This is a weekly series that follows MLB trends created with our Trends tool. Although the trends in this series are made with specific slates in mind, they are designed to remain relevant throughout the course of the season.
4/24 – Picking on the Jays
Every day the Toronto Blue Jays disappoint, their season inches farther from ‘slow start to the season’ and closer to ‘actually bad.’ As that happens, more DFS players are realizing that they can — and probably should — target Toronto with pitching in DFS. On Monday, Ricky Nolasco was originally slated to face the Blue Jays at home but was scratched in favor of Jesse Chavez.
Chavez’s primary red flag in our Player Models was his 15-day fastball velocity, which was 1.3 miles per hour lower than his 12-month average, the worst differential on the slate. I have studied early-season velocity loss and found that its effects are exaggerated, so I was willing to overlook Chavez’s mark, particularly since his average batted ball distance allowed was also down.
In general, a decline in recent velocity is fine, as long as the pitcher’s average distance allowed is also down. Here’s the trend:
Many players jumped on the opportunity to roster a cheap pitcher against the struggling Blue Jays — Chavez cost $6,700 on DraftKings — and the recent trends held true. Chavez allowed only one earned run against seven strikeouts en route to 24.7 fantasy points. He was the third-highest scoring pitcher behind Zack Greinke and Miguel Gonzalez but was significantly cheaper than both. With 23.38 percent ownership across the four contests we track, Chavez had a +26 percentage point differential between the high-stakes $5,300 Thunderdome and low-stakes $4 Four-Seamer, per our DFS Ownership Dashboard.
4/25 – Not Good. Not Good at All.
Continuing the theme of recent velocity, we’ll look at the case of Danny Duffy on Tuesday. Coming into the matchup against the White Sox, Duffy (similar to Chavez) had a velocity differential of -1.4 mph. The problem for Duffy was that (unlike Chavez) he had experienced a decrease in batted ball distance. When pitch velocity is down but average distance isn’t I call that “the bad kind of velocity loss.”
Even more troubling was that he qualified for a trend I set up entitled “Not Good. Not Good at All,” which combines pitch velocity and Recent Batted Ball Luck:
Simply put, Recent Batted Ball Luck shows the difference in a pitcher’s percentile rank in distance allowed and fantasy points scored. Duffy had a -79 differential in this category entering Tuesday night, indicating he had scored many more fantasy points than he probably deserved based on his advanced metrics. Basically, my trends told me that Duffy had all kinds of red flags. There was no way I was going to play him.
Fading Duffy seemed to be the right play according to the sharps, who rostered Duffy in only 2.5 percent of high-stakes lineups. Duffy’s luck ran out, and he was beaten up for six earned runs and a disastrous -4.7 DraftKings points.
4/27 – Low Ownerwship at Coors
It’s hard to find low ownership in games at Coors Field, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. In some cases, you don’t even have to dig as deep as you might think. On Wednesday, I had a simple goal: Find non-terrible players without outrageous ownership at Coors.
The first step I took after including the Coors Field stadium filter was to screen for batters in righty-righty matchups. We have become very handedness-aware in DFS, and I figured I could knock the average ownership down a few notches by simply looking at same-handed matchups. Surprisingly, average ownership actually increased from 10.9 percent to 11.1 percent once I applied the filter, so I had to go further.
People generally seem willing to overlook the righty-righty matchup when the batter in question has a favorable spot in the batting order. For instance, right-righty batters hitting first through fourth averaged a massive 15.4 percent ownership. However, the batters in the fifth and sixth spots had the following results:
Getting a +1.21 Plus/Minus and 47.4 percent Consistency Rating at an average ownership of 6.6 percent sounds good to me.
The results weren’t ideal, but Rendon and Mark Reynolds (who both matched for the trend) had desirable ownership. Rendon has hit 20 home runs in each of his last two healthy seasons, and Reynolds has over 250 career home runs. Want these guys at four and seven percent ownership at Coors Field?
Conclusion
The worst part of writing this series last season was having to roster players I did not necessarily want in order to track their ownership for the purpose of my articles. With our DFS Ownership Dashboard, that is no longer necessary since I can track ownership across contests of different stakes. At a minimum, I recommend tracking ownership levels among players who match your favorite trends. It’s possible you’ll find situations in which players regularly exceed salary-based expectations at low ownership. Challenge yourself to find unexpected value using our FantasyLabs Tools.
