One thing I’ve wondered about since I started playing daily fantasy baseball was how to best handle the Rockies while they are away from Coors Field. Are they a team to target with a pitcher, deploy as a sneaky low-owned stack, just ignore? I’ll be using some custom Fantasy Labs trends to shed some light on the subject from both perspectives.
We’ll start with whether or not the Rockies’ batters are in play when they are on the road. By applying the Home/Visitor filter, I can see that they have a -0.48 Plus/Minus collectively on the road. Not good, especially considering the overall Plus/Minus for visiting teams is only -0.02. I’m not willing to say at this point that it automatically makes them a good team to target with your pitchers, though. Maybe their salaries are just inflated from playing so many games at Coors that it causes them to play below their projections on the road, without being terrible in a general sense. We’ll look at that in a minute though.
Obviously, the altitude at Coors Field inflates power numbers, making home run upside the biggest reason to target the Rockies at home. The big question then is, how does their power translate on the road? In 2014, the NL leading ballparks in total home runs after Coors were Miller, Chase, Dodger Stadium, Citizens, and Great American. Overall, games played in these five ball parks added 0.07 points to Plus/Minus. The Rockies grade positively at Miller and Great American, but the overall Plus/Minus came in at -0.37 for these five parks.
So how about pitching matchups? Do Tulo, Dickerson, Blackmon, Morneau, CarGo and the gang really turn into pumpkins away from Coors to the point where it’s an exploitable matchup? On both sites, the answer turns out to be yes.
DraftKings, pitchers vs. Rockies:
FanDuel, pitchers vs. Rockies:
In fact, you know how you are always hearing people say you should target pitchers against the Astros because they strikeout so often? Well…
The Rockies are right there with them! And when you apply a “Versus Lefty Pitchers” filter, they actually become the worst:
The highest Plus/Minus in the “Versus Righty Pitchers” filter is a +2.14, meaning that the Rockies, away from home, facing a lefty is the single best matchup for a pitcher to have. I’ll be interested to watch the ownership numbers the next time this matchup comes up. My feeling is that because of the premium prices usually attached to Rockies hitters, people are a little more scared of them than they should be, keeping ownership levels down.
