At FantasyLabs, we believe that we have the best tools and data available for 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 each weekday walk subscribers through an important trend, 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 Models.
MLB Trend of the Day: Exit Velocity Monsters
For whatever reason, there are some premier power hitters who are currently destroying baseballs. In today’s MLB Breakdown, I noted that Chris Davis and David Ortiz are among hitters who have a recent batted-ball exit velocity of 97 miles per hour. This is a simple question and will thus be a simple trend: Does a drastic increase in exit velocity historically lead to increased Plus/Minus value and/or increased Consistency?
For the first time ever, let’s have a Step 0, with which we simply establish baseline numbers for hitters.
Step 0
OK, now let’s add in our recent exit velocity filter and see what happens.
Step 1: Adv Stats – Recent > Exit Velocity – 15 > 97 to 111
That’s quite a jump: Batters with recent exit velocities of at least 97 MPH have scored 2.96 more DK points, outperformed their salary-based expectations by +2.69 more points, and seen a Consistency bump of 12.7 percentage points. Those are massive jumps.
Just for fun, let’s add in a Vegas filter.
Step 2: Vegas Filters > Runs > 5.0 to 6.4
And there you go.
Current Matches
Current matches for the final trend include David Ortiz, Justin Upton, and Tommy Pham. If we remove Step 2 and look at just exit velocity regardless of Vegas implied run total, Kaleb Cowart, Ryan Schimpf, Freddie Freeman, and Chris Davis — who has an exit velocity of 100 MPH (!!!) in his last 10 games — are added as matches.
These hitters should probably be in some of your lineups tonight. Good luck!
