The MLB Breakdown offers data-driven analysis for each day’s slate, using the FantasyLabs Tools and metrics to highlight notable players.
Thursday has a split slate: There are two games in the 1:10 pm ET early slate and nine games in the 7:05 pm ET main slate.
Pitchers
Studs
Pitching is fairly top-heavy today in terms of pricing: Of the 16 pitchers not in Coors Field, seven of them have salaries $8,000 or higher on FanDuel. In this section, we’ll look at the five pitchers above $9,000 today:
Dallas Keuchel is always a tough pitcher to analyze, as he’s one of the best groundball pitchers in the game, yet he has very limited strikeout upside. And as Ian Hartitz found in a study from yesterday, strikeouts dominate daily fantasy baseball. Of the studs, Keuchel owns the lowest past-year SO/9 rate, although today’s main slate is a little more tricky. No pitcher has a K Prediction above 7.0; for reference, all four ‘studs’ last night were above that, headlined by Yu Darvish‘s slate-high 9.3 K Prediction. Someone in today’s slate will almost certainly outperform their prediction, but the point still stands: You can’t really buy strikeout upside today.
In that case, Keuchel’s control and DFS safety thus becomes much more valuable. Through seven starts this season, he has averaged a +10.78 FanDuel Plus/Minus on 86 percent Consistency. Frankly, he’s been awesome:
His recent Statcast data backs that up: Over his last two, he’s allowed a batted ball distance of 186 feet, an exit velocity of 86 miles per hour, a fly ball rate of 23 percent, and a hard hit rate of 15 percent. Unfortunately, he’s going against a high-powered Yankees offense that ranks second this year with a .356 team wOBA. The Yankees are currently implied for 3.9 runs, and since Keuchel is going up against Michael Pineda, he’s actually a slight underdog. Keuchel could be low-owned because of the matchup, and he’s certainly capable of shutting down this offense.
Zack Greinke and Gerrit Cole have the unfortunate tasks of 1) playing each other and 2) playing at Chase Field. Per the MLB Trends tool, Chase Field has been the second-best park for hitters over the last three years:
Hyun-jin Ryu is down $1,100 since his last start to $5,500 on FanDuel today at Coors Field; both DraftKings and FanDuel typically give pitchers a sizable salary decrease when they travel to Denver. Cole? He’s down just $300 since his last start to $9,200 at Chase. My point is this: DFS sites give an appropriate discount on pitchers at Coors, but in comparison to the production difference between Coors and Chase, they probably don’t give enough of a discount on Chase pitchers.
Michael Fulmer is one of just four pitchers today with an opponent run total below 3.9, and he’s coming off a gem of an outing, putting up 58.0 FanDuel points against Oakland thanks to nine strikeouts and just one earned run across eight innings pitched. He has solid Statcast data as a result: Over his last two, he’s allowed an exit velocity of 90 miles per hour and a hard hit rate of 29 percent. And yet, he’s one of the lowest-rated pitchers in the Bales Model for both sites. What gives? Again, strikeouts are king, and Fulmer’s current 5.0 K Prediction is one of the lowest in the slate and 1.3 strikeouts lower than Keuchel’s. Further, despite having a fairly solid matchup against the Angels, who are currently implied for 3.9 runs, Fulmer is a slight dog against J.C. Ramirez. Fulmer isn’t a terrible play by any means, but it’s hard to pay such high price tags of $10,500 on DraftKings and $9,400 on FanDuel for such a low K Prediction.
Values
Don’t look now, but Michael Pineda owns a stellar .241 xFIP this season — the second-best mark among all pitchers behind Chris Sale‘s. If you haven’t heard of xFIP, here’s the definition, per FanGraphs:
Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP) is a statistic that estimates a pitcher’s expected run prevention independent of the performance of their defense
In a nutshell, remove the variables of luck, defense, and so on, and Pineda has been pretty darn good this season. He leads all pitchers with a 11.243 SO/9 rate, although his current 6.4 K Prediction, while top-five among main slate pitchers today, is fairly average on a normal slate. He has a tough matchup against a Houston team that ranks fifth this season with a .323 team wOBA and is implied for 3.7 runs today. He’s a small -115 moneyline favorite. That said, Pineda has solid Statcast data: Over his last two games, he’s allowed a batted ball distance of 175 feet, an exit velocity of 88 miles per hour, and a hard hit rate of 31 percent. Pineda doesn’t have elite marks in any single category, but they still might be enough — plus his low $8,600 FanDuel price tag — to make him the top pitching option on the board.
