The MLB Ownership Review is a regular series in which we review the ownership dynamics of a previous slate.
On Thursday, June 7, the 12-game main slate featured what looked to be an ownership battle between Zack Greinke and Dallas Keuchel. They were easily the two highest-priced pitchers in the slate, and their opponents (the San Diego Padres and Kansas City Royals) had implied totals of 3.5 and 3.6 runs (per our Vegas Dashboard).
Unfortunately, an hour after lock — and about 10 minutes before his own game started — Keuchel was scratched.
June 7th Ownership Review
Pitchers
Greinke and Keuchel were separated by just $100 on DraftKings and $200 on FanDuel, and neither of them had weather concerns with their games (per our MLB Lineups page). When Keuchel was scratched, Greinke made for an easy pivot, especially since he was in a later game. The data that follows is from our DFS Ownership Dashboard:
While we projected Greinke for higher ownership than Keuchel, Greinke’s final ownership is dramatically inflated because of Keuchel’s scratch. It’s easy to see why the public was on Greinke. He was the largest favorite on the slate with a -203 moneyline, and he had a 7.6 K Prediction. Pitchers with comparable odds to win and K Predictions have historically averaged a +3.71 Plus/Minus on DraftKings and 63.3 percent Consistency Rating (per our Trends tool). Also, it’s notable that Keuchel’s ownership decreased as the stakes increased. It’s possible that sharp high-stakes players were more on top of the news than low-stakes players were and thus were more successful at swapping out of their Keuchel shares. Additionally, it’s possible that high-stakes players were already heavily invested in Greinke.
The popular DraftKings SP2 was John Lackey, who like Greinke was increasingly popular in GPPs with higher stakes. Given that Lackey was a -198 moneyline favorite and facing a Miami Marlins team with an implied total of 3.8 runs, it is no surprise that the underpriced Lackey was a popular play. He led all pitchers on the slate with eight Pro Trends (per our Player Models).
One other pitcher worth mentioning is Buck Farmer. At just $4,000 on DraftKings, he had the third-highest average ownership at 24.5 percent. A popular punt play across the board, Farmer finished with the slate’s second-highest pitching score with a 26.6-point performance at home against the Angels. With a dominant 11-strikeout performance in his only other start of the season (on May 27), Farmer was always likely to be a relatively play, especially since he was cheap and facing the Angels without Mike Trout.
Hitters
Here are the top-10 hitters in average DraftKings ownership:
Four of the batters were St. Louis Cardinals, who faced Reds righty Bronson Arroyo, one of the worst pitchers in the slate, as evidenced by his slate-high 2.99 HR/9 over the last year. There were nine teams with higher implied totals, and the Cardinals’ total dropped by 0.3 runs throughout the day (from 5.1 to 4.8), but that did not seem to concern many players.
Arroyo give up a home run to Matt Carpenter, but the Cardinals did not live up to their ownership expectations. With 11 hits and four runs, the Cardinals likely worked out in cash games, but stacks from other teams were needed to win GPPs. With our Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters.
The Cubs and Tigers were both implied to score 5.4 runs, but they weren’t as heavily owned as the Cardinals (or the Diamondbacks), combining for just four of the top-25 batters in average ownership. Clearly, most DFS players opted to pay up for pitching instead of hitting.
Takeaways
On a slate that ended up having just one premium high-priced pitcher, Greinke was the uber chalk on both sites.
- Greinke was projected to be the chalkiest pitcher anyway, but with Keuchel scratched most players likely pivoted to him, leading to inflated ownership.
- Most DFS players paid up for pitching instead of hitting.
- Although rostering Farmer made the Cubs and Tigers more affordable, most DFS players decided to roster teams with lower implied totals, such as the Cardinals and Diamondbacks.
- Sharp high-stakes players reacted to Keuchel’s scratch with great efficiency. Be sure to monitor our MLB News feed for all breaking news.
