This is a weekly series that follows MLB trends created with our Trends tool. Although the trends in this series are made with specific slates in mind, they are designed to remain relevant throughout the season.
8/21
One strategy I sometimes like to deploy in guaranteed prize pools (GPPs) involves looking at the pitchers I know most people will not target with bats. Oftentimes, after I dig into things further, I find that I don’t want to attack the pitcher either. But sometimes, there are reasons to target a pitcher in a spot that most people will be avoiding.
On Monday, I took the same principles that our Recent Batted Ball Luck metric uses and applied it to opposing pitchers. Recent Batted Ball Luck compares a player’s batted ball distance over the past 15 days and compares that to their fantasy production over the past year. By doing this, we can identify players who have been ‘lucky’ or ‘unlucky’ relative to the amount of fantasy points they scored.
My new trend compares an opposing pitcher’s batted ball distance allowed over the fantasy year to their batted ball distance allowed over the past 15 days, which generally will include a pitcher’s two or three most recent starts. What I’m looking for is a pitcher who generally allows weak contact, but who has been allowing harder contact of late. Specifically, I’m looking at pitchers whose yearly batted ball distance allowed is below 200 feet and recent batted ball distance exceeds 220 feet. Opposing batters who are hitting in the top half of the batting order have achieved a +0.90 Plus/Minus in these situations.
Matching this trend were the Arizona Diamondbacks, who were opposed by Robert Gsellman and the Mets in New York. Gsellman may not be a player you trip over yourself to roster, but he has been excellent at limiting hard contact over the past year, with an average distance allowed of 197 feet. However, over the past 15 days, he has allowed a distance of 227 feet — an average increase of 30 feet. Along the same lines, Gsellman’s ground ball rate had dropped from 53 percent to 27 percent. In other words, Gsellman wants to get ground balls, but he has had no success in doing so recently. Additionally, Gsellman had recently returned to the majors after an extended stint on the disabled list due to a hamstring strain. Perhaps the underlying numbers were indicating that Gsellman was not all the way back to his past form following this recent injury.
Results
Gsellman found his form on Monday, limiting the Diamondbacks to one earned run on five hits over six-plus innings of work. While a dramatic shift in recent form can sometimes be an indication that the pitcher is playing through an injury or has developed a flaw in his mechanics, it’s always possible that they will find their form, which leaves you riding the bus one stop too long.
8/22
Sometimes, I will create a Trend with the expectation that an assumption will be confirmed, only to be shocked to find my assumption disproved. That was the case on Tuesday, and I’ll walk you through my thinking as it pertained to Jon Gray’s matchup at Kansas City. We know that pitchers are worse fantasy plays, from a raw production perspective, when they pitch in Denver than in games hosted anywhere else around the league. To that point, Rockies pitchers have collectively scored 0.78 more fantasy points per game in road games. However, the Plus/Minus differential is a more modest 0.2 points. Seeing those numbers, we can conclude that, although Rockies pitchers play better on the road, DraftKings’ pricing accounts for this split, leaving no real edge for us as DFS players.
My thinking on Tuesday was that I may be able to achieve better results by looking only at pitchers playing in the Rockies’ first road game after a homestand. In these games, it’s more likely that the pitcher’s most recent performance — a game that would have been played at Coors Field in most cases — was poor, and that could affect both pricing and ownership levels due to recency bias. In fact, the opposite is true. When looking at the Rockies’ first road game after a homestand (using the Home/Away Streak filter in Trends), Rockies pitchers have been both more expensive – by nearly $400 –and more highly-owned – by 2.5 percent. They have collectively scored 0.04 more fantasy points in the first road game, but have a lower Plus/Minus due to the higher salaries. All else equal, Rockies pitchers are worse fantasy plays in the team’s first game of a road trip.
Going further, I looked at pitchers who pitched well in the most recent start at Coors Field. Leaving the Home/Away filter in place, I added a filter to match pitchers who allowed an average batted ball distance under 200 feet in their last start (at Coors). We’re starting to run into sample size concerns at this point, but the results have been surprisingly poor:
Despite pitching very well at Coors Field in the most recent start, there was no carryover for these pitchers when looking at the next start.
Matching both trends, Gray had shut down the Braves’ lineup in his most recent home start, and he would now be starting at Kauffman Stadium in the first game of a Rockies road trip.
Results
Gray was able to buck the trend’s performance, scoring 18.8 fantasy points over six-plus innings. This will be an interesting trend to watch moving forward because:
A) Logically, it probably makes more sense that Rockies pitchers would be better plays in road games following a positive start at Coors, contrary to these results.
B) The last time the Rockies had a pitcher of Gray’s caliber was . . . uh, maybe never, now that I think about it. Did you know Jorge De La Rosa leads this team in all-time strikeouts and there is a gap of 212 strikeouts between De La Rosa and second-place Ubaldo Jimenez? YIKES! Anyway, what I’m saying is it’s possible that introducing a pitcher of Gray’s potential to the cohort may be enough on its own to flip the results over time. After all, Gray already sits 23rd on the Rockies’ all-time strikeout list after only 51 starts.
——
Thanks for following along with my three custom trends this week. As always, there’s plenty more left to be explored via the Labs Tools.
