The MLB Ownership Review is a regular series in which we review the ownership dynamics of a previous slate.
On Thursday, June 1, the main slate consisted of just four games, none of which had an implied total over five runs (per our Vegas Dashboard). Three pitchers had a salary of at least $8,900 on DraftKings, but the remaining five pitchers all cost $7,200 or less.
With every offense implied to score within 1.1 runs of each other, did the public choose to pay up for some of the slate’s top pitchers? Or did lineups focus on big bats and cheap pitchers? Let’s find out.
June 1st Ownership Review
Pitchers
The data below is from our DFS Ownership Dashboard (Pro Subscribers can review ownership trends across guaranteed prize pools of all stakes shortly after lock):
At $12,700 on DraftKings, Zack Greinke cost an absurd $3,100 more than Marco Estrada, the second-most expensive pitcher in Thursday’s slate. Per our MLB Lineups page, there were no weather concerns on the slate. Both pitchers faced lineups implied to score between 3.9 and 4.1 runs.
Greinke scored a slate-high 30.15 DraftKings points, while Estrada couldn’t make it out of the fourth inning before allowing seven runs. The real values were C.C. Sabathia, Wade Miley, and Jeff Locke, who all produced 20-plus DraftKings points with salaries of $7,200 or lower.
It’s easy to see why the public was on Estrada. He was in great recent form, recording a combined 20 strikeouts and allowing just two runs in his last two starts. He was limiting big hits, ranking among the top-two pitchers in lowest average batted ball distance and exit velocity allowed over the past 15 days (per our Player Models).
There was also good reason to pay up for Greinke. Per the MLB Trends tool, Greinke has actually been a better pitcher on the road since joining the Diamondbacks in 2016, averaging more DraftKings points per game, along with a higher Plus/Minus and Consistency Rating away from Chase Field. This enhanced production has come with an ownership premium, as Greinke has posted a +3.2 percent ownership differential on the road since the beginning of last season.
Low ownership for Sabathia was due to him pitching on the road against the slate’s highest-implied lineup, while Locke and Miley were home underdogs. The inflated ownership of Eduardo Rodriguez and Alex Meyer likely came down to strikeout upside. Meyer had a slate-high 7.7 K Prediction, while Rodriguez’s average of 9.2 K/9 over the past 12 months was the third-highest mark in the slate behind Meyer’s and Estrada’s marks.
On a small slate with a mix of high- and low-priced pitching options, the public chose to pay up for expensive arms while picking up Meyer’s cheap salary and high-strikeout upside.
Hitters
The top-10 hitters in average ownership are shown below:
Three Blue Jays, three Red Sox, three Diamondbacks, and Gary Sanchez made up the top-10 highest-owned hitters. The focus on the Blue Jays and Red Sox — the slate’s two-highest implied lineups — makes sense, but the high ownership for the Diamondbacks is a bit more perplexing. One potential explanation is that the heightened ownership was an indictment against Locke, who was by far the cheapest pitcher on the slate and was making his first start of the season.
In the end, the Yankees were the stack to own, as they scored a slate-high 12 runs on 15 hits. Only Sanchez and Aaron Judge posted average ownership above 20 percent, while just Sanchez posted a positive Volatility Rating among the Yankees’ top-eight hitters. On a slate with limited clear hitting options, the public and sharps alike focused on teams with high-implied totals and missed out on a Yankees lineup that had a tough road matchup but still proved to be more than capable of going off.
Takeaways
Expensive pitchers with strikeout upside, along with hitters in high-implied lineups, were the chalk on Thursday. Here are some specifics:
- The three-most expensive pitchers made up three of the top-four highest-owned pitchers.
- Meyer was the highest-owned pitcher in the $75k Thunderdome, likely due to his high-strikeout upside and sub-$7,000 price tag.
- All eight lineups were implied to score between 3.9 and 5.0 runs. Still, ownership focused on the two teams with the highest-implied totals, presenting contrarian opportunities by stacking teams with implications right below them.
Moving forward, be sure to use the FantasyLabs Tools to monitor the ownership patterns of small slates with multiple solid pitching options and few lineups with outlier run totals.
