MLB DFS: Do Walks Matter?
In my last article I looked into how a hitter’s contact rate plays into his success ratio in DFS. I’m going to look into the other side of a hitter’s plate discipline, walks. Walks are a difficult thing to figure how to value in DFS. On one hand, you don’t really want a guy to walk, because that limits your chances at extra base hits and RBI. On the other hand, unlike in season long leagues, walks in DFS do you give you points, plus getting on base gives you the possibility of coming around to score.
As a season long fantasy player, I have always looked at walks to help determine a hitter’s skill level, and all other things being equal, I like a player who walks because it shows they have good control of the strike zone. If you consistently swing at good pitches and lay off bad pitches, you are going to have more success than just blindly swinging at whatever pitch you feel like. But, excessive walks from a middle of the order hitter also leads to low RBI totals, Joey Votto being the test case for this over the past few seasons. I’m going to break down FanDuel points between players with similar skill sets but different walk rates to try and figure what effect walks have on DFS scoring.
The league average walk rate in 2014 was 7.6%. An important thing to note is that power hitters generally have a higher walk rate along with a higher strikeout rate, while slap hitters and speedsters usually have lower walk rates to go along with lower strikeout rates. Let’s take a look at the hitters with the best and worst walk rates in 2014:
Highest walk rates for hitters with over 400 PA (strikeout rate in parenthesis):
Carlos Santana 17.1% (18.8%), Mike Napoli 15.6% (26.6%), Jose Bautista 15.5% (14.3%), Ike Davis 14.8% (18.3%), Giancarlo Stanton 14.7% (26.6%), Adam LaRoche 14.0% (18.4%), Adam Dunn 13.9% (31.1%), Matt Carpenter 13.4% (15.7%), Paul Goldschmidt 13.4% (23.0%), Alex Avila 13.3% (33.0%)
Lowest walk rates for hitters with over 400 PA (strikeout rate in parenthesis):
Ben Revere 2.1% (7.8%), Jonathan Schoop 2.7% (25.4%), Adam Jones 2.8% (19.5%), Mike Zunino 3.6% (33.2%), Salvador Perez 3.6% (14.0%), Alexei Ramirez 3.7% (12.3%), Alcides Escobar 3.7% (13.4%), Juan Uribe 3.7% (19.1%), Chris Johnson 3.8% (26.0%), Torii Hunter 3.9% (15.2%)
Our old friend Mike Zunino is back another “worst of” list, reinforcing what we learned about his lack of DFS consistency in the contact rate article. Seeing another catcher with an equally high 33% strikeout rate, but appearing on the highest walk rate list, Alex Avila, makes for a good test case to break down what a walk rate might do to a players point output. I’ll look at the two catchers side-by-side, but let’s find some more exciting players to break down first.
A couple names that jump out from the two lists are Carlos Santana and Adam Jones. They have a very similar strikeout rate and had similar total DFS points in 2014. Jones scored 413 FanDuel points in 160 games, Santana had 401 FanDuel points in 152 games. When you line them up side by side and look at their metrics, the only glaring difference between the two is the walk rate. With home runs being so crucial to upside DFS scoring, it is important to point out that even their HR rates were close enough to not skew this study. Jones hit 29 HR with a 15.8% HR/FB%, while Santana hit 27 HR with a 16.1% HR/FB%. Let’s break down their 2014 seasons to see how this walk rate may have affected their DFS point outputs.
With FanDuel scoring, Adam Jones scored 0 or negative points in 43 games, 0.25-4.75 points in 78 games and 5+ points in 39 games.
Carlos Santana scored 0 or negative points in 32 games, 0.25-4.75 points in 90 games and 5+ points in 30 games.
It is very interesting to me that these numbers show the same data that my previous look at contact rate showed. The high contact hitters avoided negative days while piling up more low scoring days than the hitters who struck out more being at risk for negative days, but with more upside. The walks in these two cases appear to have the same effect. But, let me take this walk rate data a step further, this was really eye opening to me and it feels like a valuable bit of information.
I looked at all of “(player-popup #carlos-santana)Carlos Santana”:/players/carlos-santana-10261’s games where he scored 0+ points and found that 30 of those games would have been a negative if it were not for getting a walk. He had a large number of games with an 0-3 or 0-4, but salvaged it with a walk, and in some cases ended up scoring as well.
Adam Jones had just seven games all season that would have been a negative, but getting a walk boosted him above 0.
Now, of course, 1 point is still just 1 point regardless of whether it brings your score from -0.50 to +0.50 or from 6.50-7.50, but in cash games, I always want to find every point I can. Over the course of a season, if you can find a way to add 1 point here and 1 point there over thousands of contests, these are the kind of small edges that can make a difference.
