At FantasyLabs, we believe that we have the best tools and data available to DFS users. We also realize that those tools and data are only as beneficial as our ability to communicate their functionality and worth to you.

With this in mind, our “Trend of the Day” series features articles that walk subscribers through an important trend each weekday, created by our Trends tool.

It seems like we’ve had some crazy line movements over the first couple days of the MLB season. Even yesterday, the Mariners moved 0.7 runs during the day, and there have been a variety of other heavy movements this week.

I’ve seen it thrown about a lot that these situations are obviously really valuable for batters — that makes sense, of course; increasing a projected run total not only means that they have implied higher upside, but also that their salaries (a static variable) are likely not in line anymore with that. But what does the data actually say about these situations?

MLB Trend of the Day: Significant Line Movement for Batters

First, let’s start with the line movement part of the trend.

Step 1: Vegas Filters > Line Change > Set “0.3 to 0.8”

I think this is a good range — it’ll keep the count high, it’s significant around the 0.3 range, and it’ll eliminate the above-0.8 outliers.

Positive, for sure; although, it’s not quite as positive as I was expecting. Let’s see if we can add another filter or two and boost this Plus/Minus.

Step 2: Player Filters > Lineup Order > Set “1 to 5”

Our Plus/Minus increased slightly, from +0.45 to +0.74. Getting better, but I think we can add one more filter to boost this even more.

Step 3: Vegas Filters > Open Total > Set “8 to 11”

And we’ve continued to climb the Plus/Minus ladder, finishing with a nice +1.06 Plus/Minus. Not surprisingly, the higher the opening implied run total, the more value you get when the line positively moves. That’s important to know — a 0.3-line movement isn’t the same for all teams every day.

And here are our matches for today:

Of course, you can always add more filters if you’d like. For example, how about if a pitcher’s velocity is high (Houston’s opposing pitcher, Nathan Eovaldi has the highest average velocity of the slate at 96.6 mph).

And honestly, this is a tough trend to decipher — it says there is value here, but Eovaldi has elite advanced stats marks in just about every category: he has the lowest batted-ball distance, lowest fly-ball rate, highest ground-ball rate, and so on. How you approach the Astros bats versus him will likely play a large role in tournaments today.

Good luck!