Every five days, you must choose: roster Clayton Kershaw or fade Clayton Kershaw? In a span of five days, what decisions even compare? Making your bed every five days? Taking out the trash? Laundry? Ha – everyone knows the most efficient time to do laundry is once every new moon. I can’t even remember what I did yesterday, but I guarantee you I remember if I rostered Kershaw five days ago.
When Kershaw is on the hill, he will significantly affect your night whether you play him or not. From past experience, I can tell you that there is nothing worse than fading Kershaw, going to sleep on the East Coast, and waking up to see a complete game shutout at 30% ownership.
So how exactly does this guy dominate, anyways? His repertoire mainly consists of a four-seam fastball (94 mph), slider (88 mph), and curve (74 mph). Obviously, Kershaw generates a higher number of swings and misses with each pitch than most other pitchers. His curve is arguably the best pitch in all of baseball. In his career, his curve has a 53.7% strikeout percentage. Is that good?
(via MLB.TV)
Yes, yes it is. Opponents have been held to a .128 wOBA and a .030 ISO against Kershaw’s curve. This is terrifying to even think about. Sure, throwing meatballs to Giancarlo Stanton from 60 feet away is scary, but standing in the box facing this curve will haunt you for eternity.
Kershaw has three Cy Young Awards already. His last four years represent one of the best stretches in the history of baseball. Nobody will ever top Koufax from 1963 to 1966, but Kershaw’s run has been damn good.
Naturally, a pitcher with this much talent will undoubtedly be priced extremely high on both DraftKings and FanDuel. His average price on DraftKings the last few years has been $13,000, compared to $11,500 on FanDuel. I often find myself weighing price per advantage for items in my daily life. Should I buy this box of Gushers for $2.00? Of course. Should I roster Kershaw for $13,300 on DraftKings? Well, that’s what this article is about!
When to be on “Team Kershaw”
You might be thinking that Kershaw has had a down year. He is 5-3 with a 3.36 ERA – awful for his standards. However, his xFIP is the lowest in baseball (again) and his BABIP is 34 points higher than his career average. Also, his last three starts have all been fantastic. Why does this matter? Well, this is around the time where Kershaw starts cooking.
On FanDuel, Kershaw has the highest Plus/Minus during the warmest months. In April, for his career, his wOBA allowed is .283 – the highest of any month. In July, for his career, his wOBA allowed is .239 – the lowest of any month. His wOBA allowed for each month appears to match up with our data on expected points vs. actual points.
Even with this information, I would not put too much weight on the month Kershaw is pitching in. Since there are plenty of factors that could alter these numbers and relying on one statistic is never ideal, let’s take a look at a statistic that makes a little bit more sense: home vs. away.
On DraftKings, Kershaw has a Plus/Minus of 10.9 when he is at home. We can attribute this to the park factor of Dodger Stadium being near the bottom of the league each year Kershaw has played. When you are going to bite the bullet and pay up for Kershaw, it is important that he is playing at home. This matters more for cash games because the key is consistency; for GPPs, he is still capable of having huge games on the road, but not as often.
I previously wrote about the significance of the Vegas Score for each pitcher, specifically the top 1%. I used Kershaw as an example of pitchers with optimal Vegas Scores. On FanDuel, Kershaw has a Plus/Minus of 3.52 when he has a 99 or 100 Vegas Score.
Since wins are more important on FanDuel, let’s focus on spots where Kershaw is a heavy favorite. Look at how Kershaw performs when he is at least a -175 moneyline favorite:
On average, Kershaw performs 3.72 points above his expected points when the moneyline is -175 or higher. Since wins aren’t as important on DraftKings, let’s look at something that is of equal importance: strikeouts. I took every game Kershaw has thrown (excluding his rookie season) and compared his strikeouts to his opponent’s strikeout percentage.
Strikeouts are king on DraftKings, as this article discusses, and Kershaw seems to have a range of four to eleven strikeouts, eliminating outliers. While two strikeouts doesn’t seem like a lot, it is roughly 25% of his range. So, when choosing optimal situations to roster Kershaw, it is worth checking out his opponent’s team strikeout percentage.
