Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 8)

Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. This week we saw Jack Flaherty strike out the world with his slider on Sunday. We also saw two Tigers' lefties continue […]

DraftKings Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks (5/20/18): MLB DFS Lineups

We’ve got an 11 game featured slate this Sunday, and it is dominated by NL East pitchers. Four of the five highest priced pitchers on this slate play for teams in the NL East. Sorry Wei-Yin Chen, we don’t want to play you today. But we do want to build our lineup around two of […]

Contact Rate Risers and Fallers for Week 7: Buy or Sell?

Welcome to Contact Rate Risers and Fallers! Our premium tools allow us to get out ahead of trends in player performance, including contact rate. Every Wednesday, we'll be looking at some players that have seen an increase in contact rate and some that have seen it decline. Contact rate can foretell a player's batting average […]

Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 7)

Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. This week saw two 21-year-old rookies go into Coors Field and blank the Rockies. An uninspiring afterthought veteran also did something very […]

DraftKings Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks (5/13/18): MLB DFS Lineups

It’s Sunday Run-day in Major League Baseball! Why call it Run-day, you might ask? That’s because there should be crooked numbers all over big league scoreboard this Sunday. Of the 22 starting pitchers on this eleven-game slate, seven of them are below $5,000 and four of them are the minimum $4,000 for a starting pitcher. […]

Contact Rate Risers and Fallers for Week 6: Buy or Sell?

Welcome to Contact Rate Risers and Fallers! Our premium tools allow us to get out ahead of trends in player performance, including contact rate. Every Wednesday, we'll be looking at some players that have seen an increase in contact rate and some that have seen it decline. Contact rate can foretell a player's batting average […]

Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 6)

Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. With all the exciting young pitching prospects being called up and doing well and some veterans surprising us it was hard to […]

DraftKings Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks (5/6/18): MLB DFS Lineups

It's a nine game main slate this Sunday, and it's an interesting slate at that. There are a couple big time aces on the mound, as well as a some vulnerable starters to target with the bats. In this article, I will be providing you with my daily fantasy baseball lineup picks for DraftKings on 5/6/18. […]

Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 5)

Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. This week we've got a trio of youngsters to look at, two in the NL Central and one in the AL. Each […]

DraftKings Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks (4/29/18): MLB DFS Lineups

Sunday brings us a big 12 game slate with a wealth of options at the plate and on the mound. This article will focus only on the featured slate, as that is where most contests will take place. In this article, I will be providing you with my daily fantasy baseball lineup picks for DraftKings on […]

Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 4)

Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. This week we're looking at a pair of NL East hurlers that have put up some eye-popping strikeout numbers, as well as […]

DraftKings Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks (4/22/18): MLB DFS Lineups

Happy Sunday! We’ve got an 11-game featured slate on DraftKings today, one that excludes the west coast games. That still leaves us with Coors Field, Corey Kluber, and a lot of terrible, horrible starting pitchers. It will be tough to fit the Klubot and the Coors Field bats in our lineup today, but there is […]

Tyson Ross (SP) - Week 3 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 5% of Leagues ANALYSIS: Once one of the premier strikeout pitchers in baseball, San Diego Padres starting pitcher Tyson Ross fell off the face of the earth after 2016 shoulder surgery. He is attempting to recapture success after suffering from thoracic outlet syndrome, the same injury that […]

Vince Velasquez (SP) - Week 3 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 14% of Leagues ANALYSIS: Philadelphia Phillies starting pitcher Vince Velasquez broke onto the scene with a three-hit, 16 strikeout shutout against the Padres in 2016, but it has been down hill from there. He has dealt with nothing but injuries and busted potential since then. In […]

Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 3)

Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. This week we'll be going over a couple good starts from Padres hurlers Joey Lucchesi and Tyson Ross, as well as a […]

DraftKings Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks (4/15/18): MLB DFS Lineups

We have an ace-heavy 11 game featured slate this Sunday. There are several quality pitchers on the schedule today, as well as several suspect pitchers. There aren’t many middle tier options on the mound, which means we’ll have to choose our hurlers carefully. We’ve also got weather concerns across the country. As of writing this […]

Dylan Bundy Has Been Unleashed, Is Kevin Gausman Next?

