Last week, DraftKings launched contests for the Canadian Football League, which I think is really exciting. Now I have two leagues to point to when I say dumb*ss sh*t like, “Tim Tebow’s not even good enough to be a $0 DFS option.”
This is the 65th installment of The Labyrinthian, a series dedicated to exploring random fields of knowledge in order to give you unordinary theoretical, philosophical, strategic, and/or often rambling guidance on daily fantasy sports. Consult the introductory piece to the series for further explanation.
Lucas Giolito: Is He a Black Swan?
In Tuesday’s MLB Breakdown, John Daigle highlighted much-hyped (former) Double-A pitcher Lucas Giolito, who last night made his MLB debut with the Washington Nationals. The 21-year-old flamethrower — in a rain-delayed and -shortened outing — gave up only one hit on his way to four scoreless innings. That hit was a single by Mets leadoff hitter Curtis Granderson to start the game, which the Nationals won 5-0.
Giolito was $6,400 on DraftKings and $7,200 on FanDuel.
Technically, Giolito didn’t have a good DFS outing. He had a negative Plus/Minus debut on both sites.
But here’s the thing: Given how new Giolito is to MLB, his potential, and his relatively low salary, it’s very possible that Giolito is very undervalued right now. It’s possible that he’s a Black Swan.
You know who’s not a Black Swan? Almost every other player in MLB. We’re days away from the All-Star Game. At this point in the season, almost all MLB players are the opposite of new, unknown, and foreign. They are old hat, known, and familiar. In short, they are predictable.
The New, Unknown, and Foreign
If one wants to win a guaranteed prize pool, one probably shouldn’t roster players who are predictable. [Insert here some quotation from Albert Einstein about insanity, repetition, and expectation.] (Author’s Note: I’m too lazy to do the google search. You know the quotation I’m talking about.)
That quotation hits the nail on the head. Maybe he couldn’t tie his shoes, but Einstein wasn’t a DFS moron.
Rostering players who are in new situations, somewhat unknown, and maybe even from different countries or leagues is a way to leverage uncertainty in GPPs. Not only do such players tend to be cheap — because the DFS platforms would be very unreasonable to price them highly — but they also have Upside that is yet to be quantified and/or grasped.
Plus/Minus, Upside, and other premium exclusive metrics are accessible via our free Ratings tool.
Like a newborn entering the world, players who are new, unknown, and/or foreign have potential that is theoretically almost limitless.
A Few Examples
Just think about the Euro Tour golfers who occasionally come from nowhere to do well at PGA events. Golfers like that, in part, are why our PGA Director Colin Davy has insisted that strokes gained is overrated in PGA DFS — it ignores Euro Tour data and also golfers who outperform expectations and ownership, precisely because little is known about them and expected of them and few people roster them.
Shortly before the NFL draft, I argued that NFL rookies might be the most important professional athletes in the entire DFS industry: They have the largest fantasy impact of any rookies in the major sports, they are often misvalued, and NFL DFS is the most lucrative of all DFS sports. Basically, rookies are important to NFL DFS because they are new and unknown assets.
And in football the concepts of newness and unknownness apply to more than just rookies. They also apply to veteran players who are relatively unknown (at least in their current states) and entering new situations. There are two really important items to note:
Item No. 1: Because of the high injury rates in football, we probably see more non-rookies come from nowhere in the NFL than we do in other sports. The Zero RB Strategy is built upon this knowledge, and even though it was theorized originally for redraft leagues it certainly has applications to DFS.
Just think of Arian Foster emerging in 2010 because of an injury to Ben Tate. Or Devonta Freeman breaking out last year, aided by an early-season injury to Tevin Coleman. Or even Tim Hightower returning to the NFL last season — after four years out of the league — and providing unspeakably unreal value as an almost-30-year-old journeyman in the final four weeks of the season with an average of 21 rushes and three receptions for 114 yards and a touchdown per game . . . all because Mark Ingram was injured.
Non-rookies aren’t the only NFL players who can provide DFS value because of newness and unknownness.
Item No. 2: ‘Unknownness’ is definitely a real word. I looked it up on the Internet, and it told me that it was real, so it must be true.
What was I talking about? . . . Ah, yes! The CFL!
Eric Rogers: A DFS Case Study
You probably don’t know who Eric Rogers is. He has a chance to provide extreme value to DFS players in 2016 — because he’s new, unknown, and foreign-ish. On the one hand, this piece is absolutely about Rogers. On the other hand, it’s about what to look for across all sports when targeting players who can become GPP winners.
