Daily Notes Explained
Here are some helpful notes & explanations on what you get from the daily notes on this substack every day. I will be adding on to this as I add new things.
Every day I have a script that takes the season’s updated Baseball Savant (a pitch-by-pitch dataset) data and does a bunch of calculations & leaderboards with. I then dump that into a blog post, and most days will talk briefly about some of the things that stand out. I’m able to pull this off every day thanks to the power of Python programming, Google Colab, and that unbelievable dataset that MLB puts out.
What Do You Get with a Paid Subscription?
I am a data scientist by trade, so I have plenty of skills that apply really well to fantasy baseball. Using that, I have developed a bunch of stuff that you won’t really find many other places. I have put the stuff that I think is most helpful behind the pay wall, which is just $7/month or $70/season for the 2022 season. This includes, but is not limited to:
Daily Projections (with DraftKings salaries & scores) Excel & a Tableau Dashboard)
Strikeout Prop Model Comparisons. Compares my K projection with FanDuel and DraftKings Sportsbook betting lines
My personal DraftKings player pools and cash lineups (not every day but when I have time!)
Hot Hitter Tracking (compares recent data with hitters’ career numbers in some underlying metrics to see who has elevated their game recently)
Daily hitter matchup ratings
Plate Discipline leaderboard
Pitch Mix and Velo Changes Tracker
Full daily and season-long pitcher and hitter data reports
Full access to my daily-updated algorithmic hitter and pitcher rankings
I’ve been adding on to this as the year goes by, and I will continue to refine and add on as time passes.
I will also be providing my team-by-team, player-by-player reviews & previews over the offseason. I did these the last two seasons for free, but plan on starting earlier and really taking my time with it this offseason - but only giving it away to paid subs. I hope this keeps my paid members around for the five-month offseason.
What Are The JA Rankings?
I have built a scoring system for hitters and pitchers that gives positive or negative points on every pitch thrown. For example, if there is a whiff, the pitcher would get positive points while the hitter receives negative. A home run would give positive points to the hitter and negative points to the pitcher. This applies to all events, so we’re granting points on every single pitch. The JA score reflects the RATE in which players score those points, so it’s not just a cumulative total that you see.
On the hitting side, you will see plate discipline be rewarded. Hitters that make tons of contact and take walks do well here, but the way to score points fast is to hit barrels that go for homers.
What Are the Magic Formulas Qualifiers?
I am looking for pitchers that have good
Strikeout rates
Walk rates
Ground-ball rates
If you can do all three of these things at the same time, you’re going to be successful. So in the notes we look to the last 3 weeks to see which pitchers are qualifying in all three of those categories, the parameters which were determined by me.
On the hitting side, it’s similar - I want to see low strikeout rates (under 20%) and high barrel rates (over 15%) happening at the same time. It’s not easy to do, but hitters that can do that are the elite.
I have also added more qualifiers to the premium part of the notes that loosens up the criteria bit to see which hitters are nearly qualifying.
DFS Tools
Lots of the paid stuff is focused on DFS, which I provide tools for. They are in the form of Tableau dashboards - which is a super great tool where you can go in and search, sort, and filter the projections and numbers how you want. I made this video to show off a few of those tools, I think it’ll help you learn how to use them to make your best DFS lineups.