Most of the articles I write usually stem from an initial hypothesis. It’s either something I’ve heard people discuss or something I’ve wondered about, but have never really had the tools to actually study it. But thanks to the Trends tool here at Fantasy Labs, I’ve been able to finally get some answers to my questions.
For this article, my hypothesis was that players who hit a bunch of home runs would have higher upside on DraftKings than FanDuel. The reason, of course, has to do with scoring – on DraftKings, home runs are essentially worth 14 points (11 points more than a single), whereas on FanDuel a home run is worth 6 points (5 points more than a single).
To look at this, I took the top home run hitters of 2015 (as of a couple days ago) and plotted their upside (we define upside as percentage of times a player has reached twice his salary-based expectation on both DraftKings and FanDuel). Here were the results:
The lines look similar, but as you can see, home run hitters have much more upside on FanDuel than they do on DraftKings. What could be some reasons for this?
I think first off, I was flawed in thinking the scoring would favor upside on DK more – while homers are more points on DK, they’re actually less multiplicatively. And the reason isn’t how the sites value home runs, but rather how they value singles – a homer on FD is worth six times more points than a single, whereas on DK it’s only worth 4.67 times more points than a single.
Another thing I didn’t think about at the time was the fact that FanDuel penalizes players for outs. This accentuates the difference between your high-upside players and others – it’s not about how many points the high-upside guy is scoring, but rather how many points they’re scoring relative to another player. On FanDuel, because of their tiered scoring and negative points for outs, this is more dramatic and thus gives home run hitters higher upside.
It’s a good strategy to chase home runs on any site, but you should especially do so on FanDuel. Though there’s a counter to this – some home run hitters are pretty volatile in terms of boom-or-bust potential. While there’s obviously higher upside with those guys on FD, there’s equally greater downside if those guys don’t hit one and strike out a couple of times. However, especially on FanDuel, it’s a complete must to find at least a couple homers if you want to win a tournament.
