Being able to pinpoint potential indicators of future regression is an attribute that can be incredibly profitable in the world of daily fantasy sports. Fading a high-owned player on a hot streak or targeting a struggling low-rostered option can make or break your night. With The KBXE Review, I’ll do my best to identify pitching options who are due for regression, both positive and negative, with the use of KBXE.
KBXE is a statistic that I created earlier this spring in the hopes of quantifying many of the components we put into consideration when rostering a pitcher each day. The formula itself is as follows:
K/9 — BB/9 — ((xFIP — ERA)/2)
For further reading on the subject, be sure to check out the introductory article. Additionally, I’ll be incorporating advanced stats from our Trends tool to test the validity of our findings.
The Review
Because the intention of this article is to help in forecasting regression, I believe it’s important to take a moment to look back at the prior results to determine if we are in fact doing so. Because neither you nor I likely have time to review of all 102 pitchers, I’ll focus on the top 10 and bottom 10 from our last article (April 28th), considering how they’ve performed (per Plus/Minus) in their starts since then.
The Top 10
Notables
A Plus/Minus of -15.29!?! Really?
There’s a lot going on here, but first and foremost let’s address the issue of our previous cover boy and top-ranked pitcher just destroying DFS lineups over his past two starts.
If many of the advanced stats were on his side heading into these matchups, what gives? The first item that stuck out to me is the fact that both games took place against the Yankees. Now, I’m not going to get all “Batter vs. Pitcher” on you, but there’s no denying that the Yankees are very familiar with David Price — his 12 starts against them are four more than he has had against any other team dating back to 2014. And using our Trends tool we can see that his struggles against them are nothing new.
Bill Monighetti addressed Price’s struggles vs. the Yankees back in February and the concerns seem to have been legitimate. I’ll be interested to see how Price handles his next few starts as he attempts to bounce back.
The other main point I want to touch on with this group is innings pitched. Strikeouts per nine innings is a great stat, especially for tournaments, as it conveys a pitcher’s strikeout potential. Elite pitchers often have high K/9s.
But if a starter is routinely pulled around the fifth or sixth innings, he’s never realizing his strikeout potential. Such had been the case with Jose Fernandez up until recently, routinely capping his ceiling. Keep this in mind, whether utilizing KBXE, setting the sliders on your Player Models, or just doing research, as it’s easy to overlook a pitcher who may have a slightly lower K/9 projection but a better chance of going seven or eight innings.
Bottom 10
Notables
A lot of these players don’t have much fantasy relevancy on a week-to-week basis, but a couple of players who were (or are still) gaining traction in terms of their DFS usage are Jordan Zimmerman and Mat Latos. As his underlying numbers predicted in the last installment, Latos finally fell from grace over his past couple of starts.
But Zimmerman has maintained his rather stellar pace, with his earned run average still sitting at just 1.50. His ability to avoid big innings has allowed him to work deep into games, which is good for our purposes. But as with any non-strikeout pitcher there’s concern about his ability to rack up points through nothing more than innings pitched and wins. Regardless, he continues to prove me wrong with an average Plus/Minus of +3.1 over the previous two weeks.
Projecting Forward
In the space we’ll look at the players who are trending up and down: Those who have a KBXE score at least one standard deviation from the mean.
Trending Up
Notables
Ricky Nolasco is new to the list and worth monitoring. His pitch velocity over the previous 15 days is up 0.5 miles per hour. Although he has struggled in his past two outings, he has also had some bad luck. His 15-day BABIP of .420 is drastically higher than his career and seasonal marks of .314 and .304. Nolasco’s ability to limit baserunners prior to his two recent starts had allowed him to work deep into games, helping to offset his pedestrian K/9 rate. He has a reasonable price and could be useful in ideal spots in the future.
Jumping up from 10th to sixth in the rankings is Fernandez, who was made for this list. As I touched on above, the issue with Fernandez is his inability to work deep into games, thus limiting his upside. But as he showed in his last start, he has the potential to be dominant in terms of his strikeout potential if given a longer leash. Obviously KBXE is a fan of his, but also working in his favor is a Distance Differential Score in the 95th percentile over the previous 15 days.
Trending Down
Notables
As I mentioned last week, this list will often be filled with pitchers we have no interest in targeting. But that’s not to say that it’s completely barren. Felix Hernandez, Jordan Zimmerman, J.A. Happ, and Jason Hammel are players who have found fantasy success against the odds. What does this group have in common? They all have ERAs that are likely unsustainable per advanced stats such as xFIP.
Based upon FanGraph’s definition, a “Below Average” xFIP is anything lower than 4.1, “Poor” anything below 4.4, and “Awful” anything below 4.7. Despite the exquisite ERAs of this bunch, their xFIP ratings range between “Below Average” to “Poor”, with Zimmerman sitting dangerously close to an “Awful” rating.
Proceed with caution if you find that you absolutely “must” gain exposure to this group in the coming days.
