Daily Fantasy Sports: Boys Club?
I’m an introvert.
I’m a novelist.
I could have started this article either way, because both mean the same thing.
When I was in high school, people used to argue with me when I told them I was an introvert. They would explain to me what an introvert was, and would try to show me why I was not an introvert. Because, you know, they knew me so much better than I knew myself.
But even though I am plenty sociable when I am around people – even though I thoroughly enjoy getting to know new people, and listening to the things others have to say (which is another way of saying: “I’m a novelist”) – I do not “recharge” by being around people. I recharge by being by myself.
Heck, you could ask my wife. She and I both work from home (myself with DFS play and DFS writing and freelance writing and fiction writing, and my wife with photography (tell your wife or girlfriend to join her fifty-freaking-thousand followers on Instagram…or, if you are a female reading this or a male who wants to follow my wife (that sounds weird…“Do you want to follow my wife?”), the same goes: abby_tohline is her Instagram handle; she’s pretty awesome)), and yet – even though we are both home all day – we might have some days in which we spend only three or four hours in the same room together. Maybe she’s working in her office and I’m working in the living room. Or perhaps she’s working on the bed and I’m working outside. However it sets up, though, the result is… well, is what I just said: some days, in spite of both working from home, we only share the same room for a few hours.
Introvert? You bet.
Rewind, now, to last August. I had won a seat to DraftKings’ million dollar tourney in the Bahamas, and my wife and I were flying to a place with a beautiful beach, amazing food, and a huge collection of some of the most well-known (and some of the lesser-known) DFS players.
You know how many DFS guys I met that weekend? I think, maybe, six. I spent a bit of time with AlSmizzle and Cal Spears at the Atlanta airport. I chatted with RayofHope for maybe one minute at some cocktail thing one of the first nights we were there. I hung out with 00oreo00 for a bit while we were sweating the $1 million tournament. And I got a chance to tell CSURam88 “congratulations” at the airport the morning after his $1 million win. How was my math there? Looks like that’s five people, then; I met five people that weekend (thinking back, now, I may have met Naapstermaan as well; that would be six). This, in spite of the fact that there were plenty of events DraftKings had set up for everyone in the tournament, and in spite of the fact that I was there all weekend with all these guys (the only event we attended – outside of the actual $1 million tournament – was the cocktail thing, and we left that pretty quickly).
But wait. It gets worse. Last December, I was in the Bahamas again. I had failed to win a seat to the $1 million NFL tournament (oooh, it hurt to type that – memories of those FOUR second-place finishes in qualifiers still sting), but I did win a “trip only” qualifier that gave a free trip to the Bahamas to the winner. So everyone else was there competing for $1 million. And I was there with my wife, just chilling.
Were you there, too? If you were, I bet you did not know that I was there. Because, literally, I did not see anyone. As in: I’m currently trying to find a time when I can go out to Nashville to hang with the RotoGrinders guys for a couple days… and I did not even see them when I was in the Bahamas. My wife and I hung out together on the beach. We relaxed. We did nothing. And I saw no one.
But here’s the funny thing: after my wife and I were in the Bahamas for the first tournament – the baseball tournament, in which I had a seat – we had a conversation about what a “boys club” the DFS community was. How everyone knew everyone, and anyone who didn’t know everyone was excluded.
In one sense, this is true. And honestly, you can’t really blame anyone for this sort-of-somewhat being the case, as most of the “known names” in DFS have been playing for years – long before DFS became the increasingly popular phenomenon it has become. They played against one another on sites that no longer exist. They worked together to pioneer research and strategies in DFS. They attended early live finals that had no fanfare – live finals where the first-place prize and the “big check” was for $50,000 instead of for $1 million. They helped build the RotoGrinders community, and they watched as other players became “former players” – watched, that is, as others were unable to keep up with the “bankroll building” these guys who are still around were able to maintain. These guys got in on the ground floor of something, and they’re still around. They know each other by more than just their screen names; they know each other from the times they’ve hung out together in Vegas at the annual RotoGrinders NFL Kickoff party, and from the times they’ve hung out at other live events.
If I were not such an introvert, those two weekends in the Bahamas could have been “live events” at which I had hung out with all those guys. Instead, I decided to use the excuse that, “Yeah, DFS is something of a boys club.”
And honestly, saying “If I were not such an introvert” is a cop-out. Because you can be an introvert and still meet people, and still interact with people, and still enjoy your time with new people. You can be an introvert and not revert to the excuse that “DFS is something of a boys club.”
There are a few reasons I bring this up. I’ll admit right now that this doesn’t tie too much into the stats we are going to be looking at after this (“doesn’t tie too much”? – yeah, okay, doesn’t tie at all!). But it’s worth bringing up anyway, for a couple reasons.
1) I feel like a lot of times, non-“known players” put an imaginary barrier between themselves and known players. Some of them do this by putting “known players” on too high a pedestal (which, inevitably, leads to looking for ways to mentally knock them off this pedestal, instead of looking for ways to learn from their knowledge and experience).
