Tag: DFS Baseball

DFS tourneys /

Behind obscure pick Montgomery, FanDuel user coasts to victory, earns $20K prize

With just 30 career wins in MLB and 114 total, it seems likely that FanDuel user “junito441212” hit the top jackpot of his/her DFS existence Tuesday night, taking home $20,000 in the $5-entry MLB Super Rally.

Call it luck if you want, but as far as large tournaments go, the final margin wasn’t close. Junito piled up 85.25 points while no other lineup cracked 80.

MVP honors of the night go to Seattle pitcher Mike Montgomery, who hurled a complete-game shutout and racked up 10 strikeouts against the notoriously tough-to-whiff Royals. Even with a price tag of just $6,200, Montgomery was deployed in only 0.7 percent of lineups in the 41,101-entry field.

junito

More on Montgomery in a bit.

For hitting, junito relied on red-hot Maikel Franco, the Phillies’ rookie third baseman who homered and finished with five RBI for the second straight night. (Note: Tuesday may have been your last chance to grab Franco at a bargain rate. What was a $2,900 asset last night is now solidly in the mid-tier price range at $3,500).

It was the second straight night our featured big winner took Franco, and the second straight night in which the winner’s big-money offensive piece fell well shy of expectations. Tuesday, it was the astronomically priced Paul Goldschmidt who was the low man from a value standpoint after producing 2.25 points on a $6,100 salary.

But when you get home runs from five other spots in the lineup it tends not to matter as much. Especially when you’ve got Mike Montgomery to lean on.

About that.

Who in the world is Mike Montgomery?

Aside from the most-added guy in your seasonal leagues this morning, he’s a 6-foot-5 lefty who was once the No. 19 prospect on Baseball America’s Top 100 list. But that was a long time ago. After peaking in 2010, the 25-year-old has struggled with injury and inconsistency and didn’t reach the bigs until this season.

Since getting the call he’s been solid. The peripherals don’t suggest an All-Star, but the Mariners likely aren’t complaining about a 2.04 ERA through five starts.

But was there anything to suggest this kind of performance was imminent? Was there anything 99.3 percent of us missed when setting our lineups last night?

No. No there was not. Montgomery had never struck out more than four in an MLB game previously and had never pitched more than 7.1 innings. You could point to Safeco’s pitcher-friendly environs or Montgomery’s long-lost pedigree as reasons to believe, but even his most ardent supporters couldn’t have reasoned their way to the expectation of 23 fantasy points.

And that just underscores what we already know: More often than not, breaking from the herd is the best way to hit it big in DFS tournament play. And short of clairvoyance, doing so is often going to require a little bit of luck.

DFS tourneys /

Contrarian stack on light-hitting Phillies paves way to $100K payday in DraftKings contest

DraftKings user “Boopscoop4” woke up six figures richer this morning and he has Freddy Galvis to thank.

True, Maikel Franco did the heaviest lifting, but any time your bargain-bin special at shortstop out-produces your highest-priced hitter by a factor of four, that dude deserves a tip of the cap.

The Phillies were far and away the contrarian play of the day in GPPs. And though Franco’s four-hit, two-homer day carried many DFSers to the money, only Boopscoop4 had the gumption to go all-in on a light-hitting Philadelphia team in an unfavorable matchup against Michael Pineda.

The winning lineup in the day’s richest tournament—DraftKings’ MLB $250K Swing For The Fences—featured four Phillies hitters, all of whom outscored Mike Trout pretty significantly despite none being more than 1.9 percent owned.

That’s how you get separation from the field.

Pineda was more than 58 percent owned in the tournament, owing to his strikeout stuff and the Phillies’ general ineptitude on offense. Of course, hindsight is what it is, but retrospectively, it made some sense to go against the grain in this game.

First, there’s Yankee Stadium. Even casual DFS players know the park’s reputation for producing big offensive numbers—especially via the ever-valuable long ball. Then there’s Pineda. The mercurial 26-year-old has shown real signs of living up to long-awaited potential and rounding into ace form this season. But he’s also displayed a tendency toward the total meltdown—last night’s game was the fifth time in 14 starts he’s given up at least five runs.

Not to be overlooked is the fact that the Phillies don’t actually strike out much. Of course when you’re plugging in Ryan Howard as your first baseman, it negates a good deal of any safety you may gain from the contact the other guys are making, but still. Worth mentioning.

Monday night it added up to a perfect storm. The park did its part, Pineda served up batting practice (and sank more than half of the tournament field with minus-15.7 points), and not even Howard went down on strikes.

The result is a big payday for Boopscoop4.

By the way, shout out to “mlytal10,” who managed 196 points and a 57th-place finish despite Pineda. The rest of his team was so good he would’ve had a top-10 finish if he just could’ve left one pitching slot open.

DFS Baseball /

Plate appearances: A simple DFS Baseball stat that often gets overlooked

When people start playing Daily Fantasy Baseball, they are often obsessed with specific stats that they believe are key to a hitter’s success.

Some examples of things you might hear:

  • “Home runs are the greatest way to gain the most ground in any contest, since each home run counts for a four-base hit, with an RBI and a run, with the added bonus of possibly more RBI depending on who is on base.”
  • “OPS is most important because it combines the ability for a man to get on base and his ability to hit for power.”
  •  “wOBA is what you want to key on because it combines power potential and a player’s ability to get on base.”
  • “Splits are what you need to know for each hitter against the handedness of the pitcher he’ll be facing that day.”

All of the above might be true, but today I’m going to address a key stat that often gets overlooked as we sift through the noise of “Batters vs. Pitchers” and BABIP.

Plate appearances.

