With our Trends tool, you can see current and historical matches for players in matchups that meet the specified criteria. This makes it pretty easy to track performance within the result set. In this series, I thought it might be cool to take it 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.
This Monday, I created the following Trend:
Description
The trend I made this week matched players who ranked in the 96th-100th percentile in Projected Plus/Minus. If the number “96” seems random, it kind of is. I used it because I wanted the trend to give me a couple of results each night and this seemed like the best place to draw the line. I’m telling you this because if you want to copy this trend, but adjust the range slightly, that’s fine – the number wasn’t chosen as a hard boundary.
Projected Plus/Minus is one of the first stats I look at in Player Models, especially in NBA, and I thought this would be a good time to track how the top-rated players in this category do. Looking at this trend’s historical performance, I believe we are looking at the highest “+/-“ score since I started the series:
This was a really simply trend to put together. Here is the only filter:
• The Player’s Projected +/- Percentile is Between 96 and 100
Results
The screenshots below are from teams I entered into FanDuel’s $5 Layup
1/4
The trend fared well on January 4th…really well. In fact, the team that took down the Layup on this night rostered both Withey and Crowder. The winning team’s power forwards were Draymond Green and Chris Bosh and while both of them did well, Ibaka actually outperformed both from a points-per-dollar perspective.
Avery Bradley was out for Boston against the Nets, but that didn’t really translate to a bump in minutes for Crowder. Really, this was just a case of a player who had been outperforming his price for the past few weeks continuing to play well. Crowder had exceeded his implied point total in seven-of-eight games coming into this matchup. Sometimes value opens up due to injury to a team’s starter, and that type of value is easy to recognize – other times, there is value when a player’s price point does not match a player’s current level of production. This type of value is a little bit more difficult to identify, but the Projected Plus/Minus trend was all over it.
Withey, on the other hand, was seeing increased minutes due to Utah’s frontcourt injuries. I think people were generally aware that he was going to be a good play, but on FanDuel, you can only roster one center and with Cousins on the slate, it was hard for people to pull the trigger on Withey despite his opportunity.
Durant was also out this night, which doesn’t give Ibaka a huge boost, but he was also very affordable and facing the Kings in a great matchup. Ibaka’s 20% ownership is relatively high in a GPP, but it was nothing compared to his teammate, Russell Westbrook (62%).
Each of these three players set their CURRENT SEASON HIGH for fantasy points scored on January 4th and it’s safe to say that the Projected Plus/Minus Trend is off to a good start.
1/6
Tuesday featured a four-game slate, which produced no matches, so we’re onto Wednesday’s 11-game slate.
After the fireworks on Monday, Wednesday was pretty disappointing.
Somewhat related to Avery Bradley’s absence, Kelly Olynyk had been starting a few games recently for the Celtics (more shooting was needed in the starting lineup). Kelly did exceed his implied point total based on salary of 15.74, so this does count a W, but it’s still kind of hard to get too excited about a 21-point performance.
Charlie Villanueva found himself in the starting lineup because the Mavericks were missing multiple players due to injury/rest. His score card looks bad, but he did get up 10 shots. He was a shooter with opportunity at the minimum price – although it didn’t work out tonight, I’m still okay with the play.
1/7
Dwight Howard wasn’t declared out until after lineup lock, which meant Terrence Jones didn’t become a member of this Projected Plus/Minus club until after 7:00 ET and I didn’t get him into my lineups as a result. But after a little bit of clicking around, I found someone who did roster Jones (pretty much everybody gets rostered one way or another on a four-game slate). Anyway, the increased opportunity put Terrence squarely in play and he did not disappoint the few players who took a chance on him, exceeding his implied point total by over 10 points.
Belinelli’s night was less impressive, but he still exceeded his implied total. A few extra minutes courtesy of Omri Casspi and the dream matchup put Marco in the crosshairs of the Projected Plus/Minus trend and he came through. A lot of people probably felt the same way, which bumped up Marco’s ownership to 35.8%.
Review
With all said and done, six-of-seven matches exceeded their implied point total on the week. Coupled with a very solid overall Plus/Minus rating, I think this is one of the more helpful trends that I’ve looked at.
Coming into the week, I expected that this trend would only be good for matching chalk plays. My thinking was that if somebody has an elite Projected Plus/Minus, it’s usually going to be because he has an increased opportunity to night, and that will be easily recognizable to the masses. In truth, there were some highly-owned plays, but also some under the radar ones as well.
