At FantasyLabs, we believe that we have the best tools and data available to 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 walk subscribers through an important trend each weekday, 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 Model tools.
MLB Trend of the Day: Drew Smyly on FanDuel
If you’re playing the main slate on FanDuel tonight, you’re going to have to start and end your lineup process with this big question: How do you deal with Drew Smyly? The problem is that he’s terribly underpriced: He has a 98 percent Bargain Rating on FD, in part because of his relatively more reasonable price of $10,900 on DraftKings.
Smyly has been great so far this year, averaging 41.8 FD points and 8.2 strikeouts in his five starts. Furthermore, he has experienced a Salary Change of $0. For some reason, FD just won’t increase his price despite his excellent outings in the first month of the season.
Because of his production and inexpensiveness, I’m devising a trend (based on salary, WHIP, and K/9 rate) intended to help us determine if we must roster him or if we can consider fading him.
Step 1: Player Filters > Salary > “2000 to 8900”
Since Smyly is so underpriced, let’s first set our salary filter. We’re going to look at FanDuel pitchers under $9,000.
Step 2: Stat Filters > SO Per 9 > “10 to 90”
Next, let’s add the filter for Smyly’s elite K/9 rate. He’s actually a bit above this at 10.4, but we’ll keep it at 10 or higher for our trend.
Step 3: Stat Filters > Starter WHIP > “0 to 1.09”
Smyly’s WHIP is at 1.047, which is just ridiculously elite. We’ll set it a bit higher for this trend and look at pitchers with WHIP’s under 1.1.
And now we have our final trend:
We have a good count, so I think that we’re seeing a solid trend of how these elite yet underpriced pitchers have historically performed on FanDuel. While Smyly is probably a good fade in tournaments, good luck fading him in cash tonight.