2) Other times, I feel that new players and non-“known players” assume that the established DFS community is closed off, and because of this, they never make an effort to integrate.
3) I can say those things about new players and non-“known players” because I speak from experience. That’s exactly the way I was. That’s exactly the misconception I had. And finally…
4) I bring it up because the DFS community is really not so closed off at all! I realized this a bit too late – realized this after I had already missed out, twice, on getting to hang out with all these awesome guys who make up a chunk of the community. Have you ever reached out to any other DFS players on Twitter? Have you ever engaged with others in the forums on RotoGrinders? I’ll let you in on a secret: Most people could not care less whether or not you are a “known name.” If you want to talk DFS, they want to join you!
As I have become more plugged into the DFS community – as I have made more of an intentional and concerted (and very non-introvertish) effort to interact with and build relationships with people in the DFS community (known and non- “known” names alike; new and old players alike) – I have come to enjoy DFS a whole lot more as well. I always enjoyed DFS, of course – enjoyed the research, the team building, the competition…the thrill of those nights of a big win. But now, I enjoy more than just the DFS play alone; I also enjoy the community that comes with it.
In a roundabout way, I am offering advice to you. I am telling you my story so you can learn from my mistake. Yes, you actually tend to learn a lot as you become connected to the DFS community (in the way I talked about last week: learning things simply by picking up little things here and there). And that’s a good thing. But more than that, DFS just becomes a lot more fun when you get to know the others who make up the community!
Hop on the forums.
Hop on Twitter.
Stop being such a party-pooping introvert! Get to know some folks, and see how much more fun DFS becomes.
HOW TO TRANSITION FROM THAT?
Whenever I had an intro like that during NFL (an intro that really had very little to do with the meat of the article; I recall, in particular, one I wrote about being nice to others), it was easy enough to transition, as readers always knew I was going to be talking about that week’s slate of games during the second portion of the article. But since these articles tend to explore something a little different every week, there’s really no smooth transition from an intro such as that to the meat into which we are about to sink our teeth.
Kaboom! Blam. Kaplow!
There we go. I just exploded the bridge between the top portion of this article and the bottom portion. So here we are: the bottom portion (I hope you don’t need to go back to the top portion of this article for anything, because that bridge is beyond repair).
This week, I want to talk about some of the “stats you may not be thinking about” that I have been using lately.
RECENT GAME LOGS FOR PITCHERS
This is not an exact science (none of the things I’m going to talk about today are “exact sciences”; heck, nothing in MLB DFS is an exact science – that’s sort of the point!), but one thing you will notice as you begin to examine the game logs of pitchers is that pitching performance from one game to the next tends to be more predictive than hitting performance from one game to the next. If a pitcher is a good pitcher, and you know this, you don’t need to worry a ton about this; if a pitcher is a bad pitcher, and you know this, you don’t need to worry too much about this.
There are a few instances, however, in which I find “recent game logs” to be very helpful.
One such instance is when a very good pitcher has been struggling. If you visit the Fangraphs page of this pitcher and click on the “Game Logs” tab, you will find a wealth of advanced information from their recent games. You can look at their xFIP for recent games to see if they’ve just been getting unlucky or have actually been pitching poorly. You can look at their BB%, and can look at their PITCHf/x to see if their velocity is down (higher walks and lower velocity are often a sign of injury). You can click on the “batted balls” tab in the “game logs” section to see how many hard-hit balls they are allowing, and how many softly-hit balls they are allowing (this is a stat I have been utilizing quite a bit lately). Basically, you can see if there are signs that something may be “not right” with the pitcher, or indications that they are instead pretty much fine. (Realize, of course, that all pitchers have bad games from time to time. One or two bad games is not necessarily cause for concern. The bigger issue is when a pitcher is pitching uncharacteristically poorly for several starts in a row, and their peripherals back up the results. If this is the case, don’t simply assume that the pitcher is a “great value” because their price has been dropping! Instead, they may still be overpriced.)
Another time I like to use game logs for pitchers is with young pitchers. Most young pitchers have ups and downs when they first come up to the Big Leagues (no surprise there), but because these young pitchers are both unproven and prone to bad outings, their DFS prices are usually very low. If you simply look at their stats, this may not tell the whole story. But if you dig into their game logs, you will be able to see how they have actually been pitching lately on a foundational level (K% and BB%, hard-hit balls and softly-hit balls), and can take advantage of pitchers who are priced far lower than they should be.
HARD / SOFT
No, we’re not talking about minerals here (science joke!), but are instead talking about… you know… how hard-hit or softly-hit balls are.
This is a stat I have mentioned before, but it is also one I have been digging into even more over the last couple weeks. The main thing I find you can get out of this stat is an idea of whether or not seeming anomalies in a pitcher or hitter’s stats are sustainable. For example: If a pitcher gives up a higher-than-normal HR/FB rate, one explanation may be that he allows more hard contact than other pitchers. Same thing for soft contact and a lower-than-normal HR/FB rate.
