Hello everyone, and welcome to the MLB cash academy! I go by nillyJay in the DFS Army where I coach and contribute content for MLB, NASCAR, and all things cash games related (such as proper bankroll management and cash ladders). You can find me on Twitter or in our Slack channels @nillyJay.
The purpose of these articles is to teach you how to find players to use for cash games, as well as giving out a few that my research has put me on (and why I chose them). The idea here isn’t to just say “lock these guys and run an optimizer.” Rather, I want to encourage everyone to work on their research process and dig a little deeper to find players in good spots instead of just settling on players that fit the salary cap.
The basics
Cash games don’t need to be difficult, so the theme here will be simplicity. While baseball can be a very complex sport, there’s enough data and statistics we can use to quickly identify when a player is in a good or bad spot. Here are the most common ones I use for this purpose:
wOBA – Weighted on-base average (wOBA) essentially measures a batter’s offensive contribution. We want this as high as possible for our batters (I like .380 and higher) and as low as possible for our pitchers (I want .250 or lower here).
ISO – Isolated power (ISO) measures a batter’s hitting power (extra base hits). Bigger hits lead to more fantasy production (especially home runs), so we want this as high as we can get (.200 or higher). For pitchers, of course, we want this as low as possible (preferably .125 or lower).
K% – Strikeout percentage (K% or krate) tells us how often a batter strikes out. Once again, we want this as low as possible for our batters (I like to see 20% or less). Somebody can go 0 for 5 but still have a chance at fantasy production if they are putting the ball in play, but not if they strike out. For pitchers, we want this as high as we can get (I like to find pitchers approaching a 30% or higher K%).
DFSA grade – Unique to the DFS Army, a player’s DFSA grade is a rating of their overall matchup on a scale of 1 to 100. For both batters and pitchers, I like to see 80 or higher for cash games. The full list can be found in our Research Station.
Carnage – Also unique to the DFS Army is my own personal metric, carnage. This is a measure of a team’s offensive firepower on a scale of 1 to 10. I mainly use it to help select pitchers, where I want a score of 3 or lower. Any pitchers named in this article will include their carnage rating, but the full list can only be found in my Slack channel (#nillys-garage-nas-mlb).
Recent data – Baseball is a game that goes in streaks, both hot and cold. Because of this, I put a higher importance on more recent data. Somebody may have been crushing the ball two months ago, but that doesn’t make them a great choice today if they’re 1 for their last 23 with ten strikeouts. I like to look at the last 7-10 days for batters and the last 5-6 starts for pitchers. It’s not a bad idea to compare their current and season-long stats to see if they are over/under-performing, so keep that in mind as an option as well.
Cash players – 6/8/2018
Chris Sale ($11,500 FD, $11,100 DK) – It almost feels like cheating writing up Chris Sale, but since this is a cash play we want to go straight to the top. Sale heads into this matchup with a 36.4% krate, 98.22 DFSA grade, and a very low 2.55 carnage rating (all of which are at the very top of the charts today). While his wOBA and ISO numbers aren’t the lowest on the slate, his overwhelming Vegas odds give me all the reassurance I need. The icing on the cake is the fact that the White Sox have been striking out 24.19% of the time recently and have very few at-bats against Sale. All things considered, this is an easy cash option today. Let’s move on to some batters!
Edwin Encarnacion ($4,500 FD, $4,800 DK) – Edwin is in a great matchup today and is one of my favorite plays across the board. Not only is he boasting a ridiculous .543 wOBA and .581 ISO against RHP over the last 10 days, he’s only striking out 10% of the time, has had at least one hit in 11 of his last 12 games, and hasn’t scored a 0 in over a month. On the other side of the ball, Fulmer is giving up .457 wOBA and .222 ISO to right-handed batters. I love seeing batters in good matchups against same-handed pitchers because that gives us a little extra security later in the game when the other team can cherry-pick matchups.
Justin Smoak ($3,400 FD, $4,300 DK) – I like Smoak more on FanDuel where we get a discount, but he’s a fine play on either site. The Blue Jays have a massive 5.20 implied run total, and Cashner’s recent performances make it very believable. He’s given up 28 hits in his last three starts, and at least 6 in almost every game this season. This is reflected by his combined .443 wOBA, .200 ISO, and 16.4% krate recently. Smoak is doing pretty well himself, with a .469 wOBA and .471 ISO. He’s also a switch-hitter, which is always a nice touch. I’ll probably have at least two batters from the Blue Jays in cash today, and Smoak will be one of them.
Denard Span ($3,100 FD, $3,900 DK) – Span has himself a nice little hot streak going, shown by his .381 wOBA, .350 ISO, and 18.75% krate. He gets a bullpen game against the Rays, the team that traded him not too long ago, so he’ll be eager to have another good performance against them today. While he’ll probably only see him once, Font has been getting hit around plenty recently (.329 wOBA, .273 ISO) and isn’t striking out many players (14.9% krate), and whoever else he faces today won’t be too far behind. All in all, Span makes a good value play today to help fit in Chris Sale and some other good batters.
That’s going to do it for now. If you like what you see here, I encourage you to give us a look and consider signing up. Today is Freebie Friday, which means most all of our VIP content is available for you to check out! We cover every sport, and we have plenty coming up this weekend. For starters, check out my NASCAR Xfinity preview and EricF’s MMA article. If you want to join up, be sure to use promo code NILLY for a 10% discount for the life of your active membership. Good luck today!
