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 season.
5/1: Wind at Wrigley
On Monday, the hot topic of the day was the wind at Wrigley Field. Wind often plays a role at Wrigley — it’s the main reason why Cubs home games are generally among the last to have their Vegas lines released — and on Monday we were expecting strong gusts away from home plate. Once Vegas released the line for the Cubs (who had an implied total that hovered around six), it became a lock that Chicago’s power bats would be heavily owned that evening, even against a respectable opposing pitcher in Vincent Velasquez.
Wanting to find out how Cubs batters have actually performed in these types of games, I looked to Chicago’s elder statesman, Anthony Rizzo, who over the past three seasons has played in 32 games at Wrigley with a wind of at least 10 miles per hour blowing away from home. The results were surprising:
At over 20 percent ownership, Rizzo had struggled to return value, surpassing his salary-based expectations only 40 percent of the time.
Results
Even though I was armed with this info, Rizzo was still a difficult fade. Many sharps felt similarly, as Rizzo was 35 percent owned in the $5,300 Thunderdome (per our DFS Ownership Dashboard). He ended the night with a disappointing four fantasy points.
In retrospect, I should have listened to what the trend was trying to tell me. We can’t conclude that Rizzo is a bad play with the wind at his back — that wouldn’t make sense, particularly since the sample is small — but perhaps what we should have heard was something like this: “So far, the ownership levels have not been justified by the production. With high ownership expected once again, a fade should be considered.”
5/2: Undercover Bad
Alex Wood was popping across various models on Tuesday ahead of a matchup against the Giants. Although San Francisco was implied to score only 3.2 runs and Wood had a K Prediction of 7.5, there were reasons to be concerned. In order to demonstrate what I mean, we need to dig deeper with our Trends tool.
First of all, the home-plate umpire assigned to this game was Joe West, who is bad for pitchers. West is one of only 12 umps in our database who has cost pitchers more than 150 total points in Plus/Minus value. Umpires are listed in our Player Models, but you cannot currently weigh umpire stats in the Models since umpires are often not announced until shortly before the first game in a series.
Secondly, Wood had been on a pitch count, averaging 78 pitches per game in his previous two starts. Although the Giants were expected to strike out a healthy number of times while not scoring many runs, Wood was likely to share the fantasy goodness with his bullpen. That’s not good for DFS purposes.
Looking for similar matches based on Wood’s probable pitch count, DraftKings salary, and home plate umpire, I found the following results:
The Consistency Rating is surprisingly positive, but there is really no ceiling in this cohort, and that makes sense based on Wood’s limitations.
Results
Wood outpaced his salary-implied expectation of 14.45 points on DraftKings, finishing with 18 points as the sixth-highest scoring pitcher on the night. He surprisingly threw 94 pitches but lasted only five innings. Although this was a heavier-than-expected workload for Wood, we were able to see a clearer picture of his true range of outcomes via our Trends tool.
5/3: Groundball Charlie
I’ve mentioned previously that something I like to do when preparing for an MLB slate is creating ‘comp’ trends. Similar to ‘game comps’ used in other sports, my comp trends look for instances in which batters or teams have faced similar pitchers. These trends aren’t the be-all and end-all, but if, for example, Miguel Sano’s Plus/Minus and Consistency have dropped considerably in 77 games in our database against ground ball righties, I at least want to know about it.
That brings me to Charlie Morton, who has a distinctive profile: He’s a ground ball righty with rising velocity. Morton was expected to be relatively popular on Wednesday with an ownership projection of 13-16 percent on the DraftKings main slate, and I wanted to know what his prospects were against the Rangers. Although the Rangers haven’t lit the world on fire in 2017, their lineup still has plenty of pop from both sides of the plate. Here is one of the trends I set up for Morton:
Although the sample is small, the results are encouraging. I used the phrase “one of the trends” a moment ago because I don’t think you should create just one comp trend. An opponent may struggle against ground balls versus one handedness more than the other, it might matter how fast the pitcher throws, etc. Also, when you’re looking for these types of game comps, the samples are usually smaller than we would ideally like, so it’s good to make multiple trends and gain more perspective.
Results
Our ownership projection was fairly accurate, as Morton had an average ownership of 17.76 percent in the four DraftKings tournaments we track. Additionally, he had a +2.5 percent ownership differential between the smallest and largest stakes, which is a good sign. Morton finished ahead of aces Jake Arrieta, Carlos Carrasco, and Jacob deGrom and behind only Jeff Samardzija as the second-highest scoring pitcher of the night.
Conclusion
Perhaps the best feature of our trends is that they have a long tail. The research is done, and I will be automatically alerted in our Models when these conditions are met in the future. There will undoubtedly be another “Cubs wind game” and the drum will likely be beaten once again, calling for us to stack the game at all costs. There will also be other ground ball righties who roll through Arlington this season. Whenever these events happen, I’ll know and have the research ready.
