Welcome to the Shark Autopsy Report MLB Edition! Over the course of the remainder of the MLB season this article will deconstruct winning FanDuel lineups of contests where the dark waters of GPP contests are ripe with sharks. Navigating these waters where the sharks smell blood in the water is not easy, but the DFSArmy have you covered, providing you with the essential daily tools to help our VIPs turn into sharks! The article will be released twice weekly, with each day’s article looking at either single entry or multi-entry GPP contests. Each contest requires a different lineup construction.
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The Top 10
The Winning Lineup & Trip To WFBC
The illustrious WFBC Qualifier, DFS players try every year to qualify for the FanDuel WFBC’s coveted 100 spots for a chance to claim their place on top of the DFS Mountain as the World Champion and $300K top prize. Every year there are only two World Fantasy Baseball Champions, one on FanDuel and the other on DraftKings. 667 entrants competed for a shot to claim first place and the opportunity to travel to San Diego and compete against 100 competitors for the $300K top prize. These qualifiers have an extremely top heavy payout structure, and only pay out the top 9% of the entrants.
The lineup above was the winner of the $1.5M WFBC Qualifier # 47 contest from Friday night. If you look at the top 10 finishers, Fantasy Cruncher’s dannypickem had two entries finish in the top 3. In his first place finishing lineup, dannypickem rolled with 22% owned James Paxton as his pitcher. Paxton was not the chalkiest pitcher of the night that was split between Ross Stripling at 27.7% and Max Scherzer at 27.3%. According to all of the DFS touts on Friday, Max Scherzer was in an absolutely amazing spot against a bare bones Miami Marlins lineup. Ross Stripling was also in a highly favorable spot versus the 3rd highest ranked K-Rate (26.7%) team in MLB in San Diego Padres with. I will go over this in the pitching section, but one could conclude that Stripling was in a far better spot than Scherzer, as the Marlins K-Rate is a middling ranked 14th in MLB.
Dissecting Pitching
The pitchers in the Top 10 lineups consisted of James Paxton in 4 lineups, Ross Stripling in 5 lineups and Patrick Corbin in 1 lineup. Before I breakdown these 3 pitchers further, I want to breakdown the second chalkiest pitcher in the Qualifier, Max Scherzer. Max Scherzer carried a DFSA grade of 99.29, in fact the pitchers in the top 10 lineups carried DFSA grades of 85.23 for Paxton (5th Highest Grade), 81.20 for Corbin (6th Highest Grade) and 79.71 for Stripling (7th Highest Grade).
First off I want to say is that Max Scherzer is an Elite pitcher and most nights when he toes the rubber he is the top pitcher on the slate, and that is why variance is incredibly prevalent in MLB. Let’s take a look at Max Scherzer the DFS touts darling for Friday night and look into why the matchup may have led to his demise on Friday night:
Max Scherzer’s stats over the season so far have been dominant, but on the road he carries more vulnerabilities than he does at home, especially versus Left Handed Bats (LHB). On the road versus at home Scherzer’s K-rate against LHBs drops from 35.5% to 33.7%, wOBA increases from 0.248 to 0.297, ISO increases from 0.186 to 0.190, FB% increases from 57.1% to 58.3% and HC% increases an astounding 8.7% from 23.3% to 32%. These increases may not seem like a lot, but for a pitcher as elite as Scherzer is, these increases show kinks in his armor.
Now let’s take a look at Paxton and Stripling who finished as the top two scoring pitchers on the night, finishing with 61 and 60 FD PTS respectively. Both Stripling and Paxton were pitching in their home parks.
In the 2018 season, Stripling has performed quite well, especially since the Dodgers moved him into a starting role with all of the injuries their starting pitching staff has endured this season. At home, Stripling boasts a 28.6% K-rate, ISO of 0.071, BB-rate of 0%, and HC% of 15.0% against LHBs, which is quite impressive noting that in baseball platoon hitters are supposed to have an advantage. That’s not the case here for Stripling! San Diego Padres have been down right putrid in all facets of hitting in the 2018 season, ranking in the bottom four of all of MLB in the main hitting categories shown below.
