KBO Pitching Picks and Winning Strategy for DraftKings and FanDuel 5/28

Another day of KBO means another day of DFS Army helmets on the leaderboards for both DraftKings and FanDuel!

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Projecting Upside and Leveraging it for Your Play Style

Before we get into my favorite plays for tomorrow, I wanted to briefly talk about how I measure/define upside when researching KBO pitchers. For starters, there are often misconceptions about safety and upside. It might seem like those two things are positively correlated but that is not always true. Depending on your contest selection (cash or GPP), you are probably targeting different types of pitchers. In cash, the goal is to roster pitchers who are safer plays more often than not. When playing GPP Tournaments, it can be more beneficial to target upside instead of safety. To put it simply, “safety” and “upside” can be primarily defined by looking at an expected range of outcomes (this tool exists within our DFS Army Research Station). Here is an example to better portray what this might look like for you… Let’s assume the same matchup for the purpose of the exercise:

Pitcher A ($9,000): Scores between 15-25 fantasy points in 88% of his starts dating back to the beginning of last season. In his worst 5 starts, he averaged 12 fantasy points. In his best 5, he averaged 27.

Pitcher B ($7,800): Scores between 15-25 fantasy points in 46% of his starts dating back to the beginning of last season. In his worst 5 starts, he averaged 5.6 fantasy points. In his best 5 starts, he averaged 36.

Clearly, pitcher B is more volatile and would not be my first “cash” game pick. He isn’t trustworthy enough based on his likely range of outcomes to put up a solid score like pitcher A. In cash, a decent score from a player who is high-owned will not hurt your chances nearly as much as it would in GPP. Because 50% of players win in cash, we don’t have to take as many risks to profit – unlike GPP tournaments where a smaller number of people profit and a higher score is more important (the higher you score in GPP, the more money you can win per entry… in cash, you win the same amount whether you finish in the top 1% or barely hit the 50% threshold). Now, this is less about contest selection and more about upside so back to the main point 😊 So when specifically trying to determine upside, what should we be looking for? Here are a few quick indicators for me:

Price vs Range of Outcomes vs Ceiling

I love using our KBO research station to better understand scoring history for certain players and how I might be able to leverage their outcome range (see above example) against their price. In the above example, pitcher B has shown he can score higher than pitcher A at a discount of $1,200. *You can also employ a similar strategy for the site you play on by trying to gauge how the player price on DK differs from his price on FD or vice versa.

Matchup Ranks and Matchup History

Another key factor when determining pitcher upside potential is the opposing offense/where the rank in certain categories within the KBO. Specifically, I like looking at stats like OPS (on base + slugging), strikeouts (how often do they strike out relative to other teams) and walks (what is their plate discipline like). This is true on the micro level and also the macro level in terms of looking at past matchups of the pitcher vs team. How many times has the pitcher faced this offense so far this season and what were the outcomes? What about looking back to 2019? Baseball is beautifully mysterious in some ways and there are hitters who struggle against pitchers sometimes without any glaring statistic to point at. Matchup and matchup history matters.

Advanced Statistics

WHIP and ERA are decent indicators that can help give us a general idea as to how well a pitcher has performed over the course of his season/career. However, there are a few other stats that I like to pay close attention to when digging for upside. These include:

FIP – Fielding independent pitching. Think of it like ERA but with only the things a pitcher has the most control over (strikeouts, walks, HBP, home runs) and removing balls hit in the field of play.

BABIP – Batting average on balls in play. This stat removes outcomes unaffected by the defense (primarily strikeouts and home runs) and like FIP, can help us identify luck and regression trends for pitchers. If a pitcher has a FIP lower than their ERA and a high BABIP, its fair to assume there will be some positive regression. This often leads us to finding pitchers who might be less expensive but still with solid potential upside.

K/9 – Strikeouts per 9 innings. Strikeouts are incredibly important for DFS purposes. Pitchers with high strikeout upside (and potentially in matchups against teams that strikeout a lot) oftentimes have an increased ceiling (although that can also mean more volatile pitching). A higher K/9 means more strikeouts per nine innings.

😅 Whew! That might have been like drinking from a fire hose but I wanted to give a small glimpse into some of my process/motivation for the way I write these articles. There is no right or wrong process and the things listed above are not exhaustive but hopefully this helps give some background. Now let’s get on to those picks!

Editor’s Note – To see these statistics in actionable form, simply take a peek at our KBO Research Station!  K/9, WHIP, BABIP, and all the numbers you are looking for are a simple scroll to your right.  Shown below are the basics like salary, team, etc.  Our custom filters let you find anything you want with hyper efficiency, knocking hours off your potential research time.

