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.
6/26: Rockies on the Road
We all know that Rockies batters perform worse on the road away from Coors Field. Starting pitchers facing the Rockies do much better at home. But in MLB DFS that’s not the whole story. We know the Rockies are worse on the road, but how attackable are they with pitching on the road?
In MLB DFS, matchups and circumstances are taken into account when salaries are set. The Rockies are worse on the road, but if opposing pitchers are priced as if they are facing the worst team in the league in home starts against the Rockies, that’s not going to help us much.
On Monday, the Rockies were visiting the Giants in San Francisco, which meant they were leaving the best overall hitting environment for the worst overall hitting environment. Over the past two seasons, San Francisco starting pitchers have done well against the Rockies at AT&T Park (per our Trends tool):
In 15 games, only three pitchers have finished with negative Plus/Minus values.
Monday was a small, six-game main slate, which meant there were fewer exploitable matchups than we usually get. In this case, although the ownership was likely to be high for Giants righty Jeff Samardzija, I was willing to make that concession in exchange for a safe matchup.
Results
At $8,400, Samardzija finished with 20.15 DraftKings points for a +5.48 Plus/Minus. The Rockies were limited to two earned runs, and Samardzija picked up an easy win in the 9-2 contest.
6/27: Limited Data
In MLB DFS, it’s hard enough making sense of a pitcher’s matchup when we have years’ worth of data on the players involved. When we’re analyzing a recent minor league call-up who has pitched only a few innings in the big leagues, even more uncertainty is introduced. But uncertainty isn’t necessarily bad, and in some cases it can be beneficial.
If we use the Trends tool to look only at pitchers who have started five or fewer games over the fantasy year, we see that their average ownership is 6.2 percent. The baseline for all pitchers is 10 percent. In general, people prefer not to roster players who have limited data, all else being equal. We had him projected for five to eight percent DraftKings ownership in large-field guaranteed prize pools in our Models.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that when there is limited data on a player we may place more weight on the precious few game logs available. I think we’d be much more willing to give an established pitcher a pass for a bad recent start than an unknown pitcher whose first start was a dud. Using that idea to our advantage, we can apply a ‘Recent Batted Ball Luck’ filter to our trend. Let’s set the value from +20 to +40. We are looking at pitchers with limited history whose Statcast data indicates they have performed better than their fantasy production suggests.
Tuesday’s matching player was Sean Newcomb, who was making his fourth start. Newcomb’s first three starts looked like this:
Good, but not great — but Newcomb’s average batted ball distance of 180 feet and exit velocity of 88 miles per hour indicated that hitters had struggled to make solid contact. Leveraging the unknown, I rostered Newcomb in a plus matchup against a weak Padres lineup.
Results
Given the Statcast data, Newcomb’s cheap salary of $6,700, and the strong matchup, I thought his 10 percent average ownership on DraftKings was more than reasonable. Newcomb turned in his best start yet, going six shutout innings with eight strikeouts. Pro subscribers can review ownership trends across GPPs of various stakes in our DFS Ownership Dashboard.
6/28: Bottom-of-the-Order Pros
On Wednesday, the Astros seemed to be in a great spot given their implied Vegas total of 5.4 runs in a home matchup against Athletics righty Jesse Hahn. With the middle of the lineup likely to be popular, I took a close look at the bottom of the Astros order. My first though was, “Wow, these guys are matching a lot of Pro Trends”:
Eight Pro Trends is a high number for a player batting in the middle of the order, much less near the bottom. A player who bats between sixth and ninth has an average Plus/Minus of -0.38 on DraftKings. In those same spots, for players who qualify for 8-12 Pro Trends the Plus/Minus rises to +1.08. Best of all, average ownership for players who match this trend has been 4.6 percent.
Results
Marwin Gonzalez, Yulieski Gurriel, and Nori Aoki scored nine, 12, and five DraftKings points for a collective +4 Plus/Minus. That’s not bad, especially since their lower salaries allowed me to load up elsewhere, but that’s also not GPP-winning production. I do, though, like the idea of filling out lineups using these types of players, and there are certainly big games to be had. For example, just three days prior Keon Broxton scored 31 fantasy points at 1.3 percent ownership while hitting seventh for the Brewers and qualifying for eight Pro Trends.
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Thanks for following along with my three custom trends this week. As always, there’s plenty more left to be explored via the Labs Tools.
