FantasyLabs is a data company. With our free Trends tool and Player Models, you can leverage our advanced statistics and premium exclusive metrics to identify players to use in your daily fantasy sports lineups.
Each weekday, our Data Dive articles use 10 of these metrics to highlight notable players in the day’s Main slate.
Batters
This slate features only 10 games — but two of those are being played at Coors Field and Chase Field (a.k.a., ‘Coors Lite‘), so . . .
Park Factor: 100, All Batters, Coors Field
Righty, left, switchy, whatever: If a guy has a piece of wood in his hands and is standing anywhere near home plate at Coors Field then he has a Park Factor of 100. This game currently has a Vegas total of 11.5 runs, which might seem aggressive, but so far in the month of June the Rockies have played 12 games at home . . . and an average of 13.3 runs have been scored in those games. The Rockies and the Blue Jays have Team Value Ratings above 65 on FanDuel and DraftKings. You should probably stack both teams in at least one tournament lineup, just in case the ‘unthinkable’ happens and they combine to score at least 15 runs.
Recent Batted-Ball Distance (Ft): 267, Jake Lamb
Coors Lite isn’t the original, but sometimes it can get the job done. In his last nine games, Lamb has crushed the ball a slate-high average 267 feet. Unsurprisingly, his Distance, Exit Velocity and Hard-Hit Differentials are all highly positive, and he’s also on the advantageous side of his Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) and Isolated Power (ISO) splits. Lamb doesn’t have an easy matchup against Phillies starting pitcher Vincent Velasquez, but he’s a guy crushing the ball and playing at Chase Field. Historically, a guy like that is worth rostering.
Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA): .714, Willson Contreras
Let’s not get carried away. This guy has swung a bat in only eight Major League games, and his 2016 minor league stats don’t suggest that he, as a right-handed batter, crushes right-handed pitchers. Still, over the last month he has accumulated a positive Plus/Minus on DraftKings and FanDuel, has a 93 percent Bargain Rating at the latter site, is only $3,000, and is batting fifth for a team currently implied to score 5.1 runs. Guys like that tend to do well. Perhaps most importantly, he’s facing pitcher Dan Straily, who has gotten rocked in his last two outings and whose advanced differentials are trending in the wrong direction. Contreras could be a nice tournament option even if he’s dangerous for cash games.
Isolated Power (ISO): .349, Adam Duvall
Out of all the players to have appeared in at least 10 games in the last year, Duvall leads the slate in ISO . . . but he’s facing Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta, and so any excitement that Duvall’s sneaky righty-righty reverse split might ordinarily hold is gone. Not many players whiff as much as Duvall does (0.317 strikeouts per at-bat), and he’s on a team that has an implied run total of only three runs. On FanDuel, where Duvall has a 99 percent Bargain Rating, he might be a clever contrarian play. On DraftKings, Duvall should probably be avoided.
Plus/Minus, Bargain Rating, and other premium exclusive metrics are accessible via our free Ratings tool.
Recent Hard-Hit Percentage (%): 60, Yoenis Cespedes
Within this slate, no one has hit the ball harder than Cespedes over his last 11 games. His advanced differentials are all positive and he’s batting third — at a glimpse he looks like he’s in a good spot — but there’s a lot not to like about him. For starters, the Mets are implied to score only 3.9 runs and there’s currently a 56 percent chance of precipitation. For Cespedes, the negatives seem to outweigh the positives.
Bargain Rating (%): 99 (FD), Brian McCann
As Kelly (brother of Brian) McCann mentioned in today’s MLB Recent Form Report, the Yankees catcher has recently been hitting the ball well. He leads the slate with a recent exit velocity of 97 miles per hour. His recent fly-ball and hard-hit rates both exceed 50 percent, and his advanced differentials are all sinfully high. He’s the cleanup batter on a team implied to score 5.1 runs. That’s good. He also has a 99 percent Bargain Rating on FanDuel. That’s even better.
Pitchers
For a 10-game slate, the available pitchers aren’t nearly as bad as they could be.
K Prediction (SO): 9.0, Vincent Velasquez
In a slate with Noah Syndergaard and Jake Arrieta, it’s Velasquez who is projected to accumulate the most strikeouts. On the one hand, whenever you can get a strikeout savant for $7,900 on DraftKings and $8,100 on FanDuel, you think about it. On the other hand, you generally want to avoid pitchers who have +128 moneylines and are facing teams implied to score 4.6 runs. Remember that Velasquez is pitching at hitter-friendly Chase Field. He has strikeout potential but little else to recommend him.
Pitch Velocity Differential (MPH): +1.6, Robbie Ray
If you have to pick a pitcher playing at Chase Field — and I don’t know why you would, but just go along with this hypothetical scenario — then you should consider Ray. In his last three starts he has thrown the ball significantly harder — only Syndergaard and Danny Duffy are currently throwing the ball harder than Ray is — and all of his advanced differentials are trending in the right direction. He has a -139 moneyline, is facing a team implied to score only 3.9 runs, and has a 92 percent Bargain Rating on FanDuel. He could be a sneaky way to get an extra 12 points in tournaments.
Moneyline (ML): -265, Jake Arrieta
He has the slate’s highest ML, is currently receiving 84 percent of ML bets, his opponent Reds are implied to score a slate-low total of three runs, and he has an 8.5 K Prediction. Does it help that he has a 95 percent Bargain Rating on FanDuel, where he has an excellent chance of securing the 12-point victory bonus? Yes, it helps.
Bargain Rating (%): 99 (FD), Trevor Bauer
Bauer has good advanced differentials, a wonderfully-high 61 percent recent ground-ball rate, a slate-low 155-foot recent batted-ball distance, a -128 moneyline, and a 99 percent Bargain Rating on FanDuel. There’s a decent amount to like about him — John Daigle talks about him in today’s MLB Breakdown — but you should be sure to mind the weather report: Currently the Indians-Braves game has a 55 percent chance of precipitation.
Bonus
Why not?
Pro Trends: 13 (FD), Brian McCann
Just think of the 13 Pro Trends as the cherries on the massive cake McCann will let you have and eat in this slate.
Good luck!
