At FantasyLabs, we believe that we have the best tools and data available for those who play daily fantasy sports. We also realize that these tools and data are only as beneficial as our ability to communicate their functionality and worth.
With this in mind, our Trend of the Day series features articles that each weekday walk subscribers through an important trend, created with our Trends tool. Also, shortly after you create a trend, you will be able to see it under the “My Trends” column in our Player Models.
Trend of the Day: Batters With High Hard-Hit and Ground-Ball Rates
Just about every day while writing the MLB Breakdown, I come across hitters who have high hard-hit rates (good) but also high ground-ball rates (generally bad). I’ve always wondered which is more predictive — the positive hard hitting or where those hard-hit balls are being hit. Let’s use our advanced data to find out.
Step 1: Adv Stats – Recent > GB % – 15 > 50 to 100
We can see right away that having a high ground-ball rate is bad for DFS batters. They see a -0.38 Plus/Minus dip and about a two-point drop in Consistency from the regular sample of all DraftKings batters.
But what happens when we add in a high hard-hit rate filter?
Step 2: Adv Stats – Recent > HH % – 15 > 50 to 100
These batters have historically been able to bring value, despite their high ground-ball rates. The +0.71 Plus/Minus is over a full point jump and the nearly five-point increase in Consistency is perhaps even more notable. Of course, the overall numbers are definitely lower than if we measured just hard-hit rate . . .
The important point here is that hard-hit rate is very important: Despite the first sample’s affinity for ground balls, batters hitting the ball hard are pretty much always valuable.
Current Matches
The matches for tonight’s main slate include Carlos Gonzalez and Mark Trumbo. Gonzalez is questionable after leaving last night’s game late with an ankle injury, so monitor our Lineups page closer to game time to see if he’s expected to start.
