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Description
(Written the Friday before kickoff)
This week, I’m taking a closer look into one of our more powerful metrics, Bargain Rating. We are sometimes asked by users who play on only one DFS site (i.e. either DraftKings OR FanDuel but not both) whether they should pay any attention to Bargain Rating at all, since it’s a metric that identifies players who are comparatively cheaper or more expensive on either DraftKings or FanDuel. If you are playing on both sites, you can pick and choose which site on which to gain exposure to a player based on his relative cost.
But that’s not the only utility that Bargain Rating has. Lots of things go into site pricing: Playing time, recent performance, recent ownership, matchup, etc. So what happens when one site prices a player significantly higher than the other?
Consider the case of Ty Montgomery in the Week 7 Thursday Night Football game. FD had priced him up somewhat after a 12-target performance in Week 6 and amid rumors of an increased workload. DK, on the other hand, left him at the stone minimum salary, $3,000. The result was a zero percent FD Bargain Rating against a 99 percent DK Bargain Rating. By identifying players with high Bargain Ratings, you are essentially leveraging site pricing algorithms to your advantage. Even if you don’t play on FD, knowing that Montgomery is much more expensive there (relative to DK) is actionable when creating your DK lineup. Knowing the value of one player in one market can help you identify bargains when you’re investing in another market.
In this week’s trend, I am pairing Bargain Rating with Opponent Plus/Minus. I’m asking the question: Where has a site not properly adjusted for a player’s matchup and opportunity? The settings differ slightly from position to position because I want to have a similarly-sized player pool at each spot.
The Matches
Running Back
(Link to this week’s RB trend)
If Jamaal Charles is indeed out or limited this weekend, as seems likely at the time of this writing, Spencer Ware will be an RB1 with one of the best matchups possible. At $7,000 FD, he would be severely underpriced.
Jacquizz Rodgers is also mispriced due to the Doug Martin news, which broke after Week 7 pricing had already been set. With the highest projected ownership at his position and the second-best matchup available based on Opp Pos +/-, Rodgers is a risky fade even in large tournaments.
Wide Receiver
(Link to this week’s WR trend)
Julian Edelman’s season really isn’t going all that well. But the Patriots are implied to score 27.5 points in Week 7 and Edelman is facing a secondary that has allowed a +2.1 Plus/Minus to WRs. He seems like a reasonable buy at his depressed FD price.
On the other hand, A.J. Green is the top-rated receiver in Adam Levitan’s Player Model at the time of this writing. Despite having the best WR matchup in Opp Plus/Minus, Green owns a 98 percent FD Bargain Rating. He actually costs more on DK this week than FD by $100. And since the total DK salary cap is $10,000, his relative cost is much higher on that site. Among top-priced options, Green may be the overall best FD buy this week.
Tight End
(Link to this week’s TE trend)
Finally, at tight end, there are two matches, and neither one of them is Rob Gronkowski.
Travis Kelce’s matchup really could not look much better on paper, but you never know what’s going to happen with the extremely tilting Chiefs passing game. Yes, I rostered Alex Smith in Week 6
Results
(Written Sunday night after games)
The Buccanneers hung nearly 250 yards rushing on the 49ers, led by Quizz and Peyton Barber. That’s not going to help the ole’ Opp Plus/Minus score for the 49ers moving forward. The Bucs continue to feed Rodgers a heavy serving of pigskin with Martin on the sidelines. Rodgers has now accumulated 21.9 percent of his career rushing yards in his past two games. He is a six-year veteran, so that is either really good or really bad, depending on how you want to look at it.
While Rodgers was not able to get into the end zone, Ware’s 46-yard TD reception in the first quarter against the Saints served as the introduction en route to a dominant +10.22 Plus/Minus performance. While both RBs were clearly chalk options, we’re still looking at 70-plus percent of teams in this tournament who passed on each player.
Tom Brady was seemingly dinking-and-dunking to Edelman all game long, so I was a little surprised to see that Edelman had only 60 yards receiving. He had a better ‘real life game’ than his fantasy score indicates. In other words, it was the anti-Melvin Gordon performance.
As for AJ: Everyone knew he was going to have a big game, and he had a big game.
The next time I get the Kansas City receiving game right in 2016 will be the first. If your Chiefs player is on the wrong side of Kansas City’s game script, he has seemingly zero chance of returning value. And with the Chiefs jumping out to a 21-7 halftime lead, Kelce was on the wrong side this week.
Review
I’m not going to sit here and pretend that we learned a whole lot by the chalk going off this week. But I do strongly believe in leveraging the sites’ pricing algorithms to your advantage via Bargain Rating and Opponent Plus/Minus. We saw how valuable that can be.
