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 FREE 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.
One of the many great things about our Player Models are the colors — I know, not what you were expecting, but I’m a dork. It’s nice to see green, dark green, and some red when looking at the slate for the first time each day. However, today I was curious when seeing Jon Gray’s red WHIP number of 1.528. Does that mean we should immediately dismiss him? After all, he has a nice matchup, he’s been strong recently, and he’s the heavy favorite in a game where no one will look to roster pitchers.
Luckily with our Trends tool, this is a 54-second process to run some data. (I timed myself … I’m a dork.)
MLB Trend of the Day: Pitchers With Poor WHIPs but Are Heavy Favorites
Step 1: Stat Filters > Starter WHIP > Set to 1.5 to 3
Right away, we see we’ve dug ourselves a hole. That’s no surprise — it was color-coded red for a reason.
Let’s see if Vegas can save Gray.
Step 2: Vegas Filters > Moneyline > “-190 to -150”
I wanted to keep a broad range here so that we didn’t get too low on the count. We can see that pitchers who fit the bill are not only capable of scoring high fantasy points, they do so with a lot of Consistency. The Trend has a Plus/Minus of +5.10 with a Consistency of 65.4 percent.
The Current Matches
As was discussed earlier, this trend was tailored to Gray.
A fun thing I like to do with my newly created trends is look to see who they spat out recently. This trend is 8-2 this season in players exceeding salary-based expectations.
The Takeaway
This begs the question: Is Jon Gray a Black Swan? (See what I did there?)
This doesn’t mean you should blindly roster Gray today. He is playing in Coors Field and the total is 11. What this tells us is that powerful Vegas can save a pitcher with a bad statistic.
In a few podcasts this year, we’ve talked about how the oddsmakers are generally off early in the season. I’m not sure we’re still in the “early season,” but I quickly checked out how this trend does broken down by month. As luck would have it, May and June are the two most successful months.
