Archive for Platoon splits

For many Scoresheet owners, keepers have been submitted in their leagues and drafts are about to commence. If you find yourself with a vacancy at a position, and you’re not excited about the players who are available to fill that spot, you may be able to find a suitable arrangement by drafting a platoon.

There are not too many players who get a large enough platoon adjustment against right-handed pitchers to make them desirable as platoon options, and even fewer who are likely to be available for drafting in a keeper league. (All of Scoresheet’s 2020 platoon adjustments are available on their site.) However, the three players below are all good candidates to be used in the larger part of a platoon, and none is likely to have been protected other than in extremely deep leagues or leagues that have an unusually large number of protection slots. All three hitters, for example, are available to be drafted in the 24-team mixed Baseball Prospectus Kings league.

I’ll make the case for each player, pair them up with prospective platoon partners and compare them against a more popular option at their position.
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The daily salary cap format has become much more prevalent in the past few years. I would imagine a large part of that has to do with the fact that daily fantasy sites have figured out a good way to monetize fantasy sports. But those sites couldn’t make money if we didn’t like playing the format.

If you’re thinking of trying the format out, or if you play and are looking for thoughts on strategy, allow me to describe the strategy I employ.

Let me start by noting that I’m not a huge fan of risk, so I generally play low-risk, low-reward games like double ups, which pay out roughly the top half of the entrants each day. You get the same payout as a head-to-head matchup, but you don’t have to take on the risk of having just one opponent. As a result, my strategy might not be best suited for those who like to play the “lottery ticket” type games where you risk a small amount of money to win a big pot against a lot of other players. You need upside and luck to win those pools.

My strategy begins with the idea that you should save on pitchers when possible. There are quite a few guys I’m higher on than most, so I target them because they’re usually underpriced in my opinion. If I can’t find two bargain pitchers, I’ll just pick a stud with a good matchup to go along with a bargain. Depending on how much money I can save on pitching, I prefer to grab as many high priced hitters as possible. Hitting is just so variable day-to-day, so I’m willing to pay for the guys who go oh-fer less often.

When choosing hitters, the number one thing I look at is platoon splits. I want to pick guys who are really good against pitchers of a certain handedness and who happen to be facing such a pitcher on that day. Other factors like the park and the skill of the opposing pitcher come in to play, but platoon splits are the biggest consideration.

When you can’t find bargain pitching and don’t have much money to spend on hitters, splits can help you find undervalued players. And when you have a lot of money to spend on hitting, it’s important that you be careful not to pick good hitters who struggle against pitchers of a certain handedness.

To help me pick players each day, I created a spreadsheet with a tab listing all players who had 100 or more plate appearances against lefties last year and a tab with all players who had 240 or more plate appearances against righties. I used a different number of plate appearances because there are more plate appearances to be had against righties. I wanted to look at players who got a fair number of plate appearances against pitchers of a certain handedness.

I listed each player’s wRC+ alongside their name. I chose wRC+ because it easily allows you to see how far above average that player is against pitchers of a certain handedness. The league average wRC+ is 100, so if a guy has a wRC+ of 140 against LHP, that means he’s 40% better than average against lefties.

Below are four lists. The purpose of each list is:

• Identifying potentially underpriced options against LHP
• Identifying good hitters to avoid when they are facing LHP
• Identifying potentially underpriced options against RHP
• Identifying good hitters to avoid when they are facing RHP

For the potentially underpriced options, I listed guys with who aren’t owned in all leagues (with one exception) on the assumption that guys with lower ownership percentages will usually have lower prices on daily sites. I also tried to list at least a guy or two from each position. For good guys to avoid, I listed big name guys with high ownership percentages. Enjoy!

Strikeouts. Max Scherzer has never wanted for strikeouts. 2011 was his worst season as a professional in that regard, and he still struck out about 21 percent of the hitters who faced him. He doesn’t get enough groundballs and he doesn’t throw a lot of complete games, but at the end of the day, Scherzer sends a staggeringly high number of opposing hitters shuffling back to their dugout in shame.

Scherzer’s downsides – an ERA over 4.00 and a WHIP north of 1.30 for his career – were never enough to prevent owners from deriving value from Scherzer, but they absolutely pushed him down draft boards and suppressed his trade value. After his move to Detroit, Scherzer added double-digit wins to his profile, which helped his value in theory, but since most owners know how fickle wins can be, it didn’t do much for his long-term value or perception. Read the rest of this entry »