It’s now the last full week in February, and as a DFS player who currently resides in New Hampshire, that means it’s time for me to become reacquainted with two things:
1.) Shorts.
2.) FantasyLabs MLB Trends.
In regards to the latter item, I thought the best place to start would be with a review of the MLB transaction log over the past several months. This is the first in a series of articles where I will look at an elite player who will be debuting with a new team in 2016 every Monday for the next several weeks. You just found out I am from New England, so obviously I am starting with…
David Price
After Rick Porcello and Wade Miley let up about 500 combined runs last season, David Price is a welcomed addition for the Red Sox. As a DFS player, you’d probably liked to have seen Price relocate to a more pitcher-friendly environment, but let’s take a look at what the shift to Fenway means for David.
Over the past few seasons, Price has actually added the most Plus/Minus value pitching at Fenway when looking at parks where he has started five or more regular season games:
He has averaged less raw points at Fenway than at Yankee Stadium and Rogers Centre, which suggests the sites have historically priced him down for his road starts @BOS. That’s reasonable, but also a little misleading since Price will now be supported by the Red Sox offense rather than facing it. Overall, since 2011, David averages 13.18 fantasy points per game on FanDuel, meaning Fenway has roughly been an average venue for him.
Next, let’s take a look at his FanGraphs spray chart from 2015. As you can see, most of his home runs allowed went over the left-field wall. Left-field at Fenway is home to the Green Monster, which is closer in distance than many other left-field walls around the league, but that is mitigated by its stature (37 feet high).
Looking at ESPN’s Home Run Tracker, around 25% of the home runs David allowed last season would not have made it out of Fenway. Although Fenway Park’s distance to far-right as listed as 302’, shortest in the league, you can see by the dimension overlay that is a bit misleading, as the wall immediately shoots out behind Pesky’s Pole.
Another concern we might have about Price is a dip in wins. After all, last season, he posted 18 regular season wins (third highest in his career) and now joins a Red Sox club that won only 78 games in 2015. FanGraphs does expect Boston to win 91 games in 2016 (the third-highest projection in the MLB), but really, Price is rarely an underdog when he takes the mound.
Looking at his Vegas splits, we can see that David Price has been favored in a whopping 86.8% of the games he has started over the past several seasons. Wins can be a bit fluky for MLB pitchers, but I don’t see an obvious reason to downgrade him here either.
If you’re looking for a reason to be concerned about David Price in 2016, his choice to remain in the AL East wasn’t great for DFS purposes. Using our Opponent’s Division filter, we can see that Davis has struggled to add value in Plus/Minus against his divisional foes, who he will probably face once every three starts or so in 2016.
We’re getting into the BvP gray area now, but I always find Price’s split against the Yankees particularly interesting, so I will bring it up again. As I wrote last July, Price has been almost unbelievably bad against NYY. They are both the team he has faced most frequently and been least effective against. Every season is different, but those numbers are really bad.
I mentioned just paragraphs ago that Price had been pretty good at Yankee Stadium, and that is true. But when the Yankees have paid him a visit in the past, they have smacked him around. In 11 starts in our database, he has averaged just 8.12 FanDuel points when playing host to New York:
With the benefit of a strong offense and a park that doesn’t seem too detrimental to his profile, David Price is ready to rock in 2016. He finished 2015 at his highest price point on FanDuel at $12,300 and just $400 below his highest price on DraftKings ($12,400), which means he won’t come cheap to open 2016. Still, the 23.72 DraftKings points he averaged per game in 2015 meant he should have had an average cost around $13,800, leaving him in play even at his most expensive.