All of the above statements are predicated on the fact that a player needs plate appearances to be successful in Daily Fantasy Baseball. In the majors, failure seven times out of 10 could mean an All-Star appearance and failure eight times out of 10 could mean a Triple-A demotion. So it stands to reason that the better a player is at getting on base, the more his team will try to get him more chances to get on base, i.e. more plate appearances.

More Chances to Do Good Rather Than Bad

A pitcher enters a game and all he’s trying to do is stop bad things from happening. If no one gets on base, that pitcher earns you Fantasy points. If three hitters are unable to make anything happen, that pitcher gets points for an inning pitched.

A hitter, however, is always trying to make good things happen, with the odds greatly stacked against him. Even if he has a .400 batting average against left-handed pitchers in a hitter’s park with perfect weather conditions while facing a pitcher that has a 5.00 ERA, that hitter’s not going to score any points if he doesn’t get plate appearances.

Obviously, good hitters are going to get as many plate appearances as their team can get them, which means they’ll be loaded up early in the lineup. Those are the guys with hefty DFS salaries already, and you’re rightly trying to get them into your lineup any way you can.

But there are also some hitters that are getting more plate appearances because they reside in the back of a very good lineup that rotates through often. There are also some hitters that get more plate appearances because they reside in the front of a very bad lineup, but they are virtually guaranteed four or five plate appearances per game regardless.

So, let’s try to uncover five players from each of these groups of hitters—back and front—in hopes that they’ll help your DFS lineups more going forward.

5 Back-of-the-Lineup Hitters

We’re going to primarily look at hitters that bat sixth, seventh or eighth in their team’s lineup, assuming that the ninth hitter is either a pitcher (NL) or a pitcher’s friend (crappy hitter).

Francisco Cervelli, C, Pittsburgh — $2,800: Cervelli bats in the back of the Pirates’ batting order (sixth), and while the Pirates aren’t a stellar offense (ranked 22nd in runs scored), they are just above average in total plate appearances.

Logan Morrison, 1B, Seattle — $2,200: Lo-Mo isn’t a power hitter despite his eight homers this season, but could finish with 20-plus, and the Mariners have used him in the leadoff spot 10 times this season. To get a first baseman with a shot at five or six plate appearances—at the FanDuel minimum salary!—is a very good idea in tournament play. That extra plate appearance or two gives him another chance at hitting you a homer. He’s on pace for a career-high in at-bats.

Marcus Semien, SS, Oakland — $2,400: After an incredible start to his A’s career, Semien has certainly cooled off—batting .211 in June after hitting .283 in the first two months. Most of his plate appearances were picked up from when he hit second in the lineup. We still love his talent, and his salary has caught up with his slump, making him a bargain again for when he does play. Remember that this is the 24-year-old’s third season in the majors, but it’s his first as a regular starter, so slumps were bound to hit him. A couple weeks ago, he eclipsed his career high in at-bats for a season! He’s in the back of the A’s lineup now, but will bounce back up once his bat comes around.

Brandon Crawford, SS, San Francisco — $2,900: A little pricier than you might expect for a shortstop batting mostly in the back of the lineup all season. But he’s currently among the leaders at his position in wOBA (.358), homers (nine), RBI (42), runs scored (33) and ISO (.193). He’s a left-handed hitter with good reverse splits (.373 BA, 1.020 OPS vs. LHP). Eight other shortstops have more plate appearances than Crawford, but only Jhonny Peralta among that group is outproducing him stats-wise.

Leonys Martin, OF, Texas — $2,600: A wrist injury slowed Martin’s season, and the Rangers pushed him down to the back of the lineup for now, but he’s more like a traditional leadoff hitter. Hitting seventh, he’s starting to come around now, with a .259 batting average and five steals in June. The Rangers are a top-10 plates appearances offense, and they bat in a hitter-friendly park.

5 Front-of-the-Lineup Hitters

Derek Norris, C, San Diego — $2,900: Norris currently bats second for the Padres, and only Buster Posey has more plate appearances so far this season. That’s impressive considering he’s an NL catcher that doesn’t get regular at-bats as a designated hitter like Stephen Vogt or Yan Gomes. The Padres have the most plate appearances in the National League.

Adrian Gonzalez, 1B, L.A. Dodgers — $3,000: It’s tough to imagine Gonzalez slumping, which makes him an even better DFS investment at $3K because we know he’ll rebound. Only three other first basemen have more plate appearances this season, and he’s batting third or fourth in most games.

Chase Utley, 2B, Philadelphia — $2,200: We’re catching Utley during a slump, for sure, but the entire Phillies lineup is pretty bad in general. Getting Utley against a right-handed pitcher, at the minimum, means you’ll have someone with both power potential and run-scoring ability that’s batting second or third in the lineup pretty regularly. Plate appearances give him more chances—and the Phillies (as bad as they are) still rank 20th in total plate appearances.

Chase Headley, 3B, N.Y. Yankees — $2,400: Only six other teams have more plate appearances this season than the Yankees, and the only third basemen with more PA’s than Headley are Josh Donaldson, Manny Machado and Todd Frazier. Unfortunately, Headley just doesn’t have the power swing we’re used to seeing from third basemen. His .113 ISO is not among the top 20 at the position among those with over 175 plate appearances. But he’s a cheap option that will give you more chances at success than any other cheap third baseman. This switch-hitter bats second more than half the time for the Yankees, usually against right-handed pitchers.

Will Venable, OF, San Diego — $2,500: This is actually misleading, since Venable hits all over this lineup, with multiple games in every slot except eighth. He has hit leadoff three times this week, with a game at sixth and seventh in the lineups also. His ISO (.151) is fifth-best on the Padres, and he’s third on the team in steals. He can get you points in many ways, and he often gets the plate appearances to do so.

Just remember: The more plate appearances a hitter gets, the more chances he has to do something good for your baseball team.