Kershaw will always be at his best when he is locating his pitches. This is a very difficult thing to predict – there can often be intangibles that lead to varying performances.
Here is an example of where Kershaw kept the ball down and dominated the game – eight innings, 11 strikeouts, and only one hit. Predicting when Kershaw is going to keep the ball down is not something that can easily be done. After looking through umpire data, for Kershaw specifically, the sample sizes are too small to really gather a predictable conclusion. However, it is absolutely worth looking at the home plate umpire for each subsequent game to know if they are generally favorable for pitchers.
To sum everything up, we know that Kershaw performs better in the summer than the spring, when he is pitching at home, when the Vegas Score is in the top 1%, when the moneyline is -175 or higher, and when he faces a team with a higher strikeout percentage. There will still be outlier games, but with his high consistency, it is important to pinpoint when he is at his best – especially with a steep price tag.
When to fade Kershaw and most likely tilt
Pretty much the opposite of everything you just read. If Kershaw is on the road, with a low moneyline, lower Vegas Score, and facing a team that rarely strikes out, it is a good idea to fade him. Sometimes fading Kershaw can be as simple as just finding one or two other pitchers with optimal matchups who are much cheaper. The size of the slate is another factor – on a short slate, it might be more important to roll with Kershaw’s consistency even if he doesn’t meet every detail above. Or vice versa – on a large slate it might be wise to fade Kershaw even with a great matchup if there are expensive bats at Coors Field, for example. In general, fading Kershaw comes down to his matchup not being ideal, his price being too high, the size of the slate, and having expensive hitters with good circumstances.
When to attack
In cash games, I do not recommend ever taking a hitter vs. Kershaw. His consistency is too great.
However, in GPPs, attacking Kershaw makes sense at times. First, the ownership of the team you are stacking will most likely be the lowest of the night. Second, as much as Kershaw dominates, he is still susceptible to bad games – we just need to know when.
Out of 221 games, Kershaw has given up five or more runs only 19 times. Not surprisingly, 15 of those 19 games were on the road. Six of the games have been at Coors Field. Three have been at Chase Field. This is also not very surprising, as both of these fields have a high Park Factor. Kershaw got roughed up at Chase Field earlier this year.
Kershaw left a ton of balls up in the zone, which is a recipe for disaster in a park that is favorable to hitters. When you attack Kershaw in a GPP, Chase Field or Coors Field are good spots to start. This doesn’t mean that he never has good games in those ballparks – he has had several fantastic games at Coors Field – but when evaluating your chances of winning a tournament, it can be +EV to make an anti-Kershaw team in these situations.
If you do not want to commit to the stack because Kershaw only implodes roughly twice a year, there are other ways to attack. Only eight players have ever hit more than one home run off Kershaw. Four of these – Goldschmidt, Tulowitzki, Posey, Werth – are lefty mashers. If you think Kershaw is in a tough park, with less than optimal factors, then you can attack him with a few pieces. Going back to when he got roughed up at Chase Field, Pollock and Goldschmidt would have been good GPP plays (both hit lefties very well). Goldschmidt finished with 18 DraftKings points, while Pollock finished with 22. Here is one of Goldy’s at-bats in that game:
(via MLB.TV)
Don’t be afraid to stack against Kershaw. No one will tell on you. Honestly, people will hardly notice – that is, until you bank the largest tourney of the year with a Brewers stack vs. Kershaw. It is tough to predict when Kershaw will have a poor game, but if we narrow down all of the negative factors (on the road, high Park Factor, lefty specialists, etc.) we can start taking chances for GPPs.
Kid K will likely finish as one of the greatest pitchers of all time. He is arguably the best pitcher of his generation. But the brutal truth is that I won’t appreciate his career as much if I roster him when he implodes and fade him when he smashes. That’s just the nature of DFS. Now, you can sit down, crack a fresh box of Gushers that you definitely didn’t overpay for, and watch Kershaw knowing that you have done everything possible to make the right decision.