If Rogers never has NFL success, that will suck and I will briefly consider giving up the ‘Oracle’ moniker — but this piece really is about more than just Rogers. It’s about the type of DFS superstar we hope Rogers becomes.
He’s Very New
So who is Eric Dion Rogers? Right now, according to the Rotoworld depth charts, he’s the 10th wide receiver on the San Francisco 49ers. Because it will A) be fun and B) add length to this piece, let’s look at the wide receivers currently above him on the depth chart:
- Torrey Smith
- Quinton Patton
- Bruce Ellington
- Jerome Simpson
- DeAndrew White
- DeAndre Smelter
- Dres Anderson
- Aaron Burbridge
- Devon Cajuste
That depth chart is very thin. [Insert here an incredibly obscene joke.] That’s how thin this depth chart is.
There’s little separating Rogers at No. 10 from Simpson at No. 4, who in turn isn’t all that far from Patton at No. 2. In a world of chaos, the odds are better than most people think that Rogers will make the roster, especially when Chip Kelly is one of the gods who holds that little swirling globe in his hands.
Just a few days ago, 49ers beat writer Matt Maiocco said that Rogers is ahead of Smelter, whom the 49ers liked enough last year to draft in the fourth round (despite his advanced age and marked inexperience) and to stash on the Injured Reserve (because of a pre-draft ACL injury that prevented him from even working out for the team at the combine). The 49ers like Smelter a lot — and Rogers might be ahead of him.
And here’s the best thing about this situation: Rogers is new to the team. Even though Kelly and General Manager Trent Baalke know and like Rogers — he was the first player the team signed after Kelly was hired — Rogers isn’t new just to the 49ers. He’s basically new to the NFL.
And he’s new to DFS players as well as DFS platforms. There’s a lot of opportunity for people to capitalize on an information edge and potential mispricing early in the season.
He’s Utterly Unknown
Let’s go into Rogers’ backstory, so that — unlike almost everyone else out there — you’ll know who he is before he (hopefully) breaks out.
He’s a wide receiver who, as a true college senior in 2012, absolutely dominated at Cal, catching 91 passes for 1,298 yards and 18 touchdowns in 10 games. He also added five rushes for 46 yards and three more touchdowns. What a season, right? — and in the Pac-12!
Wait, did I say, ‘Cal’? . . . hahaha! — MY BAD! Rogers attended Cal Lutheran, a Division III non-powerhouse.
#Unknown
Despite his small-school pedigree, Rogers did not perform like a small-school athlete in his 2013 pre-draft workout. Rather, with a 4.50-second 40-yard dash at six feet three inches and 206 pounds, Rogers looked a lot like A.J. Green as a prospect when his production was also taken into account.
Of course, the A.J. Greens of DIII never are selected in the NFL draft, and such was the case with Rogers. After the draft, he immediately signed with the Cowboys as a free agent — shades of Miles Austin, anyone? — but he was cut shortly before the 2013 season started and he wasn’t offered a spot on any team’s practice squad.
And that was his 2013.
What happened in 2014 and 2015?
He’s ‘Foreign’ as F***
The Portland Thunder of the Arena Football League acquired his rights but then placed him on the exempt list because he signed with the Ottawa Redblacks of the CFL in February of 2014 . . . and then he was cut by the team two months later without seeing any game action. Rogers returned to the AFL and, joining the Thunder in the middle of the season, immediately became one of the league’s top receivers. In nine games — the first action he saw as a professional — Rogers had 73 receptions for 903 yards and 27 touchdowns.
AFL stats certainly are inflated, but he was fourth in receptions, sixth in yards receiving, and second in touchdowns on a per-game basis. That’s pretty good for a young guy who just joined the team — so good in fact that it earned the attention of the Calgary Stampeders. For the second time in 2014, Rogers was signed to the CFL and placed on the AFL exempt list. For most of the 2014 CFL season, Rogers did nothing, appearing in only two games, but in those games — at the end of the season — he showed what he could do, securing nine receptions for 149 yards and two touchdowns.
From that point on, he wasn’t just the top receiver on his team. He was the best receiver in the CFL, leading the league in 2015 in both yards receiving (1,448) and touchdowns receiving (10) despite ranking only fourth in targets (135) and receptions (87). In 17 games last season, Rogers proved that ([un]like Tebow) he doesn’t belong in the CFL.
