Good morning Army! I’m usually focused on NASCAR on the weekends, but I’m assisting with some MLB today. I usually have this chart in my slack channel during the week, so some of you will already be familiar with its format. For those of you that aren’t, no need to worry; I’ll go over everything below. The idea of my model is to help find pitchers to take for both cash/tournaments and to help identify which pitchers to attack with stacks. There are a lot of games today, so let’s get to it!
Overview
A pitcher’s KSCORE is Chop’s metric that combines the pitcher’s strikeout rate with their opponent’s strikeout rate. In a nutshell, it’s telling you what sort of strikeout potential there is. The bare minimum I will take is 450, with 500+ being ideal. As you can see, there are slim pickings today for that. VKSCORE is that metric combined with Vegas odds to give a general idea of what Vegas thinks of that pitcher’s chances to have a successful game. I generally like to have this number at least 100 points higher, as that shows they are a heavy favorite
The FD and DK VAL metric is showing how high of a VKSCORE they are getting compared to how low their salary is. A higher number is better. This is more to help find value pitchers, as the aces (like Kershaw) will never have a very high number due to their high salary.
Finally, the CARNAGE rating is my own home-grown metric that basically takes everything into consideration to get an idea of how much offensive firepower can be expected. It’s looking at how the pitcher has been doing compared to the batters of the opposing team, while also including neutral factors like what ballpark they are playing in. For pitchers, you want a lower number. For batters (stacks), you want something higher.
This is literally a number on a scale of 0 to 10, as I wanted something quick and easy to look at to get a general idea of where I want to go. One thing it does NOT take into account, however, is Vegas odds/lines. This number is 100% generated by player data only, so there are no outside influences or bias that would throw things off.
NOTE: since it’s still very early in the season, all of the data is spring training + what we’ve had so far in the regular season. Because of this, the CARNAGE ratings are a lot lower than they will be in a few weeks, but they can still be compared to one another. As we get more games, these numbers should normalize and most slates should see numbers between around 3 and 6.
There are a few ways to interpret the results, so I’ll go over the ones that probably look weird. Let’s dig into the pitchers first, and stacks second.
Cash pitchers
For cash pitchers, I like seeing big KSCOREs and low implied totals. Baseball is volatile, so I believe the way to go is to make the best choices over the course of the season and let the variance even itself out over time. That means once in a while your ace will get blown up, but so long as we’re practicing proper bankroll and utilizing cash ladders, there will be plenty of good days to outweigh the bad ones.
Clayton Kershaw – We pretty much have to start here, don’t we? Kershaw is the ace of the day and he gets a pitcher-friendly park to work at. While Vegas does have the Giants only implied to score 3 runs, looking at their BvP tells me that they aren’t as scared of him as other teams might be. I don’t expect them to blow him up by any means, but this is baseball and anything can happen. If you take him in cash, I’d recommend taking at least a couple Giants stacks to hedge your cash lineups in case things get crazy.
Charlie Morton – While his KSCORE doesn’t quite hit 500, it’s close enough because his VKSCORE looks great and the Padres shouldn’t give him a whole lot of trouble. They have very few at-bats against Morton, which is something I love seeing.
Eduardo Rodriguez – E-Rod is one of the exceptions to the rule today. Since he hasn’t pitched much yet in 2018, I had to use 2017 numbers for his calculations. That means his CARNAGE score is close to what it would be a month or so from now in the same matchup, which is a very nice number. Like Morton, there’s very limited BvP against him today, and he can rack up strikeouts in a hurry.
Luke Weaver – He’s a bit cheaper than he probably should be and makes a great budget/SP2 option today. The D’Backs have hardly ever seen him and only have a 3.xx implied run total. They aren’t as scary on the road, so Weaver could have a decent outing today.
GPP pitchers
Jordan Montgomery & Mike Wright – While their KSCOREs are nice, we have two teams with plenty of offensive firepower that have a combined 9.3 runs scored in these last three games against each other. That could very well continue today, so I can’t recommend either one of these guys in cash today. Feel free to give them a whirl in GPP, though.
Andrew Kittredge – Vegas doesn’t like his chances, and they’re probably right…but his CARNAGE rating is low not because of a lack of any significant spring training data for him, but because the Red Sox have posted below average offensive numbers so far this year. I can only recommend very limited exposure to him, but if those Boston bats are sleeping today, he could return excellent value as an SP2 on DraftKings. Chances are he doesn’t have a great day though, so do not go crazy on him.
Jameson Taillon – A decent option with Vegas support, but there is some BvP experience against him so I’m not as in love with him (for cash) as I would be the other choices listed earlier. Still, hard to go wrong here, as he is a good pitcher with a nice ceiling.
Reynaldo Lopez – Another victim of not-so-great spring training data, Lopez looked just fine in his season debut and that could carry over into today. He’s a righty who gets to see 6 right-handed batters with a 3.xx implied run total, which makes him a nice value option if he repeats his last performance.
GPP Stacks
This is where the fun is! See all those lovely yellow/red CARNAGE and VKSCORE numbers? That’s where I recommend attacking. I recommend doing 5/2/1 stacks on DraftKings and 4/3/1 stacks on FanDuel.
Tigers – high carnage and a 5.19 SIERA.
Angels – super low KSCORE, 4.76 SIERA, and 5+ IRT.
Dodgers – 5.32 SIERA and their ace is on the hill…I would think they’d want to give him a comfortable lead!
Red Sox – as talked about earlier, Vegas thinks they will blow up Kittredge, even if his CARNAGE isn’t as bad as I would want. Still, they’re worth stacking in a few lineups.
Pirates 5.00 SIERA and a crappy KSCORE. Low implied total, which means they will likely be lower owned. Time to strike!
Blue Jays – Hamels had a fantastic game his last outing (grumble grumble), so people probably won’t attack him so soon. I think you can though, as he still has a fairly high SIERA and there’s plenty of BvP for the Jays. They are striking out a fair share though, but that’s why this is a GPP stack and not a cash play.
That’ll do for now. I’ll be in slack today, but mostly doing NASCAR stuff. Be sure to check out the other content posted today, such as painting the black and the dong detector. Don’t forget to also keep an eye on the weather in #dfs-weather on Slack. Good luck!
