At FantasyLabs, we believe that we have the best tools and data available to those who play daily fantasy sports. We also realize that these tools and data are only as beneficial as our ability to communicate their functionality and worth.
With this in mind, our “Trend of the Day” series features articles that walk subscribers through an important trend each weekday, created with our Trends tool. Also, shortly after you create a trend, you will be able to see it under the “My Trends” column in our Player Model tools.
MLB Trend of the Day: Miguel Cabrera in Day Games
This is the not-so-secret-anymore secret of the DFS community: Miggy absolutely crushed in day games during the 2015 season as compared to night games.
From August of last year…
#Tigers Miguel Cabrera, 2015:
Day games (32 games)
.417/.517/.783, 12 HR, 34 RBINight games (48 games)
.305/.420/.443, 4 HR, 23 RBI— Hardball Stats (@HardballStats) August 17, 2015
The question, however, is how much value do we get from Miggy day games? Of course, this question is two-fold — value in terms of ownership percentage and value in terms of Plus/Minus. However, we can only really look at the latter issue right now, so let’s dive into that.
Step 1: Player Filters > Player Name > Select “Miguel Cabrera”
Step 2: Time Filters > Time of Day
As you can see, there definitely is a Plus/Minus bump during the afternoon game-time starts. However, he was also a positive player at the 7:00pm time start — when a lot of his games were played.
Let’s see look at specifically last year now:
Step 3: Time Filters > MLB Season > Select “2015”
Wow, that’s quite a difference from the larger sample of 2014 to now.
Let’s see the 2014 data and just how different it looks.
Step 4: Time Filters > MLB Season > Select “2014”
Definitely not the craziness we saw last year.
So what gives? I think that there’s probably some reason he hit a lot better during the day last year, although I’m not sure why. Eye problems and he saw the ball better in natural sunlight? Or it could be just random variance.
I guess the question now is how to deal with data when you’re not sure of whether it is random noise or has predictive power. Because of the issue with the other part of our value definition mentioned before (he will be highly owned), I would lean towards fading this trend. However, perhaps Miggy is just a day player — the choice now is yours.
