MLB Expert Recap and Grading

Back again with the second version of our MLB Expert Recap and Grading. We added a few experts throughout the week and also dropped one. We will no longer pull picks from DFSonDemand. They lay out their picks in format that is not very conducive to us pulling the picks quickly. As for the additions, we have added DraftKings Playbook, DailyFantasyCafe, FantasyPros and ESPN’s Daily Notes. That takes our total numbers of experts up to 17. Be sure to check out our Consensus articles as well as our Lineup Construction articles.

In this article, I will give a brief recap of each day we gathered and graded the experts, including how the Industry Consensus picks did, highlighting which experts were at the top for the day and which players were only called out by one or two experts, but produced an “A+” grade. We will also review the overall standings and highlight the top experts so far this season. And finally, I will publish results of our Lineup Construction series.

As a reminder, we are currently gathering selections and publishing the MLB Industry Consensus articles and MLB Consensus Lineup Construction articles each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday during the season, so be sure to check back about an hour or so before the first pitch of the first game to get a look at the consensus picks and sample lineups for the day.

Overall Leaderboard

I’ll say it again this week. It’s early but I’ll lay out the top-3 after the first couple of weeks of the season. No change in the top two spots.

#1) Daily Overlay – BvP for MVP (Score: 3.63) maintains the top spot after week two. Stephen saw his score dip a bit but still has a firm grasp on the peak of the mountain..

#2) Daily Overlay – On the Hill (Score: 3.37) continues the clean sweep for our in-house writers again this week. Brad also saw a slight dip in his overall score this week.

#3) DailyRoto (Score: 3.36) was the biggest mover and shaker in week two. It is certainly not a surprise to see these guys up in the top-3 as DailyRoto made a strong showing in our grading last season.

Week in Review

Monday (April 11th)

The second Monday of the season was a solid day from the experts with five sites finishing at 4.0 or above. We almost had another expert at that threshold but DK Playbook fell just short at 3.94.

Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus continued its trend of middle of the road finishes. The Consensus came in 7th among the 14 graded experts on the day. A lot of A+ grades and a lot of failing grades.

A+ – Carlos Correa, Ginacarlo Stanton, Nelson Cruz, Colby Rasmus, Nick Tropeano, Wilson Ramos, Ryan Zimmerman, Daniel Murphy
F – Robinson Cano, Stephen Vogt, Devin Mesoraco, Lucas Duda, Ben Zobrist, Alcides Escobar, Kris Bryant, Mike Moustakas, Dexter Fowler, Salvador Perez, Zack Cozart, Preston Tucker, Seth Smith

Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.40) finished atop the Monday leaderboard. Three of their five picks earned an “A” or better grade.

#2A) Rotocurve (Score: 5.00) tied for the second spot. They made three selections, all starting pitchers, and hauled in an “A+”, a “B” and a “C”.

#2B) Moxyball – Cheat Sheet (Score: 5.00) was our other 2nd place finisher. Moxyball made two plays on Monday and scored one “A+” and one “F”.

Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Mike Trout (DailyRoto)
A+ – Kendrys Morales (DK Playbook)
A+ – Addison Russell (FantasyPros)
A+ – Ryan Rua (FantasyPros)
A+ – Jose Altuve (DailyRoto, RotoGrinders Consensus)

Tuesday (April 12th)

A big step backwards for the experts on Tuesday. Tuesday also brought us the first day using our new experts that were mentioned at the top. Overall, only one expert scored above 4.0 for the day.

Industry Consensus Picks
An extremely poor day for the Consensus. A 15th place finish out of seventeen graded experts and a 1.66 DO score will not yield high returns.

A+ – Brian McCann, David Ortiz, Francisco Lindor, Noah Syndergaard, Hunter Pence
F – Waaaaay too many to list. A total of 28 of the 38 picks finished in the failing category.

Top Experts of the Day
#1) DailyFantasySportsRankings.com (Score: 4.75) blew everyone out of the water on Tuesday. Not one other expert came close. DFSR.com made a total of 16 selections and seven of these scored an “A” or higher including six “A+” grades. They were the lone expert site to play Adrian Beltre.

#2) DailyFantasyCafe (Score: 3.90) made a splash in its debut to the Consensus. Half of their ten picks finished with an “A” or better. DFC was one of only two experts to play Logan Forsythe.

Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Adrian Beltre (DailyFantasySportsRankings.com)
A+ – J.J. Hardy (Scout)
A+ – Odubel Herrera (ESPN)
A+ – Logan Forsythe (FantasyPros, DailyFantasyCafe)
A+ – Marcus Semien (DailyFantasySportsRankings.com, Fantasy Alarm)

Wednesday (April 13th)

A fairly decent bounceback day for our experts on Wednesday. Some big scores with two guys finishing over 5.0 and a nice chunk that finished in that 3.0-4.0 range.

Industry Consensus Picks
Another long list of failing grades from the Consensus. Overall, the DO score was not horrible thanks to eight “A+” grades and four “A’s”. The 2.86 score placed the Consensus 11th for the day.

A+ – Miguel Montero, Brandon Belt, Carlos Gonzalez, Carlos Carrasco, Chris Davis, Trevor Story, Nolan Arenado
F – For the second day in a row, there are too many to list. 23 of the 36 picks finished below the pass/fail line.

Top Experts of the Day
#1) Daily Overlay – On the Hill (Score: 6.50) hauls in the top spot for Wednesday. Brad made his usual four selections and garnered two “A+” grades (Carrasco, Eickhoff) and two “B” grades (Rea, Wood).

