Daily Research Buttons FAQ
The Daily Research Buttons were built around two central goals.
1. To make your lineup decisions more efficient every day.
2. To help win you CASH
We want to keep our members in the loop in terms of what we are working on next! So at the end of the FAQ here we have included a list of Daily Research options that are being worked on as we speak and will be released shortly!
Certain daily research buttons are site-specific, meaning the data found in them is based on the player salary feeds, scoring and roster formats for a specific daily fantasy sports site. You can sort through the available Daily Research buttons by site or sport.
The current daily fantasy sites with specific Daily Research buttons offered are:
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MLB Daily Research Buttons
Splits Button
The MLB Splits button is your one stop shop for all batter splits each day. It is comprised of 2011 and 2012 stats. Splits are a great way to see how every hitter does in various situations. The button takes you to our Splits Page where you can access batter splits in four different categories:
- BvP Splits – These splits breakdown how each hitter does against that day’s opposing Starting Pitcher. Data is taken from the past two years of statistics.
- Lefty and Righty Splits – These show how each hitter has done over the past two seasons against both left-handed and right-handed pitching individually.
- Home and Away Splits – Here you can see how each batter performs in his home ballpark vs. when he travels on the road.
- Day and Night Splits – Use these splits to see how each batter plays during day games versus when playing at night.
All of the splits are meant to help you decide which hitters have favorable matchups each night and might be good plays for your daily fantasy league.
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Daily Lineups, Weather and Salary
This button will bring you to our lineups page for the specific site that you have selected. Once on the lineups page you will be able to see:
- Daily lineups for each MLB team as soon as they are released along with our own RotoGrinders projections for each player.
- The salary for each player based on the daily fantasy site you chose earlier as well as their fielding position.
- Batter Handedness(left or right) for each hitter in a lineup.
- Starting Pitcher projections, handedness and salaries for each site.
- Weather reports from each home stadium that day. These consist of a four-hour time span starting one hour before the game starts and ending three hours after the expected start time.
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Player Projections Page
This page is only available for viewing by RotoGrinders Incentives members for each daily fantasy site. Check out how our incentives programs work for each site, here
Our player projections page for MLB is where you can find projections for both batters and pitchers based on our own exclusive RotoGrinders formula. Our formula runs every night to fit the projections to that day’s statistics. Variables used in calculating the batter projections for MLB include batter vs. pitcher splits, splits against LHP and RHP, recent performance, and career as well as seasonal stats.
The projections page is broken down by position. You can view projections for each individual position. You can also choose which daily fantasy site you want to view the projections for. The projections change based on the scoring system for each site. Once you’ve decided on a position to look at, you can sort the projections by five categories.
- Player Name
- Game(Team)
- Salary(for the given site)
- Projected Points – This can be based on the scoring system for each different daily fantasy site
- $/point – This figure shows you how much value each player offers. Players with lower $/point numbers offer better value while players with higher $/point figures offer poor value.
Legend for Projections Pages - A yellow background indicates players that are not everyday starters.
- A red background indicates players that have already played in today’s games.
- (P) Probable | (O) Out | (Q) Questionable | (D)Disabled List | (GTD) Game-Time Decision
For more information on how we calculate our Projections, check out our Projections FAQ.
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Top Values
This page is only available for viewing by RotoGrinders Incentives members for each daily fantasy site. Check out how our incentives programs work for each site, here
This button takes players to the top values based on the given daily fantasy site you have chosen. These ‘top value’ plays are based on the $/point figures you find on the Player Projections page. They can be used to see which players might be underpriced on a certain daily fantasy site but have a good match up for that day.
The Value Rating column on the Top Values page shows you how much a player is projected to outperform his salary on a given site. A Value Rating of 0% implies that a player should score exactly as many points as would fit his salary. A negative Value Rating implies that a player is projected to under perform his salary for a given site.
Formula for Value Rating Value Rating = (Proj. Pts. / Avg. Pts. at Position) – (Salary / Avg. Salary at Position)
You can sort the Top Values for each site based on Player Name, Salary, $/point, Value Rating, and Projected Points.
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PvB Button
The PvB Button stands for Pitcher vs. Batter statistics. While one might use batter vs. pitcher splits to decide which hitters have favorable match ups each day, the PvB figures work in the opposite direction. These statistics show you which pitchers have favorable match ups each day.
The PvB figures are composed of the combined batter vs. pitcher statistics of all hitters on the opposing team. For example, if Jon Lester is facing the Yankees and Robinson Cano is 3-4 in his career with a HR off of Lester and Mark Teixeira is 0-8 in his career against Lester then the combined PvB numbers for Jon Lester would be 3-12 with 1 HR and 1 2B allowed.
