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Take a peek at one of RotoBaller's most useful Premium fantasy tools - the Hitter Matchups tool. Utilize data points such as batter vs. pitcher stats, weather, lineup position and prices on DFS sites to create the best lineup.
Baseball is a beautiful game, and as lovely as it is to witness a great pitching performance, there's nothing like seeing a great piece of hitting. Of course, even the best hitters will likely fail at the dish around 65-70% of the time over the course of the season. While this lovely sport is truly a marathon, we've all reaped the rewards of fantastic matchups and been burned by terrible ones.
At RotoBaller, we know that knowledge is power and we try to provide the best Premium Tools to help you get every edge possible. While pitchers are important, much of your effort will go into putting together an offense that can rake. Some of you may use this tool to assist you in deciding which outfielder to rotate into your season-long team's starting lineup, while others may use it to squash their competition in a DFS contest.
Our Hitter Matchup tool helps you take a magnifying glass out and really see what this one day out of the whole season is about. This helps you make better start/sit decisions, and while the focus is on hitters, it can help give you a sense of what the pitching landscape looks like for the day. All of the data is set in one easy-to-use table that you can sort to your heart's desire, meaning you don't need to weigh down your browser with 20 tabs in the pursuit of that perfect lineup.
Set The Stage For Success
Before one even dives into the actual numbers, we have to ask ourselves what our goal is. As alluded to earlier, this tool can be used for many purposes! Your first decision will be whether you want to see all hitters or just certain positions. You can select and deselect whichever positions you like just by clicking, and the tool will automatically update and reflect the change.
Next, you're going to want to know whether the player is in the lineup, correct? Okay, well that's an easy one to work in, but we're better than that and also way too impatient to wait until lineups are released to begin researching for the day. Right underneath the positional tabs, you will see a very helpful threesome of buttons that deal with lineups:
Selecting "All" will do just that, you will be able to scroll through and see every player in the database and what their outlook is. "Confirmed" will show players who are locked into starting lineups as reported by their teams, and you'll also see what their batting slot is with a green highlight. "Projected" shows hitters that have been playing lately and their usual spot in the order, but the value will be greyed out to be sure you know it's not locked in yet. Remember, green means go.
The Price is Right!
This aspect of the tool doesn't require much explanation, but it's critical to those of you who play DFS. We grab the prices from FanDuel, DraftKings and Yahoo -- the three major DFS sites -- and bring them to you in one-stop-shop fashion:
This allows you to not only identify great value plays for each site, but also pick out which site is best to use a player on if you run contests on multiple DFS sites. If FanDuel and Yahoo have Eric Thames priced relatively high but DraftKings is noticeably lower on him for the day, then you can get exposure to him on DK without bending over backward. And of course, you can run these all on top of having the table sorted by position or by lineup status. Again, you won't need to have more than one tab open to make this work for you!
I Never Thought I'd See You Again!
The ol' Batter vs. Pitcher (BvP) debate runs rather deep in fantasy circles, with some swearing by it, "he's got his