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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FanDuel’s $110K Mon MLB Rally Contest
Winning Lineup
In last night’s $100K MLB Rally, 13,108 entrants paid $9.99 per entry to compete for top prize of $20,000. It was a close battle at the top 2 placings with the winner winning by a mere 1.2 points. Heavy ownership was centered on Beantown and Three Rivers in a quality matchups for the Red Sox and Pirates. But for the Red Sox, those 4×4 Red Sox stacks on FanDuel only paid you dividends if you rostered either Steve Pearce or J.D. Martinez. The 4-man stacks of the buccaneers favored considerably better for your lineups moving up the leaderboards with Polanco, Marte, and Dickerson. Gohehe32’s tournament winning lineup seemingly looks like he/she liked 3 games in particular, stacking 2-man from the Pirates, Tigers, and Rays games. It looked like it paid off for Gohehe32 to go away from the stacking norm of 4×4 or 4×3 stacks and roster guys in good spots.
Dissecting Pitching
Gohehe32’s winning lineup employed Gerrit Cole at pitcher at a 17.8% field ownership. Let’s take a look at a DFSArmy coach whose article “Chop’s Chin Music” by ChoppoDong (make sure to follow him @Choppodong on twitter) had to say about Cole:
As a member of DFSArmy, you get access to an amazing staff of coaches, and if you read ChoppoDong’s Chop’s Chin Music article from Monday, you would have unveiled that Cole was not only a top play by Vegas, but also by Chop’s K-Score methodology of picking top pitchers on the slate! Cole was head and shoulders above the rest of the pitchers on the slate in terms of K-Score and Vegas lines. Let’s take a look at how good Cole was heading into the main slate of games:
Cole has had great success at home on the season. His stats show dominant characteristics versus both sides of the plate, but particularly to the right side. Per FanGraphs, a pitcher with a wOBA at or below 0.290 is Excellent, a pitcher with a K-Rate at or above 27% is Excellent, and a pitcher with a K/9 at or above 10.0 is Excellent. Well Cole succeeds in all three of these categories and pushes the boundaries of Superior in nearly all of these categories to both sides of the plate. Was Cole one of the top scoring, if not the highest scoring pitcher on the main slate on Monday, YES he was, but the data within Chop’s K-Score and Cole’s Home splits versus LHBs and RHBs further quantifies this prior to lock of Monday’s main slate.
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Putting Hitting Under Scrutiny
On Monday Night, Gohehe32 utilize a 2x2x2x1x1 stacking methodology to take down the MLB Rally on Monday night. The 3 2-man stacks that were utilized were Jake Bauers and Kevin Kiermaier from Tampa Bay, Niko Goodrum and Nicholas Castellanos from Detroit, and Gregory Polanco and Colin Moran from Pittsburgh. Two of these two man stacks played in the same game that turned out to be a slug fest of hits and runs. There was 19 total runs scored and 30 hits in the Detroit versus Tampa Bay game. That is fantasy gold! As evidenced by the ownership percentages, this game flew under the DFS radar, and the four players utilized in Gohehe32’s winning lineup averaged 2.7% ownership for the tournament field. If you ran 4-man stacks on these teams on Monday night these players would have shown up in these team specific stacks. Bauers and Kiermaier over the last 14 days at home versus LHP have been mashing the baseball.
Bauers has had a differential increase over his 2018 season stats of 73 for wOBA, 12 points for ISO, and 51.04 points for WRC+. His K-Rate over the last 14 days has increased significantly by 33.3% over his 2018 season stats. Over the course of the season we don’t like to see this, but for a single game’s slate, we can leverage this.
Kiermaier has also seen massive improvements over the last 14 days at home versus LHP as compared to his 2018 season stats. His wOBA has increased 257 points, ISO has increased 550 points, WRC+ has increased 177.93 points, FB% has increased 10% and HC% has increased 40%! Similarly to Bauers, Kiermaier has been striking out a lot more over the last 14 days at home versus a lefty. But with the massive variance on a daily basis in MLB, we can take advantage of this and go where others are fearful of going!
On the season on the road versus RHPs, Goodrum and Castellanos have fared better than over the last 14 days. Negative regression? Maybe…. Goodrum ended up going 2 for 6 on the night, with 1 run scored and 3 RBI. He had a double and a triple for a grand total of 25.7 FD PTs. Though Goodrum’s last 14 days stats indicate his wOBA and WRC+ have declined, look at his power numbers, GB% and HC%. He has hit for more power, as indicative by his ISO increasing by 150 points, GB% decreased by 12.5% and HC% increased by 19.2%! Castellanos ended up going 3 for 4 on the night, with 3 runs scored and a walk. He had a double and a triple.
One of the top scoring stacks on the night were the Pirates, but they were also one of the chalkiest stacks as well, with field ownership for Polanco of 20.6% and Moran of 21.3%. A lot of that ownership was attributed from the fact that Cole, Kershaw, Berrios and etc. were on the slate and carried hefty price tags, thereby the Pirates low salaries increased their overall ownership on the night. Over the last 14 days at home versus RHP, Polanco hasn’t been hitting with as much power or hard contact as he has on the 2018 season, but he has been lifting the ball more. He has seen an increase in his wOBA and WRC+, and has seen a decline in his GB%. With his increased fly ball rate, Polanco hit a 2-run homer in the 2nd inning which massively contributed to his overall 44.4 FD PTs. Over the last 14 days as compared to 2018 season stats, Moran has seen declines in his peripheral hitting stats. But, he provided enough FD PTs support with a double and an RBI for Gohehe32 to take the win in the tourney!
MLB can be a very frustrating sport in DFS with the extremes in variance, a hitter might be in a prime spot with amazing platoon splits or reverse splits against a gas can pitcher with woeful platoon or reverse splits and go 0’fer. Even the best in the sport (Mike Trout) go 0’fer on most nights, it’s the way of the sport. But, you need to be able to determine your process and keep the process consistent daily. When you veer away from that process you tend to produce, over the long haul, inadequate to poor performances and your bankroll is affected in the same token. Just Keep Grinding and working on your process and good things will come!
DFSArmy’s MLB coaches and staff works diligently each day on helping improve their members process, and in the same breathe refining their own processes to each daily slate. The DFS landscape is every changing and being a part of a great DFS community helps you to better manage your DFS game and become a better player!
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, ThunderDan’s Dr. StrangeChalk, ThunderDan’s Weekend Covering All The Bases, Jaguar Lou’s GPP Jamboree and the Donut Shop by DFSnDonuts), utilize the DFSArmy’s evolutionary taking the industry by storm Domination Station Optimizer and we will help you become a better DFS Player!