The MLB Breakdown offers data-driven analysis for each day’s daily fantasy slate, using the FantasyLabs Tools and metrics to highlight notable players.
Monday has an 11-game main slate at 7:05 pm ET.
Pitchers
Kershaw
Clayton Kershaw typically dominates daily fantasy baseball slates, and that’s especially true today in terms of salary: He’s $5,200 and $3,700 more expensive on DraftKings and FanDuel than the fifth-highest priced pitcher.
The issue with Kershaw usually isn’t whether he’ll hit value; even if we include his Coors Field start this year, he’s averaged a +6.12 DraftKings Plus/Minus with an 80 percent Consistency Rating across five outings. His sky-high salaries on both sites are less troublesome in cash games; he provides so much safety that it almost always makes sense to pay up for him. However, in guaranteed prize pools (GPPs), he can’t just hit value — he has to exceed it at a rate high. He didn’t do that in his last start on 4/25, and GPP-winning lineups did not include the all-world lefty (per the MLB Ownership dashboard):
When analyzing Kershaw as a tournament option, don’t think in terms of Consistency. Think in terms of probabilities. What are the odds that Kershaw will score way more points than any other pitcher? Look again at the ownership levels from his last start: Kershaw didn’t have a bad game. In that large slate, he was the eighth-best player across all positions. But the problem was that Gerrit Cole, Jesse Hahn, Patrick Corbin, J.C. Ramirez, and Ervin Santana all put up similar (if not better) games at a lower cost with less ownership. He’s in play in all contest formats, but you have to think about probabilities: What are the odds that Kershaw — at his salaries and projected ownership levels — is worth rostering?
In all fairness, the odds might be high. Kershaw is facing the Giants, who are having a down offensive year in 2017, ranking 29th with a .277 team wOBA. They’re currently implied for 2.4 runs, which is nearly a full run lower than the Vegas total for any other team today:
Per the MLB Trends tool, out of the 24,731 pitchers to start on FanDuel slates since 2012, only 37 have had opponent run totals of 2.4 or lower. In those games, pitchers averaged 52.38 FanDuel points and an +11.98 Plus/Minus with 78.4 percent Consistency. If you’re worried about this being a representative sample, it seems to be; here are the pitchers who’ve matched for this trend and the number of times they’ve matched:
- Zack Greinke: 1
- Felix Hernandez: 2
- Jake Arrieta: 2
- Clayton Kershaw: 32
Kershaw himself has averaged 54.28 FanDuel points and a +13.78 Plus/Minus in these situations; his ‘worst’ game was 32.0 FanDuel points.
He’s in a nice spot today, and we haven’t even discussed his sky-high 9.0 K Prediction — easily the best mark in the slate. If we look at the above trend and add in a K Prediction filter of nine-plus, the count drops to 14 — all Kershaw.
Is he worth the extra thousands of DFS salary dollars today? He could be.
Non-Kershaws
The argument against Kershaw today is that Lance McCullers and Luis Severino are on the slate, and they’re especially cheap compared to their data points and recent production. They own opponent run totals of 3.4 and 3.3, respectively, and McCullers is an especially strong favorite at -215. There have been very few pitchers historically to own opponent run implications of 3.4 or lower and moneyline odds -200 or greater while being $9,000 or less on FanDuel. Those pitchers have historically averaged a +7.06 FanDuel Plus/Minus with a 69.7 percent Consistency Rating.
They’re certainly in good spots in terms of their Vegas data, but what really sets them apart from other typical value plays is their high K Predictions: McCullers and Severino rank second and third in the slate with marks of 8.5 and 8.3. If combine that with their 2017 performance — McCullers has averaged a +4.20 FanDuel Plus/Minus over his last five games, and Severino has posted a +17.96 mark over his last four — and their recent Statcast data . . .
. . . we find ourselves with three legitimate ‘chalk’ pitchers. Any of these guys would likely be the highest-owned pitcher if the others weren’t on the slate, but, alas, they’re all here.
McCullers and Severino also have nice matchups: They face the Rangers and Blue Jays, who rank 24th and 28th in the league this year with team wOBAs of .300 and .283. Since these matchups are similar, it’s perhaps best simply to roster the pitchers who are historically cheapest. Our Bargain Rating metric can help identify this:
- Kershaw: 11 percent Bargain Rating on DraftKigns, 90 percent Bargain Rating on FanDuel
- McCullers: 6 percent Bargain Rating on DraftKigns, 94 percent Bargain Rating on FanDuel
- Severino: 63 percent Bargain Rating on DraftKigns, 40 percent Bargain Rating on FanDuel
If you’re playing both sites and want exposure to all three pitchers, it might be wise to utilize Severino on DraftKings and Kershaw and McCullers on FanDuel.
