For just about every sport here at FantasyLabs, we have a proprietary metric called “Bargain Rating,” defined thus:
A percentile rating (1-100) of how much of a bargain a player is on one site versus the other; Bargain Rating helps to quickly identify where players are cheapest.
Especially in cash games, it is wise to roster players on the site where they’re cheaper. Look at MLB pitchers, for example: Pitchers who are much cheaper on FanDuel than DraftKings (with Bargain Ratings of 90-plus) provide a lot of Plus/Minus value (per our Trends tool):
Unfortunately, we don’t have a similar metric for golf because we can’t backtest it currently; FanDuel has had a golf product for just a couple months, and their current iteration has been around for just a couple of weeks. But that doesn’t mean the essence of Bargain Rating — the idea of investing in players in the market where they’re cheapest — isn’t still valuable for cash games and guaranteed prize pools (GPPs) this week.
Let’s create our own Bargain Ratings for the U.S. Open.
U.S. Open Bargain Ratings
Because the sites have different salary caps and salary floors, we can’t just subtract a player’s salary on DraftKings from his salary on FanDuel, and vice versa. For example, Dustin Johnson is $12,000 on DraftKings and $11,200 on FanDuel. That difference — $800 — is actually less than the difference of, say, Daniel Summerhays, who is $7,100 and $5,700 (a difference of $1,400). Summerhays’ FanDuel Bargain Rating is not twice DJ’s, however, because we haven’t yet factored in the salary cap. The DraftKings cap is $50,000, while the FanDuel cap is $60,000. Thus, if we measure DJ’s salaries versus the respective caps and then measure the percentage difference, we see that he’s actually more discounted on FanDuel than Summerhays is.
- Johnson: ($12,000 / $50,000) – ($11,200 / $60,000) = 5.33 percent
- Summerhays: ($7,100 / $50,000) – ($5,700 / $60,000) = 4.70 percent
I found in Part 1 of my Vegas Bargain Ratings (VBR) piece that DraftKings and FanDuel have very different pricing this week. Take a look at the correlation — the r-squared value — between Vegas implied odds to win the U.S. Open and the salaries on both sites:
While the DraftKings pricing is heavily correlated with odds to win, the FanDuel pricing isn’t. It’s hard to say whether a high DraftKings or FanDuel Bargain Rating is better; without backtesting this data with our PGA Trends tool, we’re guessing. That said, we at least know how sites price players — DraftKings by odds; FanDuel by odds and other factors — and we can use Bargain Ratings simply to find where we should have exposure to golfers we like.
That’s how I would use these unofficial Bargain Ratings. Don’t use them to find players to roster. Instead, roster golfers based on what you read in the PGA Breakdown, watch in the model previews from guys like CSURAM88 and The Sports Geek, and research for yourself in our Player Models.
And then, once you’ve decided who to roster, use Bargain Ratings to find where golfers are the cheapest and invest accordingly.
Anyway, here are the Bargain Ratings for the U.S. Open:
Notable Players
FanDuel
The guy with the biggest pricing discrepancy is Jordan Spieth, who is $11,500 on DraftKings but only $10,100 on FanDuel. He’s been up-and-down recently . . .
. . . but has played well over the last two weeks (since returning to his old putter). Spieth isn’t as long as the other high-priced studs in the field — and players need distance at Erin Hills — but he’s long enough; he won the U.S. Open in 2015 at Chambers Bay, which is 7,585 yards and a Par 72. Putting will be important on Erin Hills’ greens, and when Spieth is in form he’s arguably the best putter in the world. He’s worthy of a roster spot on either site, but he’s especially cheap on FanDuel.
One note: Remember that a golfer can very well be over- or underpriced on both sites. Jon Rahm, for example, is similarly priced on both sites — he has Bargain Ratings of 48 and 52 on DraftKings and FanDuel — but you could make the case that he’s quite underpriced on both sites. Even if he’s not a value on one site relative to the other, he’s perhaps still a value on both sites.
DraftKings
The $7,000 range is where you’ll find most of the golfers who are underpriced on DraftKings relative to FanDuel: Jimmy Walker, Martin Kaymer, Louis Oosthuizen, Matt Kuchar, and Francesco Molinari all have DraftKings Bargain Ratings of 85 or higher. These guys are particularly intriguing on DraftKings, as they’re likely undervalued because of low opening implied odds to win the tournament.
Oosthuizen, for example, leads the entire field with a 67.2 Recent Adjusted Round Score; he’s coming off two great rounds at THE PLAYERS Championship and the Byron Nelson Championship, finishing top-20 in both. He has a hot putter — he’s averaging just 27.5 Putts Per Round over his last two tournaments — and he has adequate distance for Erin Hills. With 2.0 percent odds to win the U.S. Open, he has a relatively low VBR score — but what this might mean is that, because DraftKings priced golfers so closely with Vegas odds, both Vegas bettors and DraftKings missed Oosthuizen’s great recent form. FanDuel could have him priced more appropriately, giving him a high Bargain Rating on DraftKings.
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For more on Erin Hills, be sure to check out our U.S. Open Dashboard and join us for our FREE live show tonight at 8pm ET, when I’ll be joined by Peter Jennings (CSURAM88), Colin Davy, and Sean Valukis to discuss everything U.S. Open and answer your questions live on-air!