It has become a trend among starting pitchers with one dominant pitch to throw it earlier in counts and to throw it more often. This defies conventional baseball wisdom, but several starting pitchers have found or recaptured success by featuring breaking balls more heavily. Rich Hill, fighting for his baseball life, began using his curveball […]

Andrew Triggs (SP, OAK) - Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues OWNED IN: 10% of Yahoo leagues ANALYSIS: Oakland Athletics starting pitcher Andrew Triggs has averaged nearly 11 K/9 through his first two starts and has been getting hitters to whiff consistently with his breaking pitches. While he did not have a strong 2017 season, these numbers were influenced by […]

Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 2)

Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. This week we'll be going over Sean Newcomb's dominance at Coors Field, and great two-start performances from Reynaldo Lopez and Andrew Triggs. […]

DraftKings Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks (4/8/18): MLB DFS Lineups

All teams are in action this Sunday, but DraftKings has given us a 10-game featured slate to work with instead of the full 15. This 10-game slate has excluded every game that starts after 3:00 PM EST. Not on the featured slate are the Coors Field game, Clayton Kershaw’s start against the Giants, and Shohei […]

Are You For Real? A Look at Surprising SP Starts

Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more. This week we’ll look at the debut performance of Shohei Ohtani, as well as Kyle Gibson’s domination of the Orioles and Ty […]

DraftKings Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks (4/1/18): MLB DFS Lineups

Today is an odd Sunday schedule, since only eight games are on the main slate at DraftKings. Normally, all teams will be in play on Sunday, but due to travel days we're working with a truncated slate. That means we need to get a little creative, as there is no obvious stack today. In this […]

Deeper NL Starting Pitcher Sleepers - Undervalued ADPs

Nothing helps deepen a fantasy rotation like scooping up late-round values. Having a few sleepers in your back pocket allows for a heavier investment in hitting earlier in the draft, and gives you some names to target once the player pool gets thin. For those who love to do last-minute drafts, start their league a […]

Infield Busts Set to Bounce Back in 2018

Collectively, the fantasy community seems to harbor contempt for players that have burned us in the past. After an established, trusted player delivers a poor season it’s hard for us to trust him again. Building a team of last year’s busts is walking a fine line. For every Justin Verlander there’s an Adam Wainwright. This […]

ADP Sleepers and Busts - Closers

Where an owner drafts closers comes down to personal strategy and philosophy. Some owners are willing spend up for high-end closers like Kenley Jansen and Craig Kimbrel, while others are content to let closers fly off the board deep into the draft and scrounge for saves late. For those of us unwilling to invest in […]

Deeper Shortstop Sleepers - Undervalued ADPs

After catcher, shortstop is generally considered the weakest offensive position in fantasy baseball. While an influx of young talent has bolstered the top end of the position, it can still be hard to find appealing options after the studs are gone. In deeper leagues, especially AL or NL-only leagues, getting value out of late round […]

ADP Sleepers and Busts - NL Starting Pitchers

With the inherent injury risk to pitchers and innings management becoming more prevalent in baseball, nailing starting pitchers becomes even more important on draft day. After the big four of Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, and Corey Kluber are off the board, seemingly every pitcher has some sort flaw or concern going into 2018. […]

ADP Sleepers and Busts - Catcher

Catcher is generally considered the weakest position in fantasy baseball. That is exactly why getting reliable production from the position is so important. There won’t be many good options on the waiver wire to replace a bad pick. This article looks at some catchers that are undervalued and overvalued based on their NFBC ADP (as […]

Using xwOBA for Predictive Purposes in Pitchers

When it comes to predictive metrics, MLB's statcast has afforded the baseball community a wealth of data since its league-wide installation in 2015. One of the more intriguing metrics is expected wOBA, or xwOBA. This statistic gives us the expected wOBA for a player based on the hit probability of batted balls, calculated using exit […]

2018 Strikeout Risers and Fallers - What We Learned

For the second straight season, we witnessed the highest strikeout totals in MLB history. There was an average of 8.25 strikeouts per MLB game in 2017, up from 8.03 strikeouts per game in 2016. Strikeouts have increased in baseball every year since 2005, and there is no indication that this trend will reverse any time […]