I have also been using this stat lately to get a feel for whether or not a hitter is coming out of a slump. The other day, for example, I used Aramis Ramirez in cash games and GPPs on a day he was facing a lefty with his price far too low. Last year, this would have been an auto-play for most people, but because of how much Aramis has been struggling to start the year, no one was looking to him. I had noticed earlier in the year that Aramis was hitting almost everything softly (which was way out of line with his career hard/soft), but when I was putting together research for the slate in question, I noticed that Aramis had been hitting everything hard over his previous 10 games or so. This led me to feel very comfortable using him in a plus matchup at a depressed price. I could not have predicted he would hit the home run he hit that night, but I could predict that he was in a good position to hit the ball hard and pick up points.
This is a great complimentary research piece to use in a lot of ways. My best advice on hard/soft is simply this: start paying attention to it, start seeing what you are able to read from this stat, and make small adjustments to your own approach accordingly.
K% VS HANDEDNESS
This one seems obvious, of course, but it is somehow a stat that a lot of people fail to look at or even consider.
People will often talk about the K% a pitcher has, and if this K% is a bit daunting, they will avoid hitters accordingly. While this is all fine and dandy, however, you need to realize and acknowledge that most pitchers have different strikeout numbers against righties and lefties. This is especially important on FanDuel, where each out is negative points for your hitter, and you therefore want hitters in cash games who are likely to put the ball in play in their at-bats. Just because a pitcher has a 22% K rate does not necessarily mean they will have a 22% K rate against the lefty hitter you like. Maybe they strike righties out at a very high rate, and do not have nearly as much success punching out lefties.
Don’t just pay attention to K% in general; also make sure you are paying attention to a pitcher’s K% vs your hitter’s handedness.
wOBA ALLOWED VS HANDEDNESS
This is another underutilized stat. In general, you want to not only use pitchers on your rosters who have high K rates and low SIERAs, but to also make sure these guys allow low wOBAs. What we often fail to think about, however, is the fact that a pitcher’s SIERA (as well as – again – the K% you see when first examining them, of course) takes into account batters of all handedness. Remember, however, that all lineups are constructed differently.
Sometimes, you will come across a pitcher who – for example – allows an extremely low wOBA to righties, but who struggles mightily against lefties. Most teams will be able to run at least four or five lefty bats out there against one such pitcher, but there is a smattering of MLB teams that have very few lefty bats. What that means for you (or, if you are an Arrested Development fan (uh… the show, not the group), “What that means for your weekend”) is that this pitcher’s price will have been determined by their overall performance… but their expected performance against a team full of righties is going to be much higher. (You’ll even notice, when taking a closer look at things in this manner, that a lot of pitchers allow, say, a 10% walk rate to hitters of one handedness, while allowing only a 4% rate to hitters of the other.)
One strategy I like to employ is taking low-priced, low-owned pitchers in tournaments when these pitchers are facing a team full of a handedness against which they excel. People tend to get far too caught up in a pitcher’s overall numbers, without thinking enough about the way this pitcher’s underlying numbers align with the lineup they are facing.
TEAM STATS VS PLAYER STATS
That’s not really the best title for this section as it doesn’t describe what I’m getting at. But here’s what I’m getting at:
When we are looking at pitchers and determining who we want to use, we will usually look at the numbers of the lineup they will be facing. Right? But what we will rarely do is take the next step of breaking down exactly why these numbers look the way they look.
This is not always necessary. In fact, I’d say it is rarely necessary. Typically, you can look at a team’s overall numbers and get a pretty good feel for that team itself. But there are a few times when the stats of one or two players will skew the “team stats” of that entire team, and will therefore become misleading.
One example – to give you an idea of what I mean – is the Mariners team stats against left-handed pitching. If you look on the surface, the Mariners appear to be surprisingly good against lefties. And certainly, as a team, they are much better against lefties this year than you would expect. But in looking at their team numbers, you also need to realize that Nelson Cruz has absolutely ridiculous numbers so far against left-handed pitching. This means that the entire team’s stats are skewed upward by one player, and it means that the rest of the team is not as difficult a matchup for lefties as those “on the surface” numbers would indicate.
Another example (although this is more just a fun one than one that helps you out a ton) is the extremely low strikeout rate Jose Altuve has… and the incredibly high strikeout rate the Astros have. On the surface, the Astros are a good team to target for strikeouts. When you then take into consideration the fact that their strikeout numbers as a team are largely skewed downward by Altuve’s low strikeout rate, this makes the rest of the team an even better target for Ks! (Not that this is super useful information, as the Astros still crush the ball and are scary to use pitchers against. But it’s a fun stat nonetheless.)
That’s it from me today. Hopefully you are digging beneath the surface in your MLB research, and are looking for ways in which you can take things to the next level and gain an edge on the rest of the field!