During most of the NBA Season this year, I wrote a weekly series called “NBA Trend Testing,” in which I would use the FantasyLabs Trends tool to create a custom trend and then track the results of my matches for the week. The goal is to create trends with high Plus/Minus values and share them with our readers. I will be doing the same thing during MLB season and will be posting an article every Friday which will review the past week’s custom trend.
Description
Let’s get right into it then. The trend I created this week involves Bargain Rating for a specific reason. As the season goes on, value tends to settle and I think Bargain Rating becomes a little more predictable. In NBA, we saw DraftKings and FanDuel each consistently have pricing disagreements on the same players (Brook Lopez comes to mind) which resulted in high Bargain Ratings on one site and low Bargain Ratings on the other.
At the beginning of the season, I wonder if Bargain Rating follows the same pattern. We have very little 2016 data to go on at this point, so my thought is that the sites are likely to disagree more frequently on price points in April. With that in mind, here is the custom trend that I created this week:
This is a batter trend that was created on FanDuel with the following filters:
• Bargain Rating is Between 95-100
• Vegas Score Percentile is Between 75-100
In other words, we are looking for players who are underpriced on FanDuel (relative to their DraftKings pricing) and who are playing on teams that rank within the top 25 percent in Vegas Score (an aggregate rating that considers projected runs, spread, etc).
I had speculated that there would be more players who qualify for a high Bargain Rating earlier in the season and that does look to be the case. Below, I sort total matches by month. The three months with the most matches are the first three months of the season.
Results
This Trend matched a lot of players throughout the week, so I won’t go over every single player. If you’d like to see the comprehensive results, once you recreate the Trend, go to the “Past Results” tab and sort by date.
4/4
We had three teams that qualified with a Vegas Score over 75, which meant bargain players from the Twins, Orioles, and Diamondbacks were in play on Monday:
I’m highlighting these three players in particular because their ownership numbers were astronomical in this guaranteed prize pools. As has been previously noted, although it is usually a pretty good indicator for ownership levels in DFS, Vegas is probably less accurate earlier in the year. The result here was three highly-owned players going busto.
The winner of this GPP chose to stack the Dodgers, who were in San Diego. Vegas was only predicting 3.5 runs for Los Angeles, which led to lower ownership levels on Adrian Gonzalez and Chase Utley, who were the cornerstones of the winner’s lineup.
Almost everybody from the Twins-Orioles game had a high Bargain Rating, indicating that DraftKings priced this game up. The Tillman-Santana matchup did not result in the fireworks many were expecting. To be fair, this was basically a bullpen game though as there was a rain delay and both starting pitchers pitched only two innings.
4/5
The Mariners, Mets, and Giants all rated an identical 79 percent in Vegas Score on 4/5:
On Tuesday, we hit on big games from Brandon Crawford, Neil Walker, David Wright, and Robinson Cano.
As I’ve written previously, Globe Life is one of the most weather-affected stadiums in the MLB. Seeing high ratings for the Mariners in this trend plus a favorable forecast, I went pretty heavy on the Mariners. I was rewarded with 10 Seattle runs and big games from the two qualifying bargain players (Seager/Cano) as well as Leonys Martin and Nelson Cruz, who homered twice.
4/6
The Mariners qualified on Tuesday, but they REALLY qualified on Wednesday. Take a look at the combined Vegas-Bargain scores for Marte, Cano, and Lind:
And note this:
After Tuesday’s demolition of the Rangers, the Mariners were in high demand on Wednesday. Adam Lind appeared on 14.3 percent of teams in this GPP even though you can only roster one first baseman on FanDuel. That obviously did not pay off, but at the same time those who sneakily faded Cano after his hot start were burned once again.
The winner took down this GPP with a Mariners stack of Cano-Seager-Martin-Smith. Only one of those players qualified as an elite Bargain, although Seth Smith ($2,500), Leonys Martin ($2,400), and Kyle Seager ($3,400) were still relatively cheap. This is a reminder that players can be underpriced on BOTH sites, which would not result in a high Bargain Rating.
4/7
Again, the matches were plentiful yesterday, with the Cubs, Nationals, and Athletics all posting a Vegas Score over 75 percent. A couple of Cubs also had elite scores in Bargain Rating:
Here’s how they did:
Both Zobrist and Fowler came through in a big way, though note the elevated ownership levels. In this case, ownership didn’t matter: The top finisher in this GPP employed a Cubs stack of Zobrist-Fowler-Rizzo (27.9 percent owned) and chose to differentiate his lineup at pitcher, taking Hector Santiago at 8.4 percent.
It’s true that if a team has a high projected run total, most of the time you can expect DFS players to be all over the top hitters. Still, there are other ways you can differentiate your lineup, and this is a perfect example of that.
Results
In all, 27 of the players who appeared as matches exceeded their implied point total, while 22 players fell short this week. Referring back to the earlier graphic with the monthly breakdown, while there were more matches in the early part of the season, the actual results were the worst in the month of April. We need Vegas to be accurate in order for this Trend to do well, which means it is probably a little more effective later in the year. Still, the +1.30 Plus/Minus over 3,300 results is an indication that there is value to be had here.
