I think everyone who plays DFS has one or two players that they just cannot figure out, for whatever reason. You all know the story, they never meet value when you pick them and go off on the nights when you spend elsewhere. For me, that person is probably Damian Lillard. I just cannot catch that guy on the right night! In fact, every time I see his name, there is a voice in my head that yells “LILLARD!” in Seinfeld’s “Newman!” voice.
As DFS players, we can basically cherry-pick which games we want to take a stand on. Don’t have a good feel for a game? That’s fine, just pick players from different teams. Vegas, on the other hand, has to make predictions for every game on every night. I wonder, are there specific teams or players that Vegas just cannot get right?
Taking a strictly DFS approach to this, I’m most interested in which teams and players have exceeded expectations when Vegas projects them to do poorly. For this study, I’ll define “doing poorly” as being projected by Vegas to score under 3.7 runs. To no one’s surprise, applying this filter on a trend caused batters to lose value overall (-0.40 on DraftKings, -0.26 on FanDuel).
Breaking down the results by team showed that there was one team that performed surprisingly well when Vegas projected them at 3.7 or under in 2014:
Outside of these three clubs, every other MLB team finished in the red. Interestingly enough, the Pirates also finished inside the top 10 in Plus/Minus when Vegas Runs were set at 4 or higher in 2014. The biggest underachievers in 2014 when Vegas Runs were projected at 4+? The same two teams on both sites:
Let’s look at results for 2015 now. These teams have been the worst when projected at 4+ Runs by Vegas this season:
And while the Pirates are still hanging around the top 10 of the rankings when the “Vegas Runs Are Under 3.7” filter is applied, the Astros and Royals have been Vegas’ Lillard Teams this year, trolling them on both sides of the spectrum:
As the ultimate home run-or-out team, it kind of makes sense that Vegas would have a hard time figuring out the Astros. As a team, they collectively rank second in the MLB in both home runs and strikeouts. As a DFS player, you could probably use this to your advantage, knowing that while Vegas’ Projected Run Total has proven to be an inaccurate predictor so far this year for the Astros, it is likely to scare off a lot of people when the total is lower, leaving some of their players underowned.
The Royals were a little more surprising to me because I view them as the ultimate “play good defense, put the ball in play, win the game 4-3” team. Looking at the results, they blew up Trevor Bauer in April for 11 runs when Vegas had them under 3.7, got to Pineda for 12 runs in mid-May, and beat up the Angels the first week of the season when Vegas had them scoring under 3.7 in each game. Because a lot of these games came early in the season and because they are close to getting lapped as a team by the Astros in total home runs (79-43), I’m not really sure what to make of these results. It will be interesting to see if Vegas “figures out” the Royals as the year goes on. My bet is they do.
I thought it would also be interesting to see if there were individual players who exceeded expectations when Vegas projects their team to struggle. Of those with 100 or more results from the past two seasons, here are a few players who did well in Plus/Minus when Vegas projects 3.7 or fewer runs:
| Player | +/- |
| Lucas Duda | +0.37 |
| Todd Frazier | +0.25 |
| Anthony Rizzo | +0.72 |
| Freddie Freeman | +0.23 |
| Brian Dozier | +0.41 |
There are a few other players that finished slightly in the green, but basically you have to be a power hitter to be able to exceed Plus/Minus consistently in these situations. I’d be willing to bet the ownership % on these players is also greatly reduced due to perceived loss of value.
So there you have it, the teams and players who have consistently been pains in the ass for Vegas the past couple of seasons. Be sure to check the data often to see if Vegas gets a better handle on projecting these guys and to see if a new pain in the ass emerges. Luckily for me, I don’t have to worry about mine for another several months – LILLARD!