KBO Pitchers and Picks for 5/28

Here are some of my favorite plays for the upcoming KBO slate. This morning’s slate is not very good for pitching and looks to me more like a GPP slate. But, Lets get into it! * indicates a left-handed pitcher. (Matchup data is from our Research Station vs Hand of pitcher)

Tier 1

Hyun Jong Yang*

Team: KIA Tigers
Price: $9,600 | $29
Matchup: ISO (5th) | wOBA (3rd) | SO (8th) | IRT (8th) | OPS (3rd) 
Notes: Per price point and matchup here, I think I will be leaving Yang for GPPs here. KTW has been pretty good this season, but they are facing a lefty today. Yang has been outstanding for KIA so far with a 3-1 record and just 3.43 ERA and 1.14 WHIP. He was able to shut down DOO just 2 starts ago and put up 6 innings with 7 strikeouts. He comes into this game as a slight favorite too. Although KT has been pretty good vs LHP so far, I think the way Yang has been pitching it’s good to consider him in GPPs tonight considering the state of pitching today isn’t the best.

Format: GPP (FD) | GPP (DK)

Casey Kelly

 

Team: LG Twins
Price: $7,400 | $23
Matchup: ISO (9th) | wOBA (8th) | SO (1st) | IRT (10th)| OPS(7th)
Notes: Another day, another slate of meh pitching options. Kelly was awful in his season debut, but great in his second start and iffy last start. He has faced 2 of the best offenses in the league already though and HAN hasn’t fared that well. He’s also pretty cheap on both sites allowing you to pay up for more bats too. HAN has the lowest IRT on the slate right now and just have not been hitting well lately. Kelly is actually our highest proj starting pitcher from our RS today. This game has the lowest total on the slate too.

Format: ALL (FD) | SP/2 (DK)

Everyone else (I don’t think there are many great options today and all are very risky)

Young Gyu Kim

Team: NC Dinos
Price: $6,300 | $24
Matchup: ISO (3rd) | wOBA (2nd) | SO (3rd) | IRT (5th)| OPS (2nd) 
Notes: Pitching again, stinks today, so it’s tough to make some suggestions, but I know we need options. NCD has been the best team in the league by far and have Vegas backing them up. They also are facing KIW who is really hit or miss. They seem to go every other game with scoring a ton, then going flat. Kim hasn’t really been amazing, but he’s cheap and did score 19 DK points against a weak SK team. Risky, but hey it’s not a great pitching slate. Kim does have just a 3.94 ERA and a low WHIP for KBO standards.

Format: GPP (FD) | GPP (DK)

Warwick Saupold

Team: Hanwha Eagles
Price: $9,000 | $26
Matchup: ISO (9th) | wOBA (7th) | SO (1st) | IRT (9th) | OPS (7th)
Notes: I don’t normally like recommending people facing off each other, but I really don’t like any options today. Saupold at least has been able to go deep into games and has shown upside. His price has finally risen and he’s facing a hot LG team who feasts off RHP. I think if Saupold can at least calm them down a bit he can go 6-7 innings and grab a few K’s in the process. He is our 2nd highest proj pitcher on DK and LG has a 18.2% K rate vs RHP so far this year. He comes into this start with an amazing 2.25 ERA and sub 1.00 WHIP, he just hasn’t shown a ton of K upside. He’s expensive, but one of the better options tonight given the options we have.

Format: GPP (FD) | SP 1/GPP (DK)

And, if really pressed for time (or just in need of a second opinion), our KBO Cheatsheets are populating now!  Cut hours off your research for any position by seeing our daily guru’s choices, confidence ratings, format preference, and detailed notes explaining the play.  You can even use these notes to give more or less weight to our optimized projections while you assemble the winning lineups tonight!!

See our NASCAR section for research, projections and cheatsheets, too!

Glossary
OPS (On-base plus Slugging)
SO (Strikeout)
K/9 (Strikeouts per 9 innings)
BB (Walk)
ERA (Earned Run Average)
WHIP (Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched)
QS (Quality Start)
IP (Inning Pitched)
ER (Earned Run)
R (Run)
DK (DraftKings)
FD (FanDuel)
KBO (Korean Baseball Organization)
LHP (Left Handed Pitcher)
BABIP (Batting Average Balls in Play)
Chalky (High Ownership)
RS/9 (Run support per 9 innings)
GPP (Guaranteed Prize Pool)

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