Fastballs
Michael Wacha: He has a boom-or-bust matchup against the Brewers, who ranks first in team ISO (.228) but also first in team strikeout rate (25.9 percent) this season; he’s allowed a low 15 percent hard hit rate over his last two starts and has an above-average 6.8 K Prediction.
Jason Vargas: He burned everyone at sky-high ownership last game against these very White Sox; his Statcast data is still very solid, however, and he has a nice 7.4 K Prediction against a team with a top-10 K rate this year; he’s averaged a +13.70 DraftKings Plus/Minus over his last four starts.
Notable Stacks
With our Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters. The highest-rated five-man DraftKings stack (using player ratings in the Bales Model as our guide) is currently a 2-3-4-6-7 stack of the Houston Astros:
They will likely be popular, as they are currently implied for a slate-high 5.1 runs. They face Rangers righty Andrew Cashner, who owns the third-worst past-year WHIP in the slate (1.610) and a bottom-10 HR/9 allowed (1.412). Carlos Correa is still a guy to buy low: He’s averaged a poor -2.08 DraftKings Plus/Minus over his last 10 games, but his recent Statcast data paints a different portrait. During that same time frame, he’s averaged a massive batted ball distance of 263 feet, an exit velocity of 95 miles per hour, a fly ball rate of 53 percent, and a hard hit rate of 46 percent. He’s been unlucky of late, and a matchup against Cashner could be just what the doctor ordered.
On FanDuel, the highest-rated four-man stack belongs to the Kansas City Royals:
They are tied with the Astros for a slate-high 5.1 runs at the moment, but what makes them stand out is their depressed collective salary. Our Team Value Rating (TVR) metric helps identify discrepancies between Vegas totals and DFS salaries; it’s defined below:
A 0 to 100 grade showing a team’s historical value based on their live implied runs and collective salaries on a given DFS site
The Royals lead all teams on FanDuel with an 88 TVR; seven of their projected nine hitters (per our MLB Lineups page) have salaries of $3,000 or less. Whit Merrifield is projected to lead off at only $2,500, and he’s actually hit the ball well lately: Over his last nine games, he’s averaged an exit velocity of 94 miles per hour and a hard hit rate of 45 percent. They face rookie Dylan Covey, who has not had a particularly great first three games of his professional career:
Batters
In our Models, one way I like to find batters is to start by looking at pitchers. For example, Brewers pitcher Zach Davies has awful Statcast data over his last two starts, allowing an average batted ball distance of 237 feet, an exit velocity of 94 miles per hour, and a hard hit rate of 42 percent. He did fine in his last game, scoring 39.0 FanDuel points against the Reds in five innings pitched, but his batted ball numbers suggest he was a little lucky. The Cardinals’ Jedd Gyorko, who is projected to bat cleanup today, could certainly take advantage of a struggling Davies. Over Gyorko’s last 10 games, he’s averaged a batted ball distance of 233 feet, an exit velocity of 94 miles per hour, and a hard hit rate of 44 percent. He crushes righties — he owns a past-year ISO of .304 — and he could crush again tonight.
It could pay off in GPPs to dip down below the Astros and Royals to a Cleveland Indians stack. If we build a model solely around batted ball data, wOBA, and our Recent Batted Ball Luck (RBBL) metric, a four-man Indians stack stands out:
Here’s a definition of that new RBBL stat if you’re unfamiliar with it:
The difference between a player’s percentile rank in batted ball distance and fantasy scoring over the past 15 days
Now, let’s look at those Cleveland batters:
They’ve all had mediocre production of late, but their batted ball numbers have been good. Most of these guys have negative wOBA splits against lefties, but they’re still solid, and the negative splits could actually work to keep their ownership down. As you can see above, only Francisco Lindor is projected for higher than two percent ownership in FanDuel GPPs. For a team currently implied for 4.6 runs — the third-highest mark in the slate — that’s intriguing.
Good luck, and be sure to do your own research with the Labs Tools!
News Updates
After this piece is published, FantasyLabs is likely to provide news updates on a number of players herein mentioned. Be sure to stay ahead of your competition with our industry-leading DFS-focused news blurbs:
