Introduction to Pitcher Stats in Daily Fantasy Baseball
Every day when I sit down to start building my DFS lineups, I begin by finding my starting pitcher for the day. The reason has nothing to do with the salaries or expected points; it is because pitching is far more predictable on a day-to-day basis than hitting. The key thing to note is that goes for bad pitching as well as good pitching.
When I start to look at what hitters to use in my daily lineup, I begin the same way: I analyze the pitchers. I have full charts on every pitcher for the day before I even begin to think about what specific bats I will be using.
If you have been playing DFS for a while, you may have used some similar strategy, whether looking at Vegas lines to find projected high-scoring teams, making a list of pitchers with high ERAs, or those with simply a reputation or track record of poor pitching. But, where the real analysis comes in is to realize that not all bad pitchers are created equal. It is not a simple matter of what pitcher will give up the most runs or the most DFS points, but in what manner is he going to give up those points?
Throughout this course, we’re going to look at all the different metrics to measure a pitcher’s true skill level, what types of hitters to use against those pitchers, and in what type of contests you should use them. Some pitchers have high strikeout rates but give up home runs while some pitch to contact and have high ground ball rates. There are many different stats available to use, and we’ll break them down along with a look at how each affects DFS scoring and which to use in cash games versus tournaments.
All of a pitcher’s skills are intertwined and no one metric can be fully understood without looking at it alongside his full skill set. Let’s start with a bird’s eye view of the numbers you need to know to understand how to attack a pitcher before we begin breaking them down individually.
Strikeout Rate
If I could only see one number to gauge a pitcher, it would be his strikeout rate. Strikeout percentage is simply the percentage of all plate appearances that end in a strikeout. Using hitters against pitchers with low strikeout rates is one of my core cash game strategies. If you did nothing except avoid all pitchers with strikeout rates of 25 percent or lower and only play hitters against pitchers under 15 percent you would be dramatically more successful overnight.
Walk Rate
Walk rate, the percentage of batters that a pitcher walks, is a little bit more difficult to understand how to use for DFS. There are certain types of hitters that I want to use against high-walk pitchers, but in other cases I would prefer the pitcher have better control and keep his pitches in the strike zone. It is an underappreciated statistic in DFS, and learning to use it properly will give you an edge that a lot of people ignore.
Ground Ball/Fly Ball Ratio
Knowing what kind of hits a pitcher allows is key to knowing what type of hitter to use against him and in what types of contests. Ground ball to fly ball ratios are very consistent numbers from year-to-year, and while they are consistent for hitters, they are even more stable for pitchers. In a nutshell, ground balls go for hits much more often than fly balls, but, of course, home runs come from fly balls.
Home Run to Fly Ball Ratio and BABIP
Home run to fly ball ratio is the ratio of home runs hit for every fly ball allowed. BABIP is how often a ball in the field of play goes for a hit. It is important and somewhat counter-intuitive to understand which results are under a pitcher’s control and which ones are random. While pitchers have control over their strikeouts, walks, and whether the ball is hit on the ground or in the air, after a ball is hit into the field of play it is basically out of his control what happens. Learning to embrace the randomness is a big step towards DFS success.
Platoon Splits
It is common knowledge that a majority of Major League hitters perform better against pitchers of opposite handedness and that pitchers perform better against hitters of the same handedness. But this is a huge over-simplification, and you should always look at each case individually as some players have reverse splits or none at all. The next step is looking at each of a pitcher’s different metrics against the handedness of a hitter. A pitcher may struggle giving up home runs to right-handed batters, but also have a higher strikeout rate, which would cause him to be targeted only in certain types of contests and avoided in others.
ERA vs. ERA Estimators
It is tempting to try and find a single metric to glance at to see a pitcher’s true ability. Most DFS players learn quickly that ERA is not a good gauge of a pitcher. In fact, it is one of the least consistent and predictive stats you can find. There are several different versions of “ERA estimators” such as FIP, xFIP and SIERA which do a much better job of capturing what a pitcher’s true skill level is. They all have slightly different formulas, but essentially they even out a pitcher’s luck factors to estimate what his ERA would have been with league average BABIP, home run to fly ball ratio and fielding.
From these basic building blocks, you can learn everything you need to know about finding which pitchers to play against in DFS. Because pitching is so much more predictable than hitting, I believe the best way to construct your daily lineups is to find:
- 1) Which pitchers to play against
- 2) In which manner are those pitchers likely to allow points
- 3) What type of hitters to play against them
- 4) Which of those matchups are cash game versus tournament plays
- 5) Lastly, finding the hitters that fit those matchup criteria
Finding the actual hitters is the last and honestly least important step in my lineup building. It’s all about the pitchers.