These statistics are updated each day based on the starting pitchers for that day and can help you find which aces and fantasy sleepers might be looming for that day. They are sorted by Batting-Average against daily. Finding quality starting pitching every day is a key to winning in daily fantasy baseball and the PvB page works to make that job a little bit easier.
LEGEND: - ABA – AT BATS AGAINST
- HA – HITS ALLOWED
- 2BA – DOUBLES ALLOWED
- 3BA – TRIPLES ALLOWED
- HRA – HOME RUNS ALLOWED
- BBA – WALKS ALLOWED
- KA – STRIKEOUTS AGAINST
- K/AB – STRIKEOUTS PER AB AGAINST
- OBPA – ON BASE PERCENTAGE AGAINST
- OPSA – ON BASE PLUS SLUGGING AGAINST
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Today’s Projected Lineup
Today’s Projected Lineup is the best combination of players, based on our projections, that can be made on each website, each day. Today’s Projected Lineup takes the lineup formats and the player salary feeds from each daily fantasy site and makes an ‘optimal’ projected lineup for that day and site.
These Projected Optimal Lineups are available for both leagues that start with day games and leagues that only allow players from the night games to be selected. Besides allowing you to see what our best projected lineup is for early and late games, this also allows you to see multiple permutations of our optimal lineup on each daily fantasy site.
NOTE: These Projected Lineups are not intended to be directly used on a given daily fantasy site. They are a barometer of which players have quality value for that day and fit the salary cap restrictions but do not take other strategical factors into account when calculating.
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The Cheat Sheet: Upcoming Targets
The Cheat Sheet is a homegrown RotoGrinders idea that is put out weekly by our very own Bowens1984. The key purpose of the cheat sheet is to be your quick reference guide to picking your lineup and to save you time. The figures shown on the cheat sheet are broken down twofold.
1. The first goal is to highlight players that do exceptionally well in three different split statistics categories. Hitters with an OPS of .950 or higher and a batting average of .350 or higher in any of the following three split statistic categories are put on the first chart on the “Cheat Sheet” page.
OPS > .950 and BA > .350 WHEN:
- Playing at home
- Playing against a right-handed starting pitcher.
- Playing against a left handed starting pitcher.
The first chart you see breaks down each player, by team, who has numbers that qualify into one of the three above categories.
2. The second chart available on the “Cheat Sheet” targets the best hitters available for each day that week based on high quality split statistics for that game. Broken down by day, each hitter is listed followed by a reason for why they are a good pick for that day as well as the opposing starting pitcher they are expected to face.
The categories used for defining a hitter as a ‘target’ are good splits when in any of the same situations used for the first table on the cheat sheet(listed above.)
The Cheat Sheet is meant to give you a base of players to build your lineup around, and while they might not all be affordable on one roster, you will at least start with a few great options each day!
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Vegas Odds and Lines
The Vegas Odds and Lines Page is a great tool for selecting both hitters and pitchers on a daily basis. It is broken up each day by match-up, the Vegas money line for a favorite and an underdog in each game, as well as the Vegas Over/Under for projected runs scored in each game. The page is also sorted by the Over/Under projected runs scored line in order of most projected runs to least.
There are three main ways that using the Vegas Odds Page can help you in daily fantasy baseball:
1. Hitters – Seeing which games are projected to be high scoring can help you see where there might be increased value when selecting your batters. It can also help with deciding when a stack might be useful or when a team stack should be avoided(when low run totals are projected.)
2. Starting Pitchers – Finding games that are projected to have low run totals can be a useful tool in selecting a starting pitcher. You can also select starting pitchers based on whether or not his team is favored to win a game by using the money line, making you more likely to pick up the bonus points from a Win.
3. Relief Pitchers – Games where the spread is close can help you decide which closer has a decent shot at picking up the save. If a time is slightly favored, their closer might be a good choice as the odds-makers are projecting a close ballgame where a closer would be needed. Instead of spinning the “wheel of closers” you can make an intelligent, informed decision each day.
The money line is a positive or negative value assigned to each team playing on a given day and separates the favorites from the underdogs. There is a money line associated with all of these figures that shows which is favored. For example with a spread that looks as follows:
Red Sox -130
Yankees +120
The Red Sox are favored, as signified by the (-) negative denotation. The Yankees are the underdogs as signified by the (+) denotation. The -130 for the Red Sox means that you can bet $130 on the favored team in order to win $100. Thus, the higher the value above -100(i.e -150,-160) the more favored that team is. The +120 for the Yankees means that you can bet $100 to win $120 on the underdog. The higher the value over +100 is(i.e 150,160) the less likely they are to win, as predicted by the odds-makers.
The money line for over/under and hits+runs+errors is the same. If a game has an O/U line of 8 runs and the money line on the O(over) is -110 then you can expect that the odds-makers are favoring a high scoring game above the 8 run line.
NOTES: - Games are sorted in order of highest Over/Under total to lowest.