These numbers are more in favor of the walks than I expected to see, so let’s take a look at Alex Avila vs Mike Zunino, whose main difference in skill set is also a drastically different walk rate and see if the numbers hold up. As I pointed out in the contact rate article, Zunino is also a high fly ball hitter, which makes him more boom or bust . Avila scored 217 FanDuel points in 124 games, Zunino scored 229 points in 131 games.
Mike Zunino scored 0 or negative points 52 times. He scored 0.25-4.75 points in 53 games. He scored 5 or more points 26 times.
Alex Avila scored 0 or negative points 32 times, 0.25-4.75 points in 76 games, and 5 or more points 16 times.
Again, we see the same thing as with the Adam Jones-Carlos Santana comparison. The higher walk rate player had a much lower rate of negative scores. I also found the same data when I looked at the number of games “saved” from being a negative by virtue of a walk. Avila had 20 games of 0+ points that would have been a negative score if not for a walk. Zunino had just 6 such games. Through two test cases, the higher walk rate players are much more consistently giving you a positive score, the lower walk rate players have more negative games, as well as more 5+ point games.
Here’s what is curious about this data vs what I thought we might see; of course Carlos Santana gets a lot of 1 points here and there on walks, but because he walks more, that also means Adam Jones will get more hits. And, since they had similar numbers in extra base hits, Jones is just getting more singles than Santana, which are worth the same 1 point as Santana’s walks. So, shouldn’t they come close to evening out? Looking back at 2014, Adam Jones hit 120 singles, while Santana hit just 73 singles. That’s a difference of 47 singles, or 47 FanDuel points. The raw number of walks were 113 for Santana to just 19 for Jones. That is a difference of 94 walks, or 94 FanDuel points. Aha! Of course, as I’m looking at this data it becomes clear. Jones swings more, therefore he hits more, BUT, the vast majority of balls hit become outs. Every single time Santana looks at ball four, he gets a walk. Every time. So yes, Jones gets more hits, but he also gets more outs. A walk is not only worth a positive point, it also takes away an at bat that would count as a -0.25 on FanDuel. Breaking down their 2014 seasons further we find that Carlos Santana got either a hit or walk in 36% of his plate appearances. Jones, despite getting far more hits, only had a hit or walk in 29% of his plate appearances.
When Jones swings at what would be ball four, sometimes is becomes a hit, but most of the time, it’s an out. I believe this is probably the reason for Jones having more 5+ point games as well. As an example, if there are runners on 2nd and 3rd and Adam Jones is at the plate, the pitcher is unlikely to give him a good pitch to hit. He is going to see pitches just outside the zone. And, because it is his style, he is going to swing at those pitches. Most of the time, he is going to either strike out or make weak contact for an out. But, when he hits it well, he gets a hit plus 2 RBI. Besides hitting a HR, that is how you pile up high scoring days in DFS. Carlos Santana, on the other hand, in the same situation is going to be pitched around as well. But, he is not going to swing at the pitch out of the zone, he’s going to take the walk. That walk is worth 1 point every time, but he is never going to get the 2 RBI that Jones just got. This leads to exactly what the data shows; more consistently scoring a small number of points, but having less high scoring days.
Another way walks can be exploited in DFS is by bringing the opposing pitcher into the equation. A great home run hitter can hit a homer off of any pitcher any day, just as a solid contact hitter can get hits off of even the best pitchers. But, even if a guy had a 90% walk rate, when he’s facing a pitcher that just doesn’t throw balls, there’s nothing he can do, you can’t walk on strikes. But on the flip side, a guy with a consistently high walk rate facing a pitcher with a high walk rate should have a higher probability of getting a point than any other situation you can find. A high contact hitter vs a low strikeout pitcher has a high chance of making contact, but still has a relatively low rate of success, as most balls hit become outs. A pitcher who walks a lot of hitters against a hitter who is is willing to take walks seems like a good recipe for success. Going back to the Adam Jones-Carlos Santana comparison, I would look to play Carlos Santana against a pitcher like CJ Wilson who traditionally walks around 4 batters per 9 innings. I would be less likely to play Jones against Wilson, as I’m worried he’d swing at a lot of those pitches out of the zone. But, a pitcher like Phil Hughes who is always in the strike zone would be a better matchup for Jones, since I know he’s going to be swinging, I’d rather have him swinging at strikes.
As I always say, there are lots of different ways to go about building lineups and an endless array of stats to analyze. The choice of which data you end up using in your daily analysis is up to you, but the more you understand about what makes players who they are, the better chance you have at success.