I’m not the smartest man in the world and as a result, there are many things that I don’t understand. Much of that has to do with my intellect, but some is due to the fact that sometimes fantasy players fall in love with a statistic or idea and take that statistic to its illogical extreme. Today, I will look at instances of the latter.
K/9 Ratio
This is a pretty solid statistic. It’s relatively new, as in the old days, we just looked at total strikeouts. Now, rather than looking at things globally, we are instructed to look at the strikeouts a pitcher gets for every nine innings that he throws. Clearly, this statistic helps to determine which pitchers might get the most strikeouts over a season. But wait, if you want to look at the most strikeouts a pitcher gets over a season, couldn’t you just look at total strikeouts? I know, I don’t get the point. You’re right, I don’t.
Last year, among starting pitchers who threw enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, Chris Sale led the majors with a K/9 of 12.93. Not coincidentally, Sale also led the majors with 308 strikeouts. Robby Ray was next with a K/9 of 12.11, and Max Scherzer was third with a 12.02 K/9. Carlos Carrasco was ninth. So, clearly, Ray was a better strikeout pitcher than Carrasco. Yet, if you had Ray and I had Carrasco, I would have beaten you in the strikeout category 226 to 218 with my ninth best compared to your second best in the league K/9 pitcher.
Obviously, innings pitched is the key, so no matter how great a pitcher’s K/9 may be, it won’t matter if he is not on the mound. Just ask Danny Salazar, whose K/9 of 12.67 rivaled league leader Sale’s 12.93. Oh, Sale struck out 308 batters. Salazar? 145. Last year, the pitcher with the best K/9 in the majors was Dillon Maples with an incredible 18.56 K/9. Of courser, Maples threw just 5 1/3 innings. The Cubs were so impressed with Maples that they sent him back to AAA Iowa to start the 2018 season, where Maples carries a 16.2 K/9 this season.
This year, the major league leader in K/9 among all MLB pitchers is Silvino Bracho with an astounding 21.0 K/9. I’m betting that none of your teams have Bracho this year, or had Maples last year.
Percentage Owned in DFS
If you turn on Fantasy Sports radio, or read any fantasy site dealing with Daily Fantasy Baseball, you’ll hear/read about percentage ownership of each player. Apparently, if you are playing in a GPP (guaranteed prize pool) tournament, you are supposed to be concerned with the percentage of other teams that might own the player that you want. OK, so someone explain this one to me.
If you believe that a certain player is going to be the best performer at a certain position at his selected price, why should you pass on him because a bunch of other teams might feel the same way? Why pay more (or less) for someone who you believe will provide you with less points? Put another way, why does it matter what everyone else does? If your goal is to get the most points possible, and a you believe that a certain player will help you attain that goal, then by all means you ought to be picking him.
Let’s look at the thought process behind the “don’t pick the player because everyone else is going to have him.” Apparently, the thought is that if you take that player, and he performs as you expect, a good portion of the competition will have him as well. If he underperforms, then you aren’t in a good position. So, you are better off with a player less popular. Kind of like Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. Except Frost was right. Hear me out.
Let’s assume that your chosen player is popular and is taken by 55% of the players in your tournament. If he performs well, you and 55% of the competition are ahead of the rest of the pack who take someone other than your chosen player. In that case, you and the other 55% are now have a leg up on those 45%, and you are competing against the other 55%. Instead of nine players, you now have eight players to beat those other 55%. What’s not to like. There’s very little chance that your roster will match another player’s roster, player for player. And if it does, and you win, that’s quite all right. Half of the grand prize is far better than none of it.
If your chosen player underperforms, then you are in the same boat with the majority of the competition. So what? You were probably going to lose anyway, as there is one grand prize winner and thousands of losers. Better to lose with your chosen player rather than taking someone you didn’t want, but took only because you didn’t want to be in the majority.
Sometimes, the road less traveled does make all the difference, but it isn’t always a positive.
Best of luck,
Buster
