MLB 2013 Daily Research Tools
With the MLB season kicking off on Monday, we have put the finishing touches on our MLB Daily Research Tools. While the Daily Research Console itself won’t be 100% updated until Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, you can find all of the links for the tools in this article. As always, the goal of the RotoGrinders Daily Research tools is to help you win money and to make your research process fun and efficient.
NOTE: The current MLB Daily Research Console view is from last year. Links to ALL tools can be found in this article and the console view will be updated by Wednesday April 3rd.
MLB Daily Research Console Tools
1) MLB Player Statistics Page + FPPG By Site
This page is a basic statistics page and will include standard player statistics and fantasy point per game averages, broken down by site and position.
The Team Statistics Page is broken down into four pages. Team Batting, Opponent Batting, Team Pitching and Opponent Pitching. Each page is relatively straight-forward and shows basic team stats.
3) MLB Advanced Stats + Sabermetrics
Advanced Statistics include many of the Sabermetric stats that have grown wildly popular in baseball over the past 10 years as well as some other statistics that can help you when building your daily fantasy rosters.
Stats Included:
RC – Runs Created
RC27 – Runs Created Per 27 Outs
2nd-AB – Secondary Batting Average
ISO – Isolated Power
GB:FB – Ground Ball to Fly Ball Ratio
AB/HR – At Bats Per Home Run
BB/K – Walks per Strikeouts
P/PA – Pitches Seen Per Plate Appearance
BABIP – Batting Average on Balls in Play
This is a basic tool used for sites such as FantasyFeud or DraftStreet where the closer position is included. Here you can see each team’s 1st string closer as well as that players statistics for the season and the “next-in-line” closer if the 1st string player is expected to rest or will be taken out for any reason.
The Ballpark Factors page takes a look at historical data from 2001-2012 for all actively played-in Stadiums. The parks are sorted by HRs per AB for Left AND Right-handedness ratings to help you adjust your daily selections based on where they are playing that day. Further down, there are all-inclusive stats that ignore lefty/righty splits and just show total figures against league averages.
There are four cheat sheets we have developed to start the 2013 season. Two for batters and two for pitchers. You can find all of them at the link above.
- Batter Cheat Sheet – The idea that revolutionized the RG Daily Research console all started with Bowens1984 building the first ever MLB cheat sheet last season. This page takes that idea and builds on it a bit but basically shows any player with an OPS over .950 in the 4 major splits; home, road, vs. LHP and vs. RHP. Further down, in-depth split stats are shown for each “Target”
- Expanded Batter Cheat Sheet – The Expanded Batter Cheat Sheet takes the players listed on the basic cheat sheet and shows you when they should be targeted based on their splits. So if David Ortiz is a “Target” against Right Handed Pitchers, the Expanded Cheat Sheet highlights any games for the upcoming week where Ortiz faces a righty. This is separated by the 4 splits mentioned above.
- Pitcher Cheat Sheet – The Pitcher Cheat Sheet decides who you should “target” and who you should “avoid” each day by looking at opponent team splits. So if Jon Lester is on the road against the Yankees, the cheat sheet looks at the average of the Yankees batting splits both at home and against left handed pitchers. You can then see each pitchers opponent ranking based on OPS-average. Anyone facing a Top-5 offense for a given split combination is shown in red and anyone facing a bottom-5 offense for a given split combination is shown in green.
- Pitcher vs. Offense Page – This is a more basic pitcher cheat sheet that takes the idea of the Offense vs. Defense Pages from other sports and applies it to MLB. Broken down by day of the week, this page shows the average of pitcher statistics against their opponent team batting statistics in runs per game, home runs, doubles, batting average, slugging percentage and OPS. There are target and avoid plays based on these figures as well.
7) MLB Starting Pitcher Daily Hub
The Starting Pitcher Daily Hub was an idea to condense the plethora of stats that can be looked at on a day-to-day basis for pitchers. Each page uses red and green highlight colors to show why pitchers should be used or ignored based on the stats. There are four pages that accompany this and will be updated EVERY SINGLE DAY.
- Pitcher vs. Batter Data – This was a key tool built last year that takes the sum of the opponent batter vs. pitcher splits and forms your “pitcher vs. batter split”. This is helpful in seeing how a starter’s opponent batters have fared against him in the past.
