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.
6/19 – Cole World
While some pitchers can get away with throwing at lower velocity, it’s safe to say that if you’re looking at a pitcher who generally throws in the mid-90s you’re going to want to pay close attention to his recent velocity. Monday’s slate brought us hard-throwing Gerrit Cole in a matchup against the Milwaukee Brewers.
A former No. 1 overall pick, Cole found himself at somewhat of a crossroads entering 2017 after an elbow injury limited his 2016 campaign to 21 starts, an unimpressive 3.88 ERA, and a career low strikeout rate. The good news for Cole in 2017 has been that his velocity is right where you’d want to see it, and he entered Monday’s start with an average fastball velocity of 96.4 miles per hour over the past 15 days.
Given that Cole’s average velocity over his career is around 95 miles per hour, it’s easy to find how he fares when throwing harder using our Trends tool. In the 16 starts when Cole’s recent velocity has been 96-97 miles per hour, he’s achieved the following results:
When Cole is throwing the ball notably harder than average, he has provided a positive DraftKings Plus/Minus with an excellent Consistency Rating. In a good spot against a Brewers lineup that had finally started to tail off a bit after a hot start, Cole presented an alternative to chalk option Clayton Kershaw.
Results
A full $6,000 cheaper than Kershaw on DraftKings, Cole outscored the Dodgers ace by 2.5 points but appeared on half as many teams in guaranteed prize pools, per our DFS Ownership Dashboard. Ironically, Cole’s average fastball velocity in this start fell to 95.6 miles per hour, but perhaps that can be attributed to the sheer number of heaters Cole fired in this game. Cole dialed up the fastball 72.8 percent of the time, easily a season-high mark for him. Whatever the case, it was an excellent start by Cole.
6/20 – No Sale
On Tuesday, Chris Sale was far and away the best pitching option, to the point where that distinction probably wasn’t even worth debating. But while he was the best overall option, that didn’t mean he would be the best value at the position, and there was no guarantee that he would appear in the highest-scoring DFS lineups as a result.
For me, the case against going all in on Sale had to do with the weather at Kauffman Stadium. As I’ve discussed in the past, Kauffman has been one of the most weather-dependent stadiums in the MLB in recent years, and Monday’s conditions — 90 degrees with a moderate wind blowing out — gave hitters the advantage.
You can define hot and cold weather however you want, but if you run several trends involving Kauffman Stadium you will notice a sharp decline in Plus/Minus as the weather heats up. For example, when the temperature has been 70 degrees or cooler, pitchers average a +0.74 Plus/Minus compared to a -2.23 in games played in temperatures of 80 degrees or warmer. That’s a substantial difference.
Results
Against a weak Royals offense, Sale did his thing, going eight-plus innings with 10 strikeouts. However, he did tie a 2017 high by allowing two home runs to Jorge Bonifacio and Mike Moustakas, a player with negative splits against lefties over his career. Sale was the top-scoring pitcher on the night but was nowhere near the top pitcher from a Plus/Minus perspective. And since he was 50-plus percent owned in GPPs you would not have been hurt by — and maybe even would have benefited from — fading Sale in large GPPs if you picked the correct alternative.
6/21 – Unlikely Chalk
On Wednesday, there were several factors that made James Paxton’s situation unique. First of all, the slate was notably devoid of ace pitchers: Jose Berrios was the most expensive pitcher at $11,400 on DraftKings. His highest salary previous to Wednesday’s start was only $8,800. Due to the lack of name-brand ace pitchers, I figured ownership would gravitate to certain pitchers who may not deserve that much attention.
To test my theory, I built a trend. I first applied the ‘Projected Ownership’ filter to isolate the pitchers we’ve expected to be most popular. From there, I applied a ‘Month Plus/Minus’ filter and set a minimum threshold of -10. Finally, I applied a Pitch Velocity Differential filter and set that to -2 to -1 miles per hour.
Putting everything together, I am looking for pitchers who have been bad recently on the surface, as shown by a negative Plus/Minus over the past month, and who have potential red flags with their decreasing velocity. These pitchers are generally not highly owned, but this was a weird slate and Paxton did match for the trend.
Specifically, Paxton represented only the seventh time in our database these criteria have been met. Here are the results:
The Plus/Minus is obviously bad, but the main takeaway is that pitchers who have performed poorly over the past month are very rarely highly owned. In the few instances in which we’ve projected them to be highly owned, they’ve indeed been popular and horrible. In this perfect storm of negativity, I had found my fade for the night.
Results
The most-owned player on Wednesday’s slate at 39 percent, Paxton finished with the 12th-highest score among pitchers. Although he wasn’t terrible with his 15.4 fantasy points, it’s safe to say that the path to a top-tier GPP finish did not involve rostering Paxton.
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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.
