With just a single game on the docket tomorrow morning, I thought this would be a great opportunity to introduce readers to reUP Sports’ Daily Fantasy Baseball (DFB) pitching matchups feature. As a new site, this is going to be a work in progress with some trial and error for the first few weeks of the baseball season. If there is anything that you think would be helpful and would like to see incorporated into this feature, drop us a line and let us know.

The struggle early in the season is statistical scarcity. We have to base our statistical reads on last year or career stats, but it can also be an advantage for DFB players who have been doing their research. Who’s banged up? Who’s made adjustments (mechanical or pitch usage)? Who are the good young pitchers at the back of some team’s rotations? I try not to pay attention to most spring statistics, except for maybe velocity increases. You can’t really fake throwing the ball harder. 

I like to use rate stats over counting stats for a couple of reasons. One, it makes players easier to compare. A 20% K-rate is a 20% K-rate whether you’ve thrown 50 innings or 150. Here’s an example that helps explain another reason: If 2 pitchers each throw an inning and strike out a batter each without walking a batter, you know they both have an identical 9.0 K/9. But if Pitcher A retired the side in order, he has a 33% K-rate, while Pitcher B, who faced 5 batters, only has a 20% K-rate. Now you know that Pitcher A was more efficient. It doesn’t work exactly the same with BB%, but it’s simplest to keep everything in the same format.

We’re going to employ Home/Road splits and occasionally Lefty/Righty when teams are composed heavily of hitters from a single side of the plate (think Brewers) in our daily pitcher analysis. We’ll also consider the most recent starts for each pitcher, team defense, and park factors. Similarly, we’ll check in on H/R, L/R, and L7 day splits for opposing offenses as well as they become available.

You’ll read a lot about K% and BB%, which are fairly obvious. Batted ball rates such as LD (Line Drive)% and IFFB (Infield Fly Ball)% will help us figure out which pitchers are getting squared up frequently and who’s not. GB/FB (Ground Ball/Fly Ball) ratio will help us understand who has a fighting chance in some extremely batter friendly parks. wRC+ (weighted Runs Created plus) is a great league and park adjusted measure used to scale wOBA (weighted On Base Average), which is an incredible total offensive metric for players and teams. If that seems like too much, you don’t really have to understand the metric as much as know that a player/team with a 150 wRC+ has created 50% more runs than a team with a 100 wRC+, which is average. Higher than 100 = good, below 100 = bad.

ERA is the mainstream metric for measuring pitchers. ERA tells us how many earned runs a team gives up when a certain pitcher is on the mound. It’s not the greatest measure of how well a pitcher has pitched or might pitch going forward. In place of ERA, you’ll be seeing SIERA (Skill Interactive ERA). Generally, SIERA > xFIP > FIP > ERA as an estimator. It works on the same scale as ERA, meaning that whatever would constitute a good ERA, constitutes a good SIERA. Where SIERA is not available (Home/Road splits), we’ll use xFIP (expected Fielding Independent Pitching), which runs on the same scale as well.

This game write up will be longer much longer than most for introductory purposes.

What little I know about the Tokyo Dome is that it supposedly plays as a hitter’s park, though exact MLB park factors are unavailable. We’ll handle this as a road game for both teams. There may also be additional elements that come with playing in Japan that are difficult to factor, although both teams have been over there for almost a week already.

We know that both were weak offensive teams last year, but enough has changed that I’d feel uncomfortable putting much value into last year’s team offensive or defensive metrics. For the next few weeks, statistical information is limited.

McCarthy is very saber cognizant and an advocate of advanced metrics. They helped turn his career around as he changed his arm angle and pitch usage to go from an after-thought a year ago to Oakland’s opening day pitcher in 2012. He may still be under-rated if people assume it was just the park. He’s now a GB pitcher and although he won’t get you a ton of K’s, his control is impeccable. If there were DFB games running today, I would probably be able to look at his price tags and tell you he’s a good to great value.

King Felix is elite, but he’s not going to surprise anyone. He’s generally safe and a great source of K’s and control, but you’re going to pay for it. Offensive parks won’t hurt him too much either as he has one of the more elite GB/FB rates.