- Pitcher Matchup Breakdown – The Matchup Breakdown page shows pitcher handedness, opponent batting average and OPS against that hand (left or right), and the number of batters on an opposing team that bat lefty, righty, or switch hit.
- Pitcher Ballpark Breakdown – This takes the data from another tool, the Ballpark Factors Page, and applies it to each day’s starting pitchers. Here you’ll see the ballpark info for each pitcher with highlighted stats to show you whether or not a given SP has a good or bad ballpark rating for that day.
- Pitcher Home/Road Splits – This is another tool that takes the stats from the Starting Pitcher Splits Page and summarizes them daily for the starting pitchers on the bump. Here you can find basic stats for each starters home and road splits.
8) MLB Site Scoring Comparison
The Site Scoring Comparison pages are great for players looking to try a new site but concerned that they might not be able to pick up on a different scoring system immediately. This page breaks down each sites scoring system and then provides real examples of player stat lines and how the scoring differs from site to site.
The Betting Lines for Major League Baseball can be useful in interpreting where odds-makers see a lot of runs being scored, which players might excel and who they see as a favorite for each game. Vegas Odds-Makers are professionals who spend hours each day trying to figure out how each game will play out. You don’t have to bet on the games to take this information and turn it into money.
Hot Streak hitters is a great way to see which hitters have been absolutely on fire of late. It includes all hitters who have a 5 games or greater hit streak going, allowing you to see the best of the best over the past week or two. Sometimes you can’t quite find the right fit at a certain position with the batter/pitcher or lefty/righty splits, so why not roll the dice on one of these hitters on a tear? All of these players are seeing the ball well. This page will be updated after a few weeks of games for the 2013 season
Full split stats for Starting Pitchers at home and on the road can be found here. This is definitely useful when looking for a guy who excels either at home or away from home. There are plenty of pitchers who have pretty diverse splits between home and road, so be sure to check these before finalizing your starter!
Other Tools for MLB
- MLB Market Watch – This page will be made available after a week of action and will be the same as the Market Watch tools for NBA and NFL.
- MLB Lineups Page – The MLB Lineups page has lineup releases for all MLB games each and every day. These are provided by RotoWire and are refreshed every 5 minutes. Player salaries and projections are visible next to player names for Incentives users for each DFS site as well.
- MLB Splits Page – All batter splits (BvP, vs. L, vs. R, home, road, day and night) are available on this page. Our feed updates daily and is the best place to find the top splits.
MLB 2013 Incentives Only Tools
The tools below (including Grind Down+) are site specific and can only be viewed with RotoGrinders Incentives for each daily fantasy site.
- MLB Player Projections – Site specific projections every day of the MLB season. These are sorted by value (site salary/projected points) and position daily.
- MLB Bargain Bin Ballers – Site-by-site hand picked “bargain” plays each day. The same experts who do the Grind Down+ for each MLB site will also go through and list all dirt cheap, upside plays daily.
The MLB Grind Down+ (Incentives Only)
- MLB Grind Down+ – The evolution of the Grind Down continues as we will release the Grind Down+ templates for MLB as well. Below is a sample of what the Grind Down+ for MLB will consist of each day for each of the 7 daily fantasy sites we offer incentives for.
Notes:
1) Each Grind Down+ will include 2 stud starting pitcher plays and 2 value starting pitcher plays daily.
2) There will be four tiers of batters for each site (dependent on site pricing). Each tier will consist of four daily plays within that salary tier.
These will be posted for Opening Day (April 1st) by the end of the day today
New Article Series
In addition to the awesome, new tools listed above, we will be adding a few new columns to the MLB mix. Here’s what you should be on the look-out for:
- MLB Grind Down by Notorious and JackAndSoda
- Daily Pitcher Chart by Paul Sporer
- Daily Hitter Charts by Varncass
- And of course, MLB Daily Plays by Notorious, headChopper, JMBWngFn, and BOwens1984
We hope you enjoy and are very excited to hear the feedback. Please respond with any comments and thoughts in the thread stickied in our forums! Good luck this MLB season Grinders!