This is the eighth and final piece in a series of articles looking at Statcast data for batters and pitchers.
Statistics like exit velocity, batted ball distance, and hard hit rate are still relatively new to many daily fantasy players. FantasyLabs Co-Founder Jonathan Bales recently put out a video on how to use batted ball data within our Player Models. This series uses the suite of Labs Tools to explore the DFS value of Statcast data.
Using our Trends tool, we looked at numerous pieces of Statcast data for hitters and pitchers on FanDuel.
Exit Velocity – Hitters: We looked at batted balls with an exit velocity of over 95 miles per hour. Exit velocity in a vacuum can be misleading. The sweet spot for hard hit balls is 221-250 feet. With a trend-high +1.02 Plus/Minus and 38.6 percent Consistency Rating, this subgroup of hitters provides excellent value with batted balls that make it past the infield.
Exit Velocity – Pitchers: The hard throwers with low exit velocities are clearly the best, and the soft throwers with high exit velocities are clearly the worst. In between, however, the hard throwers with high exit velocities and the soft throwers with low exit velocities are remarkably similar. What this means is that a high exit velocity isn’t disqualifying if a pitcher has good pitch speed and poor pitch speed isn’t horrible if a pitcher has low exit velocity.
Hard Hit Rate – Hitters: There is a clear and direct correlation between hard hit balls and productivity. While power hitters are sexy and popular, there may be an advantage to looking for ‘small ball’ players who hit for contact. Hitters with high line drive rates are on average the most consistent batters when factoring in all levels of contact.
Hard Hit Rate – Pitchers: Hard hit rates are important when analyzing pitchers, but knowing the stats to use alongside them is as important. We looked at different batted ball events — fly ball, line drive, ground ball — and the results are the same across the board. Soft contact of any batted ball leads to the highest Plus/Minus.
Batted Ball Distance – Batters: The farther a batter hits the ball, the more productive he tends to be. That’s probably not a surprise, but what is notable is the extent to which short-term distance matters. A recent distance above 250 feet yields the highest Plus/Minus in this portion of the series.
Batted Ball Distance – Pitchers: There is a direct correlation between a pitcher’s ability to suppress batted ball distance and the extent to which he has DFS success. We looked at short- and long-term batted ball distance. It’s notable that the short-term duds have higher ownership than their long-term counterparts. (Pro Subscribers can review exposure levels in our DFS Ownership Dashboard.) In general, what we see is that the market of DFS players tends to view short-term data through the most optimistic perspective possible.
Pitch Speed: No surprise here. Soft-throwing pitchers suck; hard-throwing pitchers do not. Pitchers throwing over 95 miles per hour perform particularly well. We see the positive correlation between pitch speed and raw fantasy points. When looking at the difference between a pitcher’s average velocity over the past 15 days and over the past 12 months, it is worth noting that ownership does not change much between the different subgroups. There could be an edge for guaranteed prize pools in using this trend to see who is throwing harder in the short term while getting a discount in ownership.
Putting It All Together
With this series finished, it is obvious that Statcast data should be integral in your daily research. This is something to keep in mind when using our Lineup Builder as you create your DFS teams. When used in combination with other Labs statistics and Vegas data, Statcast data is likely to offer you a significant edge.
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Previous installments of the Statcast(unate) Event series can be accessed via my author page.
