Baseball Draft Kit: DFS Primer

What has changed since we started playing DFS baseball?

In line with trends across other sports, DFS players are sharper, and grinding out profits with a contest selection built predominantly on cash games (50/50s and double-ups) is more difficult now than it was five years ago.

In November, I had the privilege of attending a DFS panel featuring some of the brightest minds in the industry at Baseball HQ's First Pitch Arizona. One of the panelists was Dave Potts, one the sharpest DFS players in the world, and he presented a simple question to the attendees: 

What are your goals? 

If making a three- or four-figure profit over the course of baseball season by spending a couple hours researching each slate and playing several days per week is something you have the time to do, the cash-game grind might be viable for you. 

If you're positioned to take more risk, or if you're bankrolled to afford losing money on a regular basis, you can opt to play a more tournament-heavy combination of contests, with the hope of hitting a big payday or qualifying for live event finals. You're still going to need a lot of time to prepare for each slate you play, but taking a more GPP-centric approach doesn't require the same volume of play to bear fruit over a larger number of slates. 

No matter what your goals are, bankroll management and contest selection are important. Unless you're playing multiple lineups on a regular basis, you should concentrate your efforts on 50/50 or double-ups, and single-entry or limited-entry (3-5 lineups max) tournaments. 

Let's go one step further. 

Taking a day (or two) off from DFS in-season is OK. You should avoid playing slates when you have family, work, school, or any other obligations that require your attention. Weather changes unexpectedly, and players are scratched from lineups at the last minute. In order to maximize your profitability, you need to be positioned to monitor the news and adjust your lineups to account for those changes without shirking your responsibilities as a spouse, parent, employee, or student. 

Regardless of how much you play, everything revolves around breaking down the pitching on a particular slate correctly. 

Not only is it critically important to choose the right pitcher(s) for your own lineup, but it's important to fully understand the exploitable weaknesses of the pitchers taking the ball that day to choose the best combination of hitters possible. 

Here are some of the key factors to consider when you analyze pitching each day.

STRIKEOUT AND WALK POTENTIAL

The first two things I look at when I'm assessing a group of pitchers on a slate are their strikeout and walk percentages (K% and BB%). Regardless of whether you're playing DFS or season-long fantasy baseball, K% and BB% are preferable to K/9 and BB/9, since the latter are rate stats and can be misleading about a pitcher's strengths and weaknesses. Since K% and BB% are simply strikeouts or walks divided by the total number of batters faced, they paint a clearer picture of a pitcher's overall ability. 

Generally, the K% leaderboard is packed with pitchers who were cornerstones near the top of the price list on DFS sites (Chris Sale, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole), and they are highly-owned players in the bulk of their starts. (Robbie Ray, who appears in the top-10 for K% and BB%, is an odd exception). With BB% leaders, you see a group of pitchers that were frequent targets for stacking against and one-off plays (think Tyler Chatwood, Drew Pomeranz, Aaron Sanchez and Lucas Giolito), as their inability to avoid free passes typically made them some of the worst pitchers on the slate when they started. 

BULLPEN QUALITY 

Part of the puzzle with pitchers is determining win probability, which goes beyond analyzing each starter's individual skills. A high-quality, rested bullpen increases the starting pitcher's win probability. A low-quality bullpen reduces win probability, can leak runs in the late innings, and in some instances, allow inherited runners to score, damaging the starter's scoring output even after they've left the game. It's easy to see differences in bullpen quality at the extremes, and using an advanced metric like SIERA is a good way to capture performance at a glance. 

It's important to account for the availability of elite relievers when considering matchups as well. For example, targeting a Brewers starting pitcher with a stack is much more appealing if Josh Hader won't be available on the current day because he pitched multiple innings the day before. Teams that have won two or three consecutive close games without a day off might have fewer top relievers available. Keep an eye out for teams that played extra-innings games, since depleted bullpens are often forced to turn to temporary (and often, less skilled) reinforcements from the minors in the days that follow. 

WEATHER & PARK FACTORS

Once again, focusing on the extremes is the best place to gain an advantage. Heavy winds (15+ mph) make a considerable difference, with winds blowing out favoring hitters, and winds blowing in favoring pitchers. In addition to the risk of postponement, rainy forecasts vary in their impact as a slight delay of first pitch is often meaningless, but a potential hour-long break in the early innings could shorten the night of the starting pitchers involved. 

Park factors impact power output, overall run production and even strikeouts. Look for big shifts compared to a player's home park, as players' strengths and weaknesses can be bolstered by different environments. When looking at changes in park factors from year to year, be sure to account for significant adjustments made to a particular park, such as the use of the humidor at Chase Field in 2018, or the lowering of the right-field fences in Anaheim. For parks without direct adjustments, it's best to use a three-year average of park factors since there are several variables that can cause results to fluctuate from year-to-year.