As we’re growing and publishing more content all around (very exciting), I’ve decided to make a post every Friday afternoon of the content from the previous week, just in case you’ve missed anything.
Here we go (Mario 64 voice)…
General
– DFS Multi-Lineup/Exposure Tool & My Lineups Page
Fantasy Labs co-founder Jonathan Bales gives a sneak peek into our new mutiple lineup and exposures tools, as well as the new, upcoming “My Lineups” page. Check out the video!
– Aristotle, Confidence, and DFS, by Bryan Mears
Of course, this user didn’t go 100% risky either. Antonio Brown was the highest-owned player on the slate and was included in this million-dollar lineup. What’s important to note from the above situation – although this isn’t really the point of that paradox, so I’m stretching here – is that you can be both safe and risky. In fact, that’s exactly what you’ll need to do to take down a tournament. The point I’m making isn’t to choose either/or; it’s to get out of the middle. The new millionaire didn’t stick to one side – in fact, he went as extreme as you can go, rostering an incredibly risky player in Thompson, while rostering an incredibly safe player in Brown.
NFL
– The NFL DFS Year in Review: RBs on DraftKings, by Mitchell Block
In this series, I will be looking at every position and how players performed at different price points and under certain circumstances over the course of the past year. If you’re the type of player that is apt to lean towards always using a cheap quarterback or paying up for Rob Gronkowski, this may be a good time to see how such strategies worked out as a whole and if there are/were more optimal ways to approach your lineup construction from week to week.
– Video: Wild Card Round Lineup Review, by CSURAM88
Watch Fantasy Labs co-founder CSURAM88 break down his NFL Wildcard Round lineup on DraftKings.
– Ownership Lessons from the NFL DFS Wild Card Round, by JayCabay12
Also, I think last week is a good example of how aware we need to be of the field that we are playing against. The higher stakes you enter, the more likely you are to run into sharper players. Also, the larger the field, the more lineups we need to beat. That one seems obvious, but I am not sure that it is to the public. Some would consider Chris Thompson a foolish play. However, I am not sure if there is such thing as a “dumb play” on a four-game slate when you are playing against over 150,000 other lineups.
– Debating Every Position of the Divisional Round NFL DFS Slate, by JayCabay12 & Bill Monighetti
Jon may very well introduce a QB that Bill loves this week. And that’s the whole goal of this exercise – doing so will force Bill to look at all aspects of that QB and truly form a well-rounded opinion on the play. Or perhaps find a different QB to argue for that he wasn’t initially on because of the first one. It’s something that we hope our users will do in the future, as we really do believe it’s a useful process, but for now, we’ll do the heavy hitting for you.
– 3 Vital DraftKings Trends for the NFL Divisional Round, by Graham Barfield
Regardless, I think Olsen is the play at tight end this weekend. Seattle actually gave up +3.6 points over salary expectation to opposing tight ends on the year and finished the regular season ranked 26th in Football Outsiders DVOA vs. opposing tight ends. In the above trend are Olsen’s five previous matchups against teams that surrender greater than 3.5 points above expectation to tight ends. He’s beaten his salary-based (expected points) in every single one of those matchups.
– NFL DFS: What Have You Done For Me Lately?, by Kevin Cole
I think most DFS players realize that you shouldn’t base your forecasts solely on the previous week’s results, knowing that a single game is too small of a sample. But what about two games? Three games? Maybe even the last five games? Now we’re entering the territory of the mythical “hot streak”. It seems reasonable to place a higher value on players who have been more productive over a number of recent games. But it that the case?
I attempted to answer that question by looking back at the historical data (2000-2014).
– NFL DFS Divisional Round Breakdown, by Mitchell Block
Speaking of Brady, his numbers have been down of late. He’s now failed to top 20 DK points in a game in over a month. Now tasked with facing off against a Kansas City defense that has allowed only two games of 20-plus DK points over the previous 12 games and there is certainly concern surrounding his ceiling. He had a great run through the playoffs last season – totaling 10 touchdown passes in three games – and with the Patriots running game in shambles, he’ll likely be forced to air it out some. With the low total posted by Vegas, I don’t envision the Patriots needing to score a ton to come out on top in this matchup though, which may keep Belichick’s playcalling fairly conservative.
NBA
– NBA Stacking: Cleveland Cavaliers, by Bill Monighetti
Having completed an article looking at the Warriors’ stacking options last week, this seems like a good opportunity to check on their 2014-2015 NBA Finals opponents, the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavs are finally healthy, having recently gotten Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert back, so the team is a bit different than it was back in October/November. Still, between this year and last year, we should have enough data to get an idea of who works well together and who doesn’t for DFS purposes on Cleveland’s roster.
– True DvP: Opponent Plus/Minus, 1/11/16, by Bryan Mears
Bryan updates the True DvP data.
– What’s More Important in NBA DFS: Matchup or Pace?, by Bryan Mears
This article will look at the correlation between True DvP (or Opponent Plus/Minus) and two factors: a team’s defensive rating – defined as points allowed per 100 possessions – and their pace, or possessions per game. I did it for each position, as they potentially could see the effects of those things differently.
– NBA DFS: Monitoring the Minutes, Volume 7, by Mitchell Block
Taking all of this into account, any time we see a player receive a change in playing time over a stretch longer than a game or two, we should be taking note. Each week in the space below I’ll take a look at a few players that have had a noticeable change in playing time – whether positive or negative – throughout the past week or two. I’ll attempt to flesh out the reason(s) behind the change, determine if this change has been correlating into an increase or decrease in fantasy production and how long we can expect this change in playing time to continue.
– NBA Trend Testing: Pro Trends (Count), by Bill Monighetti
With our Trends tool, you can see current and historical matches for players in matchups that meet the specified criteria. This makes it pretty easy to track performance within the result set. In this series, I thought it might be cool to take it one step further. I will be creating a Trend early in the week, playing the “Current Matches” in my lineups throughout the week on FanDuel and then reviewing the Trend at the end of the week.
