If you have been a subscriber here the past month and have seen my version of the DFS MLB Playbook, you’ll know that I am slightly obsessed with contact profiles as a leading indicator for identifying potential plays for the day. We focus on a few different contact metrics to help us determine if a player is “seeing the ball”. If you ever played Little League, you know that the first step to hitting a baseball is seeing it. See it. Hit it. Right?

Well, at this level, there are guys on the mound that are doing everything they can to make sure that the hitter doesn’t see it well and then don’t hit the ball. And they are the best in the business at doing so (well, some of them).

SEE IT

We’ll use contact rate (ct%) to determine if player is seeing the ball well. This metric allows us to determine how often a player is putting the ball in play and not striking out.  The calculation here is ((AB-K) / AB).  League average is around 78% and the best hitters are at an 85% or higher clip.  Anybody topping 90% is special.  So, we’ll look at all hitters’ season-long ct% and then see what it looks like over the last seven days and 14 days to get an idea of more recent returns. Now, not all players that we target have a high contact rate. In fact, the power hitters are going to be much lower on this list. We’ll get to how we determine which of those players we will eventually target.

HIT IT

So, now that we have contact rate to help us determine how a player is seeing the ball and putting it in play, we can determine how well a particular player is making said contact.  The measures we use for this are primarily ground ball (GB%), line drive (LD%) and fly ball (FB%) splits. We’ll also reference a Ron Shandler special over at BaseballHQ called hard-contact rate (HctX). Let’s discuss these:

GB% -- if a hitter has a high ground ball rate, there is little chance for extra-base hits. You’ll see this often from players like Billy Hamilton and Dee Gordon. Top of the order hitters with little power. Those guys benefit from keeping the ball on the ground so they can utilize their wheels to get on base and subsequently wreak havoc on the base paths.

LD% -- if a hitter is hitting line drives, he is seeing the ball well and “squaring it up” to use a baseball term. This is a great metric to determine a players’ contact profile and we’ll put a lot of stock into line drive hitters.

FB% -- if a hitter has a high fly ball rate, we are hoping this players are power hitters. If not, it’s a bad thing. The power hitters need to get lift on the ball to generate home runs, right?  Similarly, the punch-and-judy hitters who are hitting fly balls are likely flying out quite a bit. See: Willie Mays Hayes in Major League.

HctX -- this is a measure that is free from the trajectory of the baseball and focuses totally on how hard a player is hitting the ball.  The average is set to 100 so anything well above that is a good measure and anything far below it is a bad one.

So, we’ll take these measures and view them from a season-long perspective and also from a recent one (last seven and 14 days).  Knowing the “type” of player is important when analyzing the contact profiles.  What is also very important from a DFS standpoint is the opposing pitcher’s contact profiles.

If a power-profiled hitter is hitting a lot of fly balls (over 45% is high) and a pitcher is also giving up a lot of fly balls, and those two are playing at a hitter-friendly ballpark or one that the wind is blowing out to any field - we are taking notice. Is this a guarantee that they will hit a home run? Umm, no. I think you know that having played this game long enough. We are simply doing everything we can to identify players that give us an advantage over the competition. For illustration sake, here is a look at five players with favorable FB% matchups in yesterday’s games and their results:

Nelson Cruz (45%) vs. Ricky Nolasco (46%) -- 3-for-4, RBI

Kris Bryant (47%) vs. Jerad Eickhoff (47%) -- 2-for-4

Miguel Montero (46%) vs. Jerad Eickhoff (47%) -- 1-for-2

Jed Lowrie (47%) vs. Hector Santiago (48%) -- Did not play

Yonder Alonso (49%) vs. Hector Santiago (48%) -- 2-for-3, HR (vs. Santiago)

If you played Alonso based on this metric, you had a nice value play with a great return. Remember, one home run on DraftKings is 14 points.

Remember, it takes two to tango, so just because a hitter has an elevated FB%, if he’s facing a pitcher who keeps the ball out of the air, their chances of success are much less to actually come through with a home run. Here is an example from yesterday. It didn’t help that both Jameson Taillon and Marcus Stroman pitched in hitters parks with the wind playing a factor, but to illustrate the point that groundball pitchers can impact even the best power hitters from lifting off:

Jameson Taillon (22%) vs. Adam Duvall (48%) -- 2-for-4, 2B

Jameson Taillon (22%) vs. Scott Schebler (50%) -- 0-for-4

Marcus Stroman (20%) vs. Chris Carter (54%) - 2-for-4, 2 1B

We will also take a look at the opposing pitchers’ LD% against. This gives us a gauge on how well he is fooling hitters and avoiding hard contact. So, if a pitcher is giving up a high number of LD% and a hitter is hitting a high number of LD% and/or displaying an elevated HctX, we’re taking notice.

Now you have a little more understanding of how and why we value the contact profiles for both hitters and pitchers to help identify potential plays for the day. Remember, just like anything in DFS baseball, it takes one hung pitch or cement mixer to make all of the numbers go bye-bye and are rendered useless. That’s the beauty of this game.