At FantasyLabs, we believe that we have the best daily fantasy sports tools and data available. We also realize that these tools and data are only as beneficial as our ability to communicate their functionality and worth.
With this in mind, our Trend of the Day series features articles that walk subscribers each weekday through an important trend, created with our free Trends tool. Also, shortly after you create a trend, you will be able to see it under the “My Trends” column in our Player Models.
MLB Trend of the Day: Cheap Tournament Batters at Good Ballparks
When researching, I let FantasyLabs’ metrics to a lot of the work for me. In particular, I rely on our Park Factor and Bargain Rating to help me find players who are in prime spots and relatively cheap, whether I’m playing in cash games or tournaments.
Let’s focus on tournaments and look at how to use these two metrics in order to find batters to roster.
Step 1: Trends > Park Factor > 90 to 100
To find batters in especially good spots, let’s look only at those batters in the top decile in Park Factor.
With this filter alone, we already have a strong Plus/Minus. Also, all 6,008 batters to match this trend previously played at Coors Field. This shows the extent of the edge that Coors players provide.
Step 2: Trends > Bargain Rating > 90 to 100
Once again, let’s look at the top decile, this time for Bargain Rating. Ultimately, we want to find discounted batters who are cheap on a particular platform.
We’re using FanDuel for this trend, and these two metrics together result in a +3.31 Plus/Minus in 980 instances.
Cash or Tournament?
If you wanted to use this trend to find batters for cash games, you could target batters who hit first through fourth and do very well.
If, though, you’re using this trend to find tournament players, then you should probably look elsewhere in the lineup, especially since batters at Coors tend to be chalky anyway.
Step 3: Player Filters > Lineup Order > 4 to 6.
Let’s look at the batters who still provide value but don’t bat in the top-third of the order
As you can see, we are still easily in the green.
Results and Current Matches
There are three matches for today: Daniel Murphy and Wilson Ramos of the Nationals and Rockies slugger Nolan Arenado. All three are expected to start (per our Lineups page) and could be used as non-stacked batters with upside in tournament lineups.
