Manufacture Steals by Knowing Your Matchups

My friend Alex Zelvin over at Draftbug has a question for those of you who haven’t tried some of the freerolls over at his site: what are you doing? You waste plenty of time on other crappy websites, so why not try to win some money doing something that’s fun? He’s even going above and beyond with some advice for those of you who will actually take the time to participate in these daily contests.

Playing Match-ups in Daily Fantasy Baseball Contests

One of the great things about daily fantasy baseball contests like Draftbug is that there are a so many different angles that can impact your strategy.  Not only are you trying to figure out who the best players are, which games provide favorable situations to one team, and which players are priced attractively, but there are situations where some players match up particularly well against their opponent.

One of those situations is good base stealers against starting pitchers who are easy to steal against.  The first thing to understand about this is that while both pitcher and catcher impact the difficulty of stealing bases, the influence of the pitcher is greater.  Because of that (and to keep things simple), when I evaluate these match ups, I look at who the pitcher is, and ignore the catcher.  ‘Stolen bases against’ data tends to show very good consistency from year to year, so it’s definitely something with good predictive value.

Here are the “leaders” from 2008.  If you’re looking for a good player to pick in Draftbug, see whether any good base stealers are opposing anyone on this list:

Floyd
Jurrjens
D. Cabrera
Wakefield
Millwood
Webb
Danks
Feldman
Burnett
R. Johnson
Volquez
Maddux
G. Olson
Weaver
Pettitte
Snell
Lincecum

Others who would have made the list quite easily if they had started more games include:

Contreras
C. Young
Gorzelanny
Banks

A player like Juan Pierre could be a good play against almost anyone on this list.  Not only can he exploit their inability to prevent stolen bases, but he’ll rarely strike out against anyone, neutralize a large part of the edge that most good pitchers have.  And he doesn’t rely on home runs, so ground ball pitchers like Webb also lose the advantage they gain from that edge.  And at a price of only 84 in Draftbug, he’s a steal…