As I mentioned Monday, I joined the FanDuel.com content staff and will be providing them with a couple Daily Fantasy columns each week. (My first column on interesting DFS stats goes up over there today after noon, so keep an eye out!)
So in my research for my columns, I’ll be coming across some interesting tidbits that I think would be interesting for my readers over here, with the understanding that the Fantasy players over here are for both traditional leagues and for Daily Fantasy players.
Specifically, I decided to see which MLB teams were churning out the best starting pitchers on the whole for Daily Fantasy play.
DFS Stats for FanDuel Starting Pitchers by Team
I posted the table below, which shows the average Daily Fantasy points (per FanDuel’s scoring) for each MLB team’s starting rotations. I totaled up the DFS points given for wins, innings pitched, earned runs allowed and strikeouts for each team, then divided them by the team’s total games to get the DFS points per game for each team.I thought the Pirates being on top of this list was pretty interesting, obviously on the backs of Gerrit Cole and Francisco Liriano, and the Cardinals and Mets weren’t really a big surprise to me either.
[table id=89 /]
But to see the Indians at No. 2 was pretty shocking, although it makes sense considering last year’s Cy Young winner, Corey Kluber, is on the staff, along with Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar. All three are pluses in the strikeouts category, and no other starting staff is even within 10 percent of them.
On the other end of the spectrum, it makes sense that Colorado would be on the bottom, coupling their bad pitcher’s park with a struggling pitching staff. But look at the second-worst team, Miami!?! With that pitcher’s park, it’s weird to see them parked right next to Colorado on the “bad” list.
David Phelps, Tom Koehler and Dan Haren are the staff leaders with nine or more starts apiece, but each of them have a K/9 under 6.25, which is just not good for DFS purposes.
Seeing Boston and Toronto in the bottom seven also makes my heart feel good, considering I’m a Rays fan. But it’s also interesting that Drew Hutchison is a pitcher with some of the best run support in the majors. I expect that run support to drop at some point, so DFS buyer beware!
Let me know if there are any other kinds of breakdowns you’d like to see. I have some requests in to our FanDuel team for some different DFS stats, so I’ll share more with you then. If you have some questions for me, feel free to hit me up @DavidGonos and I’d be happy to help!