- O/U Totals in bold are for games over 9.5 projected runs.
- An asterisk(*) next to a pitcher’s name denotes a left-handed starting pitcher.
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Ballpark Factors
The Ballpark Factors button is a useful tool for understanding which parks offer the best chance for left or right-handed batters to hit a home run. The page is broken down by ballpark factors for right-handed hitters in the top chart and left-handed hitters in the bottom chart. Each chart is sorted by home runs per at bat at that ballpark divided by the league average for all ballparks in home runs per at bat. A higher percentage implies a better ballpark for a lefty or righty to hit home runs in.
NOTE: All stadium data is collected from the 2001-2012 seasons combined.
Each chart also lists the ballpark rank, based on the home-runs per at bat statistic, along with the number of games played at that park since 2001 and the home runs hit their during that time. Further, the right-handed chart also shows the ballpark rating for left-handed hitters in the far right two columns and vice-versa.
Legend for Lefty/Righty Ballpark Charts: - Rating = (Ballpark HR per AB) / (League Avg. Ballpark HR per AB)
- Green = 1.25 or higher
- Blue = 1.10 to 1.24
- Black = 0.90 to 1.09
- Orange = 0.75 to 0.89
- Red = Below 0.75
- G – Games in sample
- AB – At Bats in sample
- HR – Home Runs in Sample
- HR/AB – Home Runs / At Bats
The final chart shown on the Ballpark Factors page is the “Park Factor” ranking for each ballpark and is independent of specific left-handed or right-handed hitter data. Park Factor compares the rate of stats at home vs. the rate of stats on the road for home runs, runs, hits, doubles and triples. A rate higher than 1.000 favors the hitter. Below 1.000 favors the pitcher. Teams with home games in multiple stadiums list aggregate Park Factors.
Legend for ‘Park Factor’ Chart - Park Factor: ((homeHRS + homeHRA)/(homeG)) / ((roadHRS + roadHRA)/(roadG))
- homeHRS: Home Runs scored at home
- homeHRA: Home Runs allowed at home
- homeG: Home games
- roadHRS: Home Runs scored on the road
- roadHRA: Home Runs allowed on the road
- roadG: Road games
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All Freerolls
The “All Freerolls” button is there to show you which freerolls, whether daily or not, are available on every daily fantasy site. On the left, the freerolls specifically for the site you are looking at for Daily Research are shown. On the right is a list of all upcoming freerolls across all daily fantasy sites. The freerolls listed include exclusive RotoGrinders members only freerolls, which are described further in the next section. At the bottom of each site’s freeroll page is a brief description of that sites philosophy on freerolls and how often they come along.
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Incentives Freerolls
This page is only available for viewing by RotoGrinders Incentives members for each daily fantasy site. Check out how our incentives programs work for each site, here
The exclusive RotoGrinders incentives freerolls are available through FanDuel, DailyJoust, DraftDay and FantasyFeud. All of these sites will show an “Incentives Freerolls” button on their Daily Research drop down. You can access incentives by signing up to any of these sites through our RotoGrinders links. You will receive access to the Daily Research buttons above described as only available for RG Incentives Members as well as:
- FanDuel: Sign up for a 40% Deposit Bonus and access to an RG Incentives Members Only $300 Monthly Freeroll. First place pays $100 and top ten are paid overall!
- DailyJoust: Sign up for a 40% Deposit Bonus and access to an exclusive RG Incentives Members Only $300 Monthly Freeroll. First place pays $100 and top ten are paid overall!
- DraftDay: Sign up for a 20 % Deposit Bonus and access to the monthly RG Incentives Members Only $300 Freeroll. First place pays $100 and top ten are paid overall!
- FantasyFeud: Sign up through our FantasyFeud links and use recruiting code Grinders30 for a 30% bonus up to $150 or use recruiting code Grinders for a 50% bonus up to $50. You will also have a chance to play your way into a $400 small player pool freeroll that takes place every two months. The 30 Grinders who play in the most games with a $5 buy-in or more get access to this freeroll that pays out $200 to first place!
For information on all of our incentives programs and what they have to offer, click here.
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Strategy Vault
“The RotoGrinders Strategy Vault consolidates the best daily fantasy strategy articles, discussions, and management tips posted on RotoGrinders into one convenient location. Basically, it’s the best of the best for articles, discussions, interviews and other content that has been posted on RotoGrinders since we went live in July 2010. Just click on a link below to jump to that strategy section!”
Strategy Topics:
- Bankroll Management
- The Basics
- Sport-Specific Strategy
- NFL
- MLB
- NBA
- NHL
- Specific Game Format Strategy
- GPP/Large-Field
- 50-50s/Double-Ups
- Super Joust
- Solo Contests
- General & Advanced Strategy
- Lifestyle
- Legality
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