In the 2018 season, Paxton’s numbers at home are quite pedestrian, especially versus LHBs. The Twins brought to Safeco Field, LHBs of Rosario, Eduardo Escobar, Max Kepler, Robbie Grossman, and Ehire Adrianza. Don’t get me wrong, Rosario and Escobar are good LHBs and Kepler has a 45.8% HC% versus RHPs on the road, but these hitters don’t scream stay away. Can they go off on any night, absolutely! But, Paxton was dominant only suffering a HR in the 5th inning to Kepler and additional hits to Dozier, Kepler and Adrianza. Paxton’s 2018 season stats versus LHBs probably scared off some of his ownership, but 22% of the entries in the Q were right on track and matching the right bats with Paxton helped dannypickem capture the top spot. I believe those 22% that rostered Paxton looked at his Last 14 Days stats versus LHBs and RHBs saw an astounding 50% K-Rate, which is a full 25% greater than his 2018 season numbers. Trends like this and taking a risk on a pitcher who on surface appears to be in a bad spot with his 2018 season numbers, leads them to taking down the Q!
Putting Hitting Under Scrunity
Nailing the top point scoring pitcher on the night is the first step to taking down the Q, which accounted for 28% of dannypickem’s overall score, but where dannypickem really distanced himself from the field was rostering Nick Ahmed at 2.4% ownership who had 31.4 FD PTs, Matt Kemp at 3.9% ownership who had 31.7 FD PTs, Gleyber (I can’t stop hitting Home Runs) Torres at 5.8% ownership who had 25.2 FD PTs, Justin Smoak at 7.8% ownership who had 25.2 FD PTs, and Kike Hernandez at 7.9% ownership who had 18.7 FD PTs. At an average ownership for dannypickem’s entire winning lineup of 8.1%, he played the contrarian card perfectly and will be soaking up the California sunshine in San Diego!
Dannypickem’s winning lineup utilized 2x2x2x1x1 stacking, which bucked conventional wisdom that states 4x3x1 stacking leads to greater success, especially in small field GPP tourney like the $44 entry $1.5M WFBC Qualifier.
Below is a listing of the hitters utilized in the top 10 lineups of the $1.5M WFBC Qualifier (including the total number of times the hitter was entered into a top 10 lineup, the ownership percentage the hitter was owned across the tournament field and total FD PTs the hitter scored):
The hitters that were utilized in the greatest number of top 10 lineups are Nick Ahmed in (4 lineups), Matt Kemp (3 lineups), and Mookie Betts (3 lineups). Nick Ahmed was utilized as a one off in the winning lineup, part of a 3 man stack with David Peralta and Paul Goldschmidt in 2nd place csommermann’s lineup, utilized as a one off in the 3rd place dannypickem lineup, and part of a 3 man stack with Jake Lamb and J. Murphy in the 10th place shawnzhan lineup. At 2.4% ownership in the tournament, the 40% of the top 10 lineups that utilized Nick Ahmed really paid dividends for them.
As shown in the below graphics, Sean Manaea has some really good peripheral statistics in the 2018 season versus RHBs at home, carrying a wOBA of 0.190, ISO of 0.113 and a 2.4% BB-rate. There are aspects that I see in Manaea’s 2018 stats that 40% of the top 10 lineups saw and attacked. K-Rate at home of 18.7% is pedestrian, as is a FB Rate of 40.6% and Hard Contact % of 39.1%.
The hitters that were utilized in the greatest number of top 10 lineups are Nick Ahmed in (4 lineups), Matt Kemp (3 lineups), and Mookie Betts (3 lineups). Nick Ahmed was utilized as a one off in the winning lineup, part of a 3 man stack with David Peralta and Paul Goldschmidt in 2nd place csommermann’s lineup, utilized as a one off in the 3rd place dannypickem lineup, and part of a 3 man stack with Jake Lamb and J. Murphy in the 10th place shawnzhan lineup. At 2.4% ownership in the tournament, the 40% of the top 10 lineups that utilized Nick Ahmed really paid dividends for them.
As shown in the below graphics, Sean Manaea has some really good peripheral statistics in the 2018 season versus RHBs at home, carrying a wOBA of 0.190, ISO of 0.113 and a 2.4% BB-rate. There are aspects that I see in Manaea’s 2018 stats that 40% of the top 10 lineups saw and attacked. K-Rate at home of 18.7% is pedestrian, as is a FB Rate of 40.6% and Hard Contact % of 39.1%.
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To put a bow on this for you and conclude this installment of the Shark Autopsy Report, there are so many statistics in MLB that it can be overwhelming as a DFS player. Know that you don’t need every single statistic there is to determine whether or not a player is a good play. Determine which stats within the Research Station provide you with the best information to make optimal decisions, read the DFSArmy coach’s MLB articles (Dong Detector, CeeGee’s Stacks, Chop’s Chin Music, Painting the Black with MDell, Walsh’s Wingmen, Jaguar Lou’s GPP Jamboree and the Donut Shop), utilize the DFSArmy’s evolutionary taking the industry by storm Domination Station Optimizer and we will help you become a better DFS Player!