When researching trends that you now know as our “Pro Trends,” one thing we found was that players who cost the same or less on DraftKings as they do on FanDuel typically perform really well. As you probably know, DraftKings has a higher salary cap than FanDuel (50k versus 35k), so a player the same price is typically a much better value on DK. Bryce Harper is the perfect example of this.
Our Bargain Rating quantifies this difference – Harper has been an expensive hitter on both sites, of course, but he’s been actually more on FanDuel, despite the lower salary cap. As a result, he’s been one of the best bargains on DraftKings on the year. Take a look at his recent game log:
As you can see over on the right, his Bargain Rating is a ridiculous 99% on DraftKings. Interestingly, this seems to be much more predictive than his Bargain Rating on FanDuel. There, he isn’t a bargain per se, but you can see he’s still crushing his expected value.
Not every player will extreme splits like this, but it does show us that even the top hitters can be incredible values. Even though Harper is going to cost a pretty penny every day, the data shows he’s worth much more than even his high salary on DraftKings – it’s been hovering between $5,200 and $5,700 lately. Finding a top hitter that is still such a value is huge in MLB DFS.
This data shows that no matter where you play – be it FanDuel or DraftKings – you should really check out the DraftKings Bargain Rating for players. The salary difference between the two – especially if the player is lower on the latter – is a very good measure of a player’s market value. But check DraftKings – obviously, if you were looking at Harper in FanDuel models, it would show him as one of the worst “bargains” – hence, the tale of two Harpers.
However, it’s not like Harper is a different player, or even that he performs sub-optimally on either site. Really, it’s just how you interpret data and salary changes – looking at our DraftKings Bargain Rating is a great start in finding players who have historically outperformed their expected value, no matter what value that may be. Even on FanDuel, look at DraftKings.
