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It’s a Beautiful Day to Learn Something New
Baseball is a nerd sport. I don’t say that because it would not be described as a contact sport, I think it’s a nerd sport because when was the last time you saw the man in the beer helmet at the Bills game keeping score in a notebook? That’s what I thought. Even in todays modern era you can still go to any ballpark and find a good ole baseball purist with his spiral ring notebook filled with scorecards from past events. Very little and very much has changed since the days of the original scorecard developed by Henry Chadwick in the late 19th century. While the foundation of scorekeeping has remained fundamentally the same, it has been amended countless times and with that came the desire for more advanced statistics.
Statistical representations of a players ability level have been around since Chadwick first conceptualized Batting Average and ERA. While you may not know the name, we owe a lot to this man for his promotion of baseball which has since become our national pastime. The name most of you will know is Bill James, who coined the phrase “sabermetrics” which refers to the Society for American Baseball Research. Sabermetrics is as we know the statistical analysis of a players performance in order to evaluate as well as compare the ability and value of said player.
You are probably saying to yourself now something to the effect of “I thought this was going to help me win DFS contests, why am I getting a history lesson?” To know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been. That’s why reviewing your results, and the results of other players who have had success can really help you make future adjustments. History is important, as is record keeping. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a beginner, you all have some sort of a grasp of what certain statistics are, and why they are important.
While nowadays we all have access to baseline projections and spreadsheets; DFS professionals at the highest level have statistical models that take these metrics and compute them (along with numerous other factors) to reassign value and performance probabilities in order to build their lineups. This is the 1%…. and while the sheer concept of competing against these people can be daunting, it does not have to be.
You can beat anyone in DFS because our success is still predicated on the athletes actual performance. All we can do is make the most +EV (expected value) decisions when it comes down to building our teams and then leave the rest to the ballplayers. In what will be one of many in-depth pieces of the summer, I will discuss the importance of some of the most meaningful and overrated statistics in the game of baseball and how they can translate to DFS success.
Swing Batter Batter, Swing!
SwStr% or swinging strike percentage is in my opinion the truest measure of a pitchers ability. For each pitch thrown, there are several possible outcomes that include a ball, a hit, a foul ball, a hit by pitch, a called strike, and my favorite, the swinging strike. Ever been to a game and you hear someone say “Wow, CC really has good ‘stuff’ tonight”… First of all that game must have been at least five years ago because he’s old now and it shows. Secondly, the ‘stuff’ that person was referring to is the ability for a pitcher to make the hitter miss.
Umpires (not including Angel Hernandez) do a pretty good job overall of calling balls and strikes. However, we’re not interested in the called strike because the called strike only shows us that the pitcher threw a pitch which ended in that result. When evaluating a pitcher this result does not take into account, the umpires ability level or tendency to call strikes, nor the catchers ability to frame a pitch. It also does not take into account the hitters decision making not to swing at the strike. What we want to be interested in is the “stuff”… the pitchers ability to make a pitch enticing enough for the batter to offer an attempt at it but come up empty. “Give him the Cheese! The High! Stinky! Cheddar!” Pitchers who can consistently show improvement in this category are pitchers I always have interest in.
I will not bore you with the percentages of certain pitch types producing larger swinging strike numbers such as sliders thrown in the lower half of the zone by right handed pitchers to left handed batters. It is entirely true that numbers like this exist, I told you earlier…this is a nerd sport. What SwStr% tells us mostly as a whole is who is good at not only striking out batters which is a primary source of points in DFS… it can also help us find value in pitchers that other players may not see.
Let’s Play A Game
If you’ve read my content before, you know I’m big on examples. Well, why stop now?
You have to roster a pitcher for your DFS lineup. Here are the options. For comparison purposes, well will remove salary from the equation for this exercise.
