Early Season MLB DFS Pitchers to Target — Matt Shoemaker

Similar to season long fantasy baseball, one of the biggest keys to early season MLB DFS is identifying undervalued players who are set to have a ‘breakout season’. Everyone knows that Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout are great plays basically every night, but if you were able to get in early on guys like Trea Turner, Gary Sanchez, Jake Lamb, Danny Duffy, and Jon Gray last year before their prices and the rest of the DFS community adjusted you had a serious leg up on your competition.

The difference in identifying value in DFS vs. Season-Long is that strikeouts are king in DFS. Obviously, we want our pitchers to limit hits, walks and runs, but if we look at DraftKings scoring specifically, the best way to rack up points quickly is via the strikeout.

Let’s assume we have two pitchers with the same DraftKings price throwing on the same night, and they both end up going 6 innings, giving up 5 hits, 2 walks and 2 earned runs. Let’s also assume they both end up receiving the win. However, one pitcher strikes out 4 batters and one strikes out 8. The pitcher with 4 strikeouts will earn 17.3 DraftKings points, which would be a decent outing, but the pitcher with 8 strikeouts would earn 25.3 DraftKings points. Those 8 points can be the difference between taking down a GPP and finishing somewhere in the 100th-200th place range. As I said, strikeouts are KING.

Taking into account the importance of strikeouts, let’s look at the first of my favorite breakout pitchers for the 2017 MLB DFS season.

Matt Shoemaker, Los Angeles Angels

Let me just get this out there first. Shoemaker, AKA Shoe, is arguably my favorite pitcher to roster in the entire league. So while I’ll definitely admit some bias here, this guy has incredible stuff, particularly his split finger fastball, and remained underpriced and underowned for essentially the entire 2016 season.

Shoe has always been a talented fella, but he has had his ups and downs since entering the league, most notably struggling with giving up the long ball. Until last year, he often relied too much on his fastball, which he struggled to keep down in the zone leading to some homerun issues (as evidenced by his 24 HR allowed in 135 innings in 2015 despite pitching in Anaheim).

In 2017, something changed. Shoe began to throw his split finger.. A LOT. Starting in mid-May, he had 11 starts where he threw his split finger nearly 50% of the time. Why does this matter? Because his split finger was downright filthy. Using Pitch f/x data, only 17 pitchers had a non-fastball that graded out as well or better than Shoe’s split finger. This list includes names like Clayton Kershaw, Jose Fernandez, Corey Kluber, Kyle Hendricks and Masahiro Tanaka, all players routinely priced several thousand dollars higher than Shoe on DraftKings. Check out the filthy-ness of Shoe’s split finger in his performance last year against the White Sox (Complete game 6 hit shutout, 13 Ks):

Why so much focus on the split finger, you ask? The strikeouts, the beautiful strikeouts. From the moment Shoe started throwing his split finger so frequently, his ability to get swings and misses, and subsequently strikeouts, skyrocketed. Starting in mid-May, he had 9 starts with at least a 25% strikeout rate. He also had 13 starts with at least a 12% swinging strike rate. For reference, only 14 starting pitchers in Major League Baseball had a strikeout rate of 25% or greater last year, and only 10 had swinging strike rates of 12% or greater. These are truly elite numbers.

It’s also not as if Shoe was just a strikeout guy who struggled in other areas. Post mid-May, he only had 4 starts where he gave up 4 or more runs (and never more than 5), including road starts against the Yankees, Red Sox, Royals and Indians.

Just for shits and gigs, here’s one more sick performance by Shoe last year against the Orioles (7 2/3 innings, 3 hits, 0 runs, 12 Ks):

Don’t get me wrong , Shoe is not on the same level as the truly elite starters yet. His other pitches are basically just average, and he gets himself into trouble when he doesn’t keep the ball down in the zone. He gives up a little bit too much hard contact (and too many line drives) particularly to left-handed hitting. He is also drastically better at home than on the road. At home last season, he flashed a 3.04 xFIP and nearly a 27% strikeout rate. Those numbers tumbled to 4.63 and just 16.6%, respectively, on the road. To be completely honest, I haven’t quite been able to pinpoint the reasoning behind these massive splits. His batted ball data is essentially the same at home vs on the road aside from generating more ground balls at home (and actually giving up more home runs). I know some in the industry will cite the ‘Marine Layer’ in Anaheim, but that’s not really my thing.

All in all, I think Shoe has clearly proven he has the talent to succeed anywhere, and if he can figure out whatever issues are plaguing him on the road, we are going to see his price spike tremendously on DFS sites. Even if his road struggles remain, this is something DFS players can take advantage of. He has proven to be a truly elite pitcher for DFS purposes at home, and those road struggles will keep his price and ownership far lower than they should be when he is pitching in Anaheim.