He belongs in the NFL.
After his 2015 campaign, Rogers was courted by half the NFL — by literally 16 teams — and in January he chose to sign with the 49ers.
People might discount what Rogers did last year and the year before in the CFL and AFL, because the CFL is foreign and the AFL is unfamiliar to them — but believing that Rogers’ previous experience is meaningless and his production not indicative of what he could do in the NFL is a mistake. Just because people don’t follow or think much of the CFL and AFL doesn’t mean that players from those leagues can’t have NFL success.
That’s especially true for Rogers, given the opportunity he has in San Francisco.
He’s Got the Opportunity
Just to drive this point home: Rogers will have an opportunity with the 49ers. Anquan Boldin’s departure frees up 111 targets from last season, and with Chip in town the 49ers will almost certainly throw more this season, especially if they trail in games, which they are expected to do. Just based on the numbers, someone on the team besides Torrey Smith is likely to receive substantial targets. It could be Rogers.
And here’s something else that so many people are overlooking: Smaller wide receivers such as DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin have had success with Kelly as their coach, and they are comparable to Smith in important ways . . . but Nelson Agholor most definitely did not do well with Chip last year. Who has done well, though, every year of Chip’s NFL coaching career, is a big-bodied wide receiver partnered with a smaller guy.
2013: Riley Cooper was partnered with D-Jax. Cooper had a surprising productive campaign, with 47 receptions for 835 yards and eight touchdowns. And, per our free Trends tool, on FanDuel he had a +3.74 Plus/Minus with 56.3 percent Consistency. In terms of Plus/Minus, Consistency, and Upside, he was easily the best receiver on the Eagles that year.
2014: Rookie Jordan Matthews was paired with Jeremy Maclin and had a good rookie year, with 67 receptions for 872 yards and eight touchdowns. On FanDuel, he was the second-best receiver on the team, with a +0.83 Plus/Minus. Of course, if we look only at games in the second half of the season, once he had a hold of the offense and was used more reliably, Matthews led the team with a +1.79 Plus/Minus and was easily the only Eagles receiver with a positive Plus/Minus.
2015: While some experts imagined that Agholor would assume the D-Jax/Maclin role and become the team’s leading receiver, Matthews maintained the hold he had established in the second half of 2014. As the team’s No. 1 target, Matthews had 85 receptions for 997 yards and eight touchdowns. As he did in the last eight games of 2014, Matthews led the Eagles receivers in Plus/Minus and again was the only one of the group to have a positive mark.
In terms of raw fantasy production, D-Jax and Maclin are the best receivers Kelly has had. In term of salary-based production, Kelly has supported bigger receivers better than he has the high-profile smaller speedsters. It’s likely that Smith will be the best overall receiver on the 49ers in 2016. It’s possible, though, that another, bigger receiver — perhaps Rogers — could provide the best value.
This Time, the Quotation
Remember, even though this piece has a ton of information about Rogers, it’s about more than just a CFL superstar. It’s about showing you some of the characteristics of Black Swans.
If you are chasing Black Swans in GPPs, you will look for the relatively rare birds who in some way are new, unknown, and/or sometimes even foreign. They don’t need to be ‘new’ — they could be players in new situations. They don’t need to be ‘unknown’ — they could be in circumstances of unknown value. And they don’t need to be ‘foreign’ — often playing in an unfamiliar league is sufficient.
In short, you are looking for talented players about whom most people possess a great deal of uncertainty and about whom you have all the pertinent information. Such players are relatively likely to be inefficiently priced by platforms and inordinately under-rostered by your DFS competitors. Even if these players have only a 10 percent chance of achieving the value they need to meet in order to be worth rostering in tournaments, they are likely to be rostered in a far lower percentage of GPP lineups.
These are the players with whom you should be practicing ownership arbitrage.
And it also helps if you find these players in situations likely to yield opportunity and that have been fruitful for comparable players. That Bayesian prior is relatively strong.
Rostering these players isn’t always easy on the psyche — but neither is not winning GPPs. If you find yourself avoiding these players and not having the results you want, you might want to stop doing the same thing over and over.
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The Labyrinthian: 2016, 65
Previous installments of The Labyrinthian can be accessed via my author page. If you have suggestions on material I should know about or even write about in a future Labyrinthian, please contact me via email, [email protected], or Twitter @MattFtheOracle.
