Throughout the season, I am using our Trends tool to create a custom trend, and then I am tracking the results of my matches for the week in this artice. The goal is to create trends with high Plus/Minus values and share them with our readers every Friday.
Description
This week, I wanted to create a really strong cash game trend for pitchers. When I am selecting pitchers for my cash game teams, the two main things I’m looking at are strikeout potential and win probability (and obviously, I want a reasonable Vegas number as well). In this trend, I’m going to be using a relatively new feature we have at FantasyLabs, our K Predictor (which you can see in our Player Models).
In addition to looking for pitchers whose K Prediction is high, I want an umpire who has historically benefitted pitchers. Here, I’m going to open up the Home Plate Ump filter and select umpires with the highest Plus/Minus values.
One note before we move forward: If you set up a trend like this, make sure that you recalibrate your list of umpires regularly. Remember, umpires are humans and their performances may vary as time passes. I have a hard time believing an umpire is going to call a pitch that is fractionally out of the zone the same way across days, weeks, and months. The best umps for pitchers at this moment may not be the same two months from now.
In creating this trend, I used the following filters:
• Home Plate Ump: Anyone with a Plus/Minus over +1.5
• K Predictor: Any pitcher with seven to 10.9 predicted Ks.
The high Plus/Minus of +6.05 is encouraging and the 64 percent Consistency is in line with what we would want in a cash game trend.
Results
The following screenshots are pulled from entries into FanDuel’s $5 guaranteed prize pools throughout the week.
5/9
On Monday, I was honestly a little hesitant to roster Strasburg. The Tigers have not been a matchup to fear so far in 2016, but they still have plenty of dangerous batters who could come to life at any time. There were also plenty of reasonable alternatives, with Jose Fernandez, Corey Kluber, and Steven Matz also pitching. That fact likely helped keep Strasburg’s ownership level down to a reasonable 12.5 percent:
Although Strasburg was outscored by Fernandez 66-42, I thought this was a fine play. Strasburg’s K prediction was 9.8 and he actually racked up 11 Ks with the help of home-plate ump Brian Knight. Strasburg outscored his implied point total by five fantasy points. I think this is a clear win early in the week.
5/10
Pitching was pretty bleak on Tuesday, as the top options were Jon Lester in a game with weather concerns and Jacob deGrom, who has not been a strong DFS option lately. These were the only two pitchers projected to strike out seven or more batters and neither of them had a beneficial ump behind the plate. There were no matches on this day.
5/11
We come back on Wednesday with four matches in Scherzer, Bumgarner, Archer, and Syndergaard. These ownership numbers were pulled from the all-day slate and I was pretty surprised that Scherzer’s ownership was so much higher than Syndergaard’s. Scherzer was obviously a lot cheaper, but I would gladly take all the Syndergaard at any price with four percent ownership in GPPs.
Home-plate ump Bill Miller was buying what Scherzer was selling and Max racked up a historic 20-K performance against a prediction of 8.9 Ks. Syndergaard and Archer fell more in line with their projections: Each player had a K Prediction around seven. Syndergaard had a usable line, but unfortunately for his DFS owners Wednesday was a no-Max, no-cash situation.
5/12
Last night, the two matches were Clayton Kershaw and James Shields. Both performed admirably as Kershaw finished with 78 fantasy points and Shields scored 60.
Kershaw was clearly the top pitching choice on Thursday and yet his ownership was only 36.4 percent on FanDuel. As a point of comparison, his ownership on DraftKings last night was twice that number in some spots. Keep in mind that DraftKings is a two-pitcher site, which bloats ownership on every pitcher when comparing the two sites. I think it’s very difficult for even the most obvious pitcher to be severely over-rostered in FanDuel tournaments, particularly at certain buy-in levels. Kershaw and Scherzer this week are Exhibits A and B to that point.
Review
We benefitted from some excellent pitching this week. While “only” five-of-eight pitchers exceeded their implied point totals, three of those pitchers had huge games and exceeded their implied totals by 30 or more fantasy points.
Some of the matches you will see are obvious plays: Again, we are looking at high-strikeout pitchers and many DFS players are going to be considering these guys. Still, if you are looking for a reason to fade the chalk pitcher, this can be a helpful corrective trend. If that pitcher also has a friendly umpire, you may want to think twice before fading.
One final note: This trend is a bit more “high maintenance” than others we have looked at for two reasons. Firstly, as mentioned in the intro, you will need to update your list of matching umpires regularly. Secondly, home-plate umpires are sometimes not announced until shortly before first pitch. There will be cases where you won’t know who the umpire is until later on in the day and will then need to react quickly if you wish to use this trend. So this trend might not be for everybody, but it could be very beneficial for the people who use it.
