicked off yesterday. Though the refereeing was less-than-stellar, I enjoyed the opening game of the World Cup. I’ll be rooting for South Korea as well as the USMNT. Here’s to hoping both can make it out of their groups. They’ll need some luck to do so.

On today’s agenda:
1. Brock Holt keeps mashing
2. The return of Jesus Montero
3. Nick Swisher is activated
4. The daily five

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Jason Hammel is on the mound today, so let’s chat about him! Hammel was signed by the Cubs in the offseason. Undoubtedly, the Cubs’ plan was to have him perform well, and then be flipped for future assets. So far, so good.

Hammel’s having a career year – the first three columns are all career bests; the fourth is second only to his 2012 campaign. His K-BB%, perhaps the best in season predictor of future success, is due to both an increase in strikeouts and a decrease in free passes. We love it when a pitcher improves their strikeout or walk rate, but when they improve both? That’s the dream.

His run prevention, so far, has outperformed peripherals a little bit; undoubtedly because he’s sporting a career low HR/FB rate. Regression is accounted for and baked into his xFIP-, which is still rather good. The worst thing we can say about Hammel’s performance so far is: his ERA could easily be around 3.50.

Jeff Samardzija gets all of the trade headlines in the Windy City. That’s fine. He’s phenomenal in his own right, but perhaps it’s time we pay a little more attention to Hammel. Samardzija will garner a larger prospect package for the Cubs – due to multiple reasons – but the team that acquires Hammel is likely acquiring one hell of an upgrade for their stretch run.

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