#2) DailyRoto (Score: 5.21) came in second for the day. A solid 16 of their 29 picks scored an “A” or better. DailyRoto was the only site to play Jose Altuve, Xander Bogaerts and Kris Bryant, all of whom scored an “A+” grade.

Sleepers of the Day

A+ – Mark Teixeira (DailyFantasySportsRankings.com)
A+ – Jose Altuve (DailyRoto)
A+ – Xander Bogaerts (DailyRoto)
A+ – Kris Bryant (DailyRoto)
A+ – Ian Kinsler (Scout)
A+ – Shane Greene (FantasyPros)
A+ – Jared Saltalamacchia (FantasyPros)
A+ – Domingo Santana (FantasyPros)

Friday (April 15th)

Not a stellar day to cap off the 2nd week of the season for the experts. Only seven of our 17 finished above 3.0 for the day.

Industry Consensus Picks
It’s going to be another “too many to list” section below when we call out the failing grades. Overall, the Consensus brought home a 2.51 which is good for a 10th place finish.

A+ – Chris Sale, Clayton Kershaw, Joe Ross, David Ortiz, Edwin Encarnacion, Mark Trumbo, Bryce Harper
F – Twenty-two of the 37 picks finished with a failing grade.

Top Experts of the Day
#1) Daily Overlay – BvP for MVP (Score: 5.38) finished off the week with the top spot. Half of Stephen’s eight picks finished with an “A+” grade.

#2) DailyRoto (Score: 3.70) takes a silver medal to the house on Friday. It was all or nothing for DailyRoto as they made 33 total picks and ten scored an “A+” and thirteen scored an “F”.

Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Stephen Vogt (DailyRoto)
A+ – Jason Kipnis (DailyRoto, Rotocurve)
A+ – Jonathan Villar (DailyRoto)
A+ – Matt Holliday (DailyRoto)
A+ – Ryan Braun (DailyRoto)
A+ – Jonathan Schoop (RotoGrinders Consensus)
A+ – Albert Pujols (DailyOverlay BvP for MVP, Fantasy Alarm)
A+ – Kike Hernandez (Scout, DK Playbook)
A+ – Dallas Keuchel (FantasyPros)
A+ – Aledmys Diaz (FantasyPros)

Consensus Lineup Construction Review

We weren’t quite able to replicate the success that we had in week one. That said, we still turned a small profit in the Cash games on FanDuel. I had an odd night on Friday in the GPP format. I finished right on the cash line but still managed to lose $1.17. Apparently a lot of folks finished on that 147 number and those small dollar prizes got divied up in minuscule chunks. Brad had a rough week on the DraftKings side of things. Just a matter of time before he gets on track.

Here is a list of the “rules” we are following when constructing lineups:

1. Matt will make two separate lineups for FanDuel and Brad will do the same for DraftKings, one for Cash games and one for GPP tournaments. Stephen will contribute a FanDuel lineup when the urge strikes him.
2. For Cash games, we will build our entire lineup from the Consensus list using any player listed regardless of what tier they are in. This was a bit difficult this week with some of the split slates. If we have to go off the board for Cash, we will make sure to use a player that was picked by at least one expert.
3. For GPP games, we are allowed to choose up to two players that are not on the Consensus list.
4. We can modify any lineup as we see fit for any late-breaking news updates that open up good options even if they are not on the Consensus list. I used this option on Friday with a late minute switch when Posey was not in the lineup and the weather in Cincy scared me a bit.

Weekly/Overall Results

FanDuel

As I mentioned above, we came out with a positive ROI in the Cash game with Stephen and I cashing in four of the six 50/50’s we played. The GPP was less successful however. Cashed in three of the six though I don’t considering losing $1.17 cashing but we’ll chalk it up in the “win” column.

DraftKings

Brad was not able to find much success in DK this week. He was able to salvage a bit by cashing in his 50/50 on Friday. No doubt in my mind that Brad gets it going this week.

The grid below shows a recap of the results so far this season. A dip in the numbers for the week but still flashing a positive ROI for the season. Stephen is setting the pace with a positive return in both Cash and GPP formats. A new week starts tomorrow and hopefully we can bump the numbers back to where they were after the first week.

Ownership Percentage Tracking

Just as Brad did for the NBA, we will track the ownership percentages for MLB. A part of daily fantasy sports strategy is understanding ownership percentages and being able to predict ownership percentages prior to entering contests especially for GPP tournaments where you might want to be contrarian by selecting lower owned players or fading highly owned players depending on the payout structure and size of the contest.

We had a hypothesis at DailyOverlay that we could utilize the Industry Consensus list to help predict ownership percentages with the assumption being that players who were selected by more experts would likely be higher owned picks in Cash and GPP tournaments.

Below is the current table showing the data we have tracked this first two weeks. Results are using DraftKings Double-Up or 50/50s for Cash and large field multi-entry tournaments for GPP. The Count column shows the number of times a player was selected by the experts for a given day. The Cash % column shows the average ownership percentage of those players in a Cash game. The GPP % column shows the average ownership percentage of those players in a GPP tournament. The Total column shows the number of occurrences that a player was selected that many times.

We tracked ownership percentages in the NBA and our original hypothesis appeared to be correct that DFS players can use the Industry Consensus list to help them predict ownership percentages for the NBA. That being said, we think this will translate to the MLB, hence the reason we will track ownership percentages here. We will continue to track and monitor this. As long as the data provides some good insight, we will provide this data.