In this series, I thought it might be cool to take our trends tool one step further. I will be creating a trend early in the week, playing the “Current Matches” in my lineups throughout the week on FanDuel and then reviewing the trend at the end of the week.
Description
This week, I created a trend that attempted to find shooters who are currently priced at a discount. I’ve written previously about the idea of buying low on shooters since their fantasy production is more volatile. If a player is healthy and will have the same opportunities on offense moving forward, the fact that they have shot poorly over the past couple games will likely drive the price down. But it’s also probably not that predictive of future results. Here is the overall rating for the trend:
The filters I used were:
- The Player Position is SF or SG
- The Month Salary Change Is Between -2300 and -700
- The Player’s Year FGA Is Between 10 and 21
Put more simply, this gives us wing players who average at least 10 shot attempts/game whose price is down at least $700 over the past month.
Results
11/30
The screenshots below are from teams I entered into FanDuel’s $5 Layup
Honestly, I was pretty impressed with the results on the first day. Each of the four players exceeded their implied point total on 11/30. While looking over some of the top teams in this GPP, I see that several of them used either Klay or Hayward.
Wesley Matthews was obviously priced down due to his minutes having been limited over the first part of the season. Still, he had played 30+ minutes in five of six games before 11/30. His production hadn’t been that great, and wasn’t even that great on this night, but the low price balanced that out.
A lot of people were on Durant @ATL (32.7%) and Kawhi @CHI (24.6%), but Hayward was among the most highly owned small forwards. He hadn’t been playing that great before 11/30 and the Warriors aren’t the best matchup in the world. But some price decreases stick out more to people than others. I think a lot of people remember paying $7,800-$8,200 for much of the season last year on FanDuel. When they saw him here at $6,500 with no obvious concerns, a lot of people bought.
Klay is one of the few players that I hate using on the road and I almost always hate playing guys @UTA especially on an eight game slate with plenty of options. So I wasn’t thrilled about this play and I was honestly expecting to see his ownership down in the 1-2% range. This is probably another example of an obvious discount, like with Hayward. Klay was awesome DFS-wise last year and reached prices as high as $8,500 on FanDuel.
12/1
Admittedly, not the most exciting of options.
Kevin Martin has always been a pretty one-dimensional player, but seeing him score 16 actual points and 16.2 fantasy points is still pretty funny. Imagine if his shot wasn’t falling that night. Seeing him at 3.3% ownership at $4,000 in a game he started for the Wolves just shows how far he has fallen in the eyes of DFS players.
Kobe’s 26 field goal attempts weren’t the answer in the battle for the basement between the 76ers and Lakers, but he did slightly exceed his implied point projection on FanDuel. Say what you want about Bryant, but his price on FanDuel has fallen to a level where he can meet or exceed his implied point projection on a regular basis even based on his 2015-2016 standards. Keep shooting, Kobe.
Wes’ 19 fantasy point game the night before wasn’t enough to move the needle on his pricing, so he found himself as a match for this trend again on 12/1. On the road and on the second half of a back to back, Matthews had no problem crushing value against the Blazers. His ownership was up quite a bit here, but that may have been due to the “revenge game” crowd.
While each player exceeded expectations, it wasn’t enough. Covington (vs LAL) was on half of the teams in this tournament and posted a pretty nice line while at SG, Beal went for 38.8 at 19.7% during Tuesday night’s demolition of the Cavs.
12/2
I’ve got to say, this trend produced a lot of plays that just grossed me out – more Kobe, more Klay on the road, bleh. Both continued to exceed value on 12/2 though, so what do I know? Klay started out HOT with at least 16 fantasy points in the first quarter and then tapered off as the game got out of hand. The Wizards continued their trend of getting destroyed on the wings as Kobe exceeded his projection by over 11 points against them.
We finally run into the first tank job of the week here with Melo against the 76ers. Although New York only won by 12 points, it was really a blowout with Philly trailing by 23 entering the fourth quarter. Melo missed the Knicks’ game prior to this with an illness, so he was an easy player to sit late in the game.
Believe it or not, Kobe (2.2%) was on the team that took down this GPP. While he did put my team that used him in the cash, being able to roster Paul George (19.3% – 57 points) would have been helpful.
12/3
On a rare six-game Thursday slate, Rudy Gay vs BOS was the only match. Although his price was down $800 in the past month, I’m not sure he was actually all that good of a deal with Boogie back in the lineup. The altitude in Mexico City was said to have bothered several of the players in this game and the Celtics jumped on Sacramento early. Boston is also generally a tough matchup for opposing wings. All of that led to Rudy joining Melo as the only two players to miss value this week.
Review
Players exceeded their expectations in 9 out of 11 games, so the trend did perform pretty well. The majority of the matches were plays I never would have made if I wasn’t doing this article, so I will be interested to keep my eye on this trend moving forward and see how it does.
One thing that became obvious over the course of the week is that there are two distinct types of plays that this trend will match. The first type is shooters who haven’t been lighting it up but have no injury or playing time concerns (Hayward, Thompson) and the second type consists of players whose price is down for a very legitimate reason (Matthews – recovering from offseaon injury, K Martin – way down on the totem pole with the Wolves fully healthy). Considering the trend’s overall +2.89 Plus/Minus, I would probably recommend this trend to others – just make sure you can distinguish the two types of plays it will suggest.
