Handicapping Daily Fantasy Baseball Pitchers: Advanced Strategy

Handicapping Daily Fantasy Pitchers: Advanced Strategy
By Adam, Daily Fantasy MLB Player, Rotopicks.com

Now that you know the basics (Handicapping Daily Fantasy Baseball Pitchers), it is time to get down and dirty. If you can win daily fantasy leagues just by looking at wins, losses, strikeouts, and earned run average, then everyone would win. Here, I will teach you how to look into the nuts and bolts of what a pitcher is doing to evaluate his performance and potential.

The first things I look at are those basic stats (Fangraphs is a good resource). I compare ERA with Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), a better barometer of pitching performance. If earned run average is lower than FIP, the pitcher is not performing as well as we think, and vice versa. I also look at batting average of balls in play, and compare it to the pitcher's career BABIP. If it is high this year, he is likely getting unlucky and primed for a rebound. If batting average of balls in play against the pitcher is abnormally low, it may be a red flag. Third, I simply look at game logs and see recent performance and performances against the team the pitcher is facing today.

After getting the basic data, we can use BrooksBaseball.net for more advanced analysis. This site has everything you need to know to decipher how and why a pitcher has performed the way he has.

First, get an idea of the pitcher's repertoire by seeing what pitches he throws, how often, and whether this has changed over time. For example, an older pitcher may be throwing less fastballs as his velocity diminishes... which brings us to checking velocity. Does the pitcher have a decreasing velocity as the season is wearing on? Is his changeup a nice decrease in speed from his fastball? Things like these give you an idea of the pitcher's arsenal.

BrooksBaseball also has the splits results against the pitcher based on handedness, pitch type, etc. If a pitcher gets crushed by lefties, check the opposing team's lineup and their amount of left handed hitters. Using the same Pitch f/x tools as we do with a pitcher, we can also look up the stud opposing hitters and look up how well they hit the pitches in our pitcher's arsenal. Basically, there is an infinite amount of information out there. Let's explore some more.

A batted ball is anything but a strikeout or a walk. Looking at batted balls for either a pitcher or a hitter, we get these percentages as the average across the league: 20% line drives (LD), 44% groundballs (GB), and 36% flyballs (FB). Line drives produce the best results for hitters, while flyballs are slightly less effective than groundballs. We can look at a pitcher's batted balls and use this knowledge. Have hitters been hitting more than 20% line drives against him? That's not so good. Is the pitcher more of a flyball pitcher or a groundball pitcher (compare his numbers to the previously mentioned averages). If he is a flyball pitcher, we can analyze the opposing team's middle of the order and see what their homerun to flyball ratio is. An average ratio is about 10%. In other words most hitters hit one over the fence once out of every ten times. But if the pitcher is a flyball pitcher and the opposing team is full of powerful bats that are over 13% homerun to fly ball ratios, then our pitcher may be in for a rough night.

We can also look into a pitcher's mechanics. On BrooksBaseball.net, we can find charts illustrating the release point of all of the pitches a pitcher has thrown. We want to see a very tight cluster of dots. If a pitcher has different release points for different pitches, hitters will be able to pick up on that.

We can also look at recent game logs, and check first pitch strike percentages, which should hopefully be high, and then check location. Is the pitcher successfully painting the corners or have his pitches been in the middle of the plate. Taking it a step further, where does the pitcher tend to throw it? Do the stud opposing hitters have good numbers hitting balls in that part of the zone?

Getting ahead in the count is very important. We can check first pitch strikes for the pitcher in past games, but we can also check first pitch swing percentages of the opposing team. We want a pitcher who throws a high rate of first pitch strikes and opposing hitters who have low first pitch swinging percentages. As you can see, the piles of data and implications are endless. This article was meant to help you brainstorm, and get a feel for delving into the aspects of pitching. When you become good at it, you will find hidden gems that point to bargain pitchers, or even red flags on those high priced aces for the day. Either way, you always want to be a step ahead of your opponents. Speaking of opponents, find the weakest competition at Fanduel. From my experiences, that site is the easiest to cash in 50/50 (double up) leagues, which is the best way to build a bankroll! Use promo code: ROTOPICKS and get a 100% bonus up to $200!

If you enjoyed this article, you might also want to check out Important Pitching Stats.

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