Throughout the season, I am using our Trends tool to create a custom trend, and then I am tracking the results of my matches for the week in this article. The goal is to create trends with high Plus/Minus values and share them with our readers every Friday.
Description
In this week’s Trend, I wanted to go a little bit contrarian. I wanted to start with one or two filters that will somewhat obviously lead to positive values and then I wanted to apply a couple of negative filters to that. The idea is that, overall, the trend’s Plus/Minus will remain above zero, but the presence of the negative variables will scare others off of these players, allowing me to roster them at lower ownership levels.
The two obvious positive filters that I applied were Vegas Runs and Lineup Order. When I set up a trend to include only players batting in the top half of the order in games where their team is projected to score four or more runs, the Plus/Minus is +1.23.
That’s great, but the matches are going to many times be the most obvious plays on the board. Let’s try to go a little bit contrarian now by adding some negative filters. First, we’ll look for players who are on the wrong side of their wOBA split. Even in great matchups, batters are sometimes passed over when facing a pitcher of the same handedness. Next, we’ll do the same thing for the opposing pitcher. Here, I am looking at pitchers who have held the opposition to a wOBA under .325.
Now, the Plus/Minus is quite a bit lower, though still positive:
The filters used to create this trend were:
• Vegas Runs, between 4.0 and 7.7
• Lineup Order, between 1 and 4
• wOBA differential is below -0.1
• Opposing Start’s wOBA Allowed, below 0.325
Results
5/23
The following screenshots are pulled from entries into FanDuel’s $5 guaranteed prize pools throughout the week.
Mike Napoli was also a qualifier on the early slate (which I did not play) and he homered against Mat Latos, scoring 25.2 fantasy points against an expectation of 9.03.
Jayson Werth matched the trend’s parameters on the evening slate in a game where Bartolo Colon was the opposing pitcher. Because Werth was on the wrong side of his handedness split, his ownership came in around three times less than that of his left-handed teammates:
Even though the results were not great, we can begin to see an argument for when using this type of trend will be valuable.
5/24
On Tuesday, we had a very similar situation. Matt Harvey was the opposing starter against Washington, but this time, the bats woke up as the Nationals pushed across seven runs. The Nationals hit five homers and three of those were by right-handed bats (Wilson Ramos, Ryan Zimmerman, and Anthony Rendon). I didn’t roster these players because their wOBA splits were not as significant, but I would be pretty willing to bet that their ownership levels were fairly low due to the righty-righty matchup.
Another match for this trend was Ian Desmond, who faced Jhoulys Chacin and the Angels.
There was essentially nobody on Desmond on Tuesday and he responded with a pretty nice fantasy game, with three hits, a run, and a stolen base. I think Desmond was overall a much better play here than Jayson Werth over the past couple of days for one key reason: the bullpen. While the Mets’ bullpen has ranked near the top of the league this season, the Angels’ bullpen is a bottom-five unit, with a collective SIERA around 4.00.
If you’re going to assume the added risk of playing a guy on the wrong side of his handedness split, there are two main benefits. The first is the decreased ownership, which we have already talked about. But second, once the team knocks out the starter and gets into the bullpen, that wOBA split becomes irrelevant and the matchup resets.
Once the Nats knocked Colon and Harvey out of the game, Werth still had a difficult matchup against New York’s bullpen. So while the low ownership was nice, I don’t think there was actually much upside there. On the other hand, if Desmond was able to pick up a hit while on the wrong side of his split against the starter, Chacin, he would be in a very good position to rack up fantasy points against the Angels’ bullpen. And I’m still getting the nice ownership here because of Desmond’s splits against Chacin.
5/27
This has been a really weird week for MLB DFS with two of the ugliest split-slates in recent memory over the past two days. We actually have not had a single match in the trend on either 5/25 or 5/26. Because of that, let’s take a look at tonight’s matches and you guys can decide whether or not you want to play along at home.
Starling Marte vs. Cole Hamels:
While Hamels’ name may scare some players off, I’m not especially intimidated by him, particularly when Vegas likes the Pirates to exceed four runs in this game. The Rangers also have a bottom-five bullpen. Marte has displayed a reverse-split over the past calendar year, so while he is on the wrong side of his split against Hamels, many players may not be aware of that and just go with the righty vs. lefty matchup. For that reason, I’m not sure that the super-low ownership that we would like will be there for Marte.
Joey Rickard vs. Trevor Bauer:
Rickard’s splits against righties is pretty ugly. But if he is, in fact, in the lineup this evening and hitting leadoff, keep in mind that the Indians’ bullpen is not that strong and the Orioles are projected to exceed four runs.
Giancarlo Stanton vs. Williams Perez:
With some expensive pitchers along with a Coors Field game on the slate tonight, I don’t know that many will be on Giancarlo against a righty. Even on the wrong side of his split, Stanton’s ISO exceeds .270, making him one of the better players to consider when he matches for this trend.
Review
I do like the sneaky-play factor that comes with this trend. In addition to targeting bad bullpens, we could also look for guys who are on the wrong side of their split, but benefit from a high Park Factor. If you enjoyed this trend, feel free to fire up our free Trends tool and see if you can come up with your own contrarian scenarios that still yield a positive Plus/Minus!
