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.
7/31: Not Overpriced
Before Monday’s slate, here’s a list of Charlie Morton’s 10 most-expensive price points on DraftKings:
Well, on Monday, Morton’s salary was $10,600, a cost $1,600 more than his previous most-expensive price. Auto-fade, right? Not so fast. Morton was rated the second-best pitching option in the Bales Model and had an ownership projection of 26-30 percent. Although he was extremely expensive relative to his own pricing history, I knew that I needed to do my due diligence before disregarding Morton.
I’ll be honest: If not for our Trends tool, I would have been much less likely to roster Morton on Monday. We play DFS daily and, as a result, we develop an accurate idea of where a player’s value should be. When we know a player is overpriced relative to his past history, it can be very hard to click on that player’s name when building rosters.
However, two possibilities exist in situations like this: 1) The player is overpriced and should be ignored, or 2) The player has been severely underpriced historically and his salary is creeping towards a more acceptable level. If option two, it’s clear that this player would remain in play, pending his matchup.
Our Trends tool reflects the same two options. Applying a ‘Season Salary Change’ filter and settings its values to +$4,000 to +$5,000 results in a -1.23 Plus/Minus. Overall, when a player’s salary has risen to this degree over the course of a season, we should fade. However, adding a filter that matches pitchers who have equaled Morton’s production – players averaging 18-19 fantasy points per game – results in a +2.85 Plus/Minus, despite the presence of the salary increase filter. Based on these results, Morton has been underpriced over the last two years, and if he stays in the $10k range moving forward, that’s closer to what we should expect him to cost based on his performance.
Results
The $10,600 price tag didn’t scare people off of Morton, as he was rostered at an average of 25.94 percent across the four contests we track via our Ownership Dashboard on an admittedly weak night for pitching options. Morton scored 20.5 points, resulting in a +2.1 Plus/Minus — positive results, which were in line with my expectations based on the trend’s results.
8/1
Each slate is different than the last, but some are more unique than others. Take Tuesday’s slate: Not only were Coors bats in play, but you also had the choice of eight pitchers priced above $9,000, including Max Scherzer and Chris Sale up top. This created a unique situation where a couple of premium pitchers, despite having plus matchups, were projected to be low-owned due to slate dynamics.
Specifically, our Trends database shows 975 instances of a favored pitcher with a K Prediction between 6.0 and 8.0 and a DraftKings salary of $9,500-$11,500. Of these pitchers, the average ownership percentage is 22.9 and Plus/Minus is +2.05. Among this group, only 30 pitchers have had an ownership projection of nine to 12 percent or lower. That’s the range Chris Archer found himself in on Tuesday.
You can find ownership projections every day in our premium MLB Models.
Prior to Tuesday, here were Archer’s actual ownership percentages: 33.4, 51.3, 22.5, 31.0. He’s generally a pretty popular guy. The Plus/Minus among the 30 pitchers who matched the low ownership condition was just +0.69. But in my eyes, the rarity of finding one of these elite pitchers at low ownership was more actionable. At minimum, I felt I had found my justification for moderate Archer exposure in guaranteed prize pools.
Results
Archer outscored both Scherzer and Sale by double-digit fantasy points, so this was clearly a win. In an extremely weird DFS night that saw Sale and Scherzer each score fewer than three fantasy points, Archer was low-owned at 6.8 percent, though his 15.9 fantasy point output was unremarkable. Still, elite pitchers are rarely so low-owned, and I don’t think I would hesitate in pulling the trigger the next time a pitcher matches this trend.
8/2
Speaking of rare circumstances, Wednesday’s slate presented another interesting opportunity.
On DraftKings, when a pitcher is priced below $5,000, that generally means either 1) This pitcher is #bad, or 2) This pitcher is probably not going to pitch deep into the game. Often, we will see recent call-ups or relievers making spot starts in this position. Of the 836 pitchers who have been priced between $4,000-$5,000 on DraftKings over the last two years, 344 have had a recent pitch count below 80 pitches.
When we look for pitchers in the same salary range with a pitch count between 80 and 90, there are 252 matches with a collective +0.84 Plus/Minus. Now we’re out of the ‘low pitch count due to not being stretched out’ category and into the ‘low pitch count because they keep getting blown up’ category. Names like Mike Pelfrey, Matt Cain, and Jered Weaver appear multiple times in the cohort.
Now let’s take a look at Luke Weaver, priced at $4,800, and facing the Brewers. Weaver didn’t appear likely to be on a limited pitch count since he had thrown 88 pitches in his prior start, while his prospect rating and his K rate during his limited time in the majors provided hope that Weaver may be #notbad. Pitchers in this group are rarely popular. In fact, prior to Weaver on Wednesday, Patrick Corbin was the only similar pitcher with an ownership projection above five to eight percent.
Sometimes, the most impressive thing about a trend is not its Plus/Minus, but how rarely the situation occurs. Sub-$5,000 pitchers are so rarely highly-owned that, when they are, it’s a situation that warrants special attention.
Results
Tracking Weaver’s ownership levels across stakes demonstrates that sharper players rostered him much more frequently than players did at lower stakes — always a good sign.
Ultimately, despite high ownership, Weaver was a key cog in top-placing teams in guaranteed prize pools. Not only did he finish with the second-highest score among pitchers, his cheap salary provided a path towards loading up on elite bats.
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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.
