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.
Today, Matt Freedman wrote a great article about what to look for in cheap FanDuel pitchers. Today, Francisco Liriano — priced only $7,900 on FanDuel — is currently the highest-rated player in the Bales Model. You see where this is going . . .
Trend of the Day: Cheap FanDuel Pitchers With Good Advanced Stats
Step 1: Player Filters > Salary > 2000 to 7900
Alright, we’re cheating a bit here, as Matt’s article looked at super-cheap pitchers: Starters priced no higher than $5,000. Liriano is relatively cheap — for example, Jose Fernandez was $12,000 on Monday — and he happens to be the highest-rated guy, so we’ll roll with it.
Pitchers in this price range have not been historically valuable.
Step 2: Adv Stats – Recent > GB % – 15 > 65 to 88
Liriano has an unbelievably high recent ground-ball rate of 71 percent, but we’ll set the threshold a little lower to increase our sample size. These cheap pitchers — typically poor investments — become excellent ones with elite ground-ball rates.
If we add in another step, the sample size will likely dip more. As such, we can stop here, but if we really want to narrow it down for Liriano tonight, we can add in a moneyline filter.
Step 3: Vegas Filters > Moneyline > -240 to -170
The sample size does dip to only 11 historical pitchers, as most cheap pitchers just aren’t such large favorites. (Liriano is currently -180, by the way.) Of course, the 11 pitchers who have qualified in the past for this trend have absolutely crushed value and been incredibly consistent.
Obviously, our only current match today is Liriano, who makes for an excellent play in all contest formats.