Player A: -185 home favorite with a 3.27 ERA. His opposing ITT is a mere 3.45 and he is also sporting a K/9 of 9.7 this season. SwStr% 9.2
Player B: +120 road underdog with a 3.84 ERA. His opposing ITT is modest at 4.31 but is only striking out 7.2 hitters per 9 innings. SwStr% 8.6
Player C: +105 home underdog with a 4.86 ERA, His opposing ITT is fairly high at 4.83 but to his credit he leads the slate with a 11.8 K/9 SwStr% 16.2
Player D: -110 road favorite with a 3.93 ERA. His opposing ITT is 4.08 and he has a 9.3 K/9 this season. SwStr% 11.5
Let’s start with breaking down the options. Process of elimination when making decisions is important to help decipher what is important and what isn’t. It’s just like a word problem, where you will delete out the information that is not pertinent to the actual question. Sort of like the way some people read my articles, look for the “locks” and ignore everything else. Good luck to those guys because they aren’t reading this. You however, you’ve made it this far which means you’re interested in learning how to get better.
Moving on, with the information provided we need to decide what is important to our decision. ERA… not important. Not that it is not a statistic that holds its own intrinsic value, but we don’t care too much about a players past performance. Past performance is not truly indicative of future results. The fact that Player C has been getting smacked around like a red headed stepchild does not matter right now.
He still has a 16.2 SwStr% through the first two months of the season that should raise some eyebrows. That is well above the league average and would garner some interest based on matchup which we would then look at in more detail. While Player D has very positive numbers across the board, based on the available options in this problem, we should likely assume he will be the most popular selection. For tournaments, I would most likely go with Player C, while cash games my preferred option would be Player D.
Why if salaries are considered to be the same for these four pitchers would we want to consider Player C? Simply put, upside. Upside is this pitchers ability to make hitters miss which is proven to us by his SwStr% as well as his K/9. Their ERA is affected by their past performance to a degree, but we don’t care about this and for good reason.
Editor’s Note – I’m here to remind you our coaches win and share what they’ve learned. I’m also showing you results from Puggle’s tourney type strategies from June 24th, 2019…..and offering the link to his Tourney Strategy Piece. I recommend you read it thoroughly and internalize it. Quality strategy is what makes you a better player. Like Puggle is saying, reviewing your process is one key. Changing how you see the game is another. Luckily, we obviously offer a forum by which you can express questions and receive answers to help you grow. Many of you read along but don’t interact as much as we’d like to see. I’m encouraging you, through proof, to start interacting more……and growing your game to the next level. It works.
History Does Not Always Repeat Itself
BvP or Batter Vs. Pitcher shows the result of a plate appearance, but it does not show the pitches or their result. A pitcher may have yielded 8 hits in 17 at bats which resulted in 6 runs in only 3 2/3 innings. The boxscore will show this, the historical BvP will show this. What it will not show is that for 8 of those hits, 4 of them came after falling behind 0-2 both swinging strikes. It is an unfair and irresponsible way to evaluate pitcher ability.
One last example of why BvP doesn’t really matter. It does not take into account the pitchers sample size and experience nor the hitters. Hypothetically let’s say Miguel Cabrera a 15 year veteran has seen Jose Berrios a division opponent 20 times in his career. Miggy is 8-18 with 2 walks, 2 singles 4 doubles and 2 home runs. A BvP truther would argue with me until they are blue in the face that Cabrera is a top option in this spot. I would then counter that with Berrios saw Cabrera for 10 of those at bats in his rookie season in which he gave up 6 of the hits including both doubles and home runs. In the past two years Berrios has developed into a front line starter with an above average SwStr% and Cabrera at this stage in his career has shown a declining skill set.
Game. Set. Puggle.
Til next time…
I’m Dabbingpuggle reminding you to have fun… it’s just a game. A game that has caused many broken computers, televisions, and relationships. A game in which success comes not only with monetary rewards, but a tremendous sense of accomplishment. To achieve this is no easy task no matter what you know or resources available to you. If you want it, work for it.