Derek Holland isn’t a household name, but he’s actually been quite solid this year, averaging a +5.42 DraftKings Plus/Minus on 83 percent Consistency over his first six starts of the season. He has an interesting matchup against a Twins squad that is average in both team wOBA and ISO this season. They’re currently implied for 4.2 runs. Holland doesn’t have a high SO/9 rate (6.525), but he does own the slate’s highest K Prediction at 7.0; Minnesota has struck out this year at a top-10 rate. He did make seven batters whiff in his last outing against the Royals and finished with 28.0 DraftKings points in that game. What really makes Holland so intriguing today, however, is that despite hitting value in each of his last three starts, he somehow dropped to $5,200 from $7,700. The Twins’ offense is pretty good, but they aren’t worth a salary decrease of $2,500. If you want to fit in high-priced batters in guaranteed prize pools (GPPs), Holland is a solid option.
Fastballs
J.C. Ramirez: He’s averaged a whopping +7.04 DraftKings Plus/Minus over his first five starts and has allowed only three earned runs in his last three; he’s in a pitcher’s park today at home and faces a Detroit team currently implied for just 3.7 runs; he’s quite cheap at $6,800 on DraftKings and $7,000 on FanDuel
Marco Estrada: He was the one ‘stud’ not discussed above, but he’s worth a shout-out given his stellar Statcast data: Over his last two starts, he’s allowed an exit velocity of 88 miles per hour and a hard hit rate of just 10 percent
Notable Stacks
With our Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters. Since the early slate is so small, let’s generate stacks on both DraftKings and FanDuel for the main slate. Per the Bales Model, the highest-rated five-man stack on DraftKings predictably belongs to the Rockies at Coors Field. But since, J.J. Calle covered them in today’s stacking piece, let’s talk about their opponent in the Dodgers:
This may seem like a weird lineup against a lefty, but manager Dave Roberts seems to be rolling with it:
Dave Roberts said Dodgers will use same lineup Thursday (incl Utley at 1B), except for Austin Barnes catching Ryu in opener with Rockies
— Eric Stephen (@truebluela) May 11, 2017
This might be a night to fade the Dodgers; while their run total is still high at 5.2 at Coors, here are those five batters’ ISO and ISO differential marks versus LHP:
- Joc Pederson: 0.029 ISO, -0.223 ISO differential
- Corey Seager: 0.166 ISO, -0.070 ISO differential
- Justin Turner: 0.120 ISO, -0.139 ISO differential
- Cody Bellinger: 0.133 ISO, -0.410 ISO differential
- Chris Taylor: 0.128 ISO, -0.069 ISO differential
On FanDuel, the highest-rated non-Coors stack belongs to the Chicago White Sox:
This stack should be fairly contrarian, as the White Sox are currently implied for 4.5 runs — the sixth-highest mark in the main slate. They certainly have upside against Minnesota righty Phil Hughes, who owns a bottom-three WHIP (1.556) and HR/9 mark (1.888) in the slate. He put up a solid game of 33.0 FanDuel points against the Red Sox the last time out, but his Statcast data is likely more telling: Over his last two starts, he’s allowed a batted ball distance of 240 feet, an exit velocity of 92 miles per hour, and a fly ball rate of 51 percent. Jose Abreu continues to crush the ball: Over his last 11 games, he’s averaged a batted ball exit velocity of 95 miles per hour and a hard hit rate of 51 percent.
Batters
We certainly have a tale of two parks today: The batters at Coors Field in Denver all have Park Factors of 100; the batters at AT&T Park in San Francisco all have Park Factors of 0. The former game has a Vegas total of 10.5 (down from 11.5 at open); the latter has a total of 8.0. That said, there are still some solid batters in the latter game with excellent splits and likely very-low ownership. Adam Duvall is a good example: He’s projected to hit cleanup for the Reds and is currently projected to be owned in just two to four percent of FanDuel lineups. He’s facing a lefty in Ty Blach, who just allowed 10 runs (eight earned) and 11 hits across three innings pitched against these very Reds in Cincinnati. Duvall took him deep and could do it again today: He owns a massive .336 ISO versus LHP.
Speaking of solid splits, Jonathan Lucroy is projected to bat sixth for the Rangers and owns a .125 ISO differential against left-handed pitchers. The Rangers are currently implied for 5.1 runs — the highest non-Coors mark in the slate — and Lucroy is just $2,700 on FanDuel. That’s likely due to poor performance of late:
Thankfully, we have a new metric to put performance into context. Here’s a definition of our Recent Batted Ball Luck metric:
The difference between a player’s percentile rank in batted ball distance and fantasy scoring over the past 15 days
Lucroy has a high mark because, despite his low -1.70 Plus/Minus on FanDuel, he owns a solid 219-foot batted ball distance over his last eight games. Given his splits and high total of the game, including Lucroy in a Rangers stack might not be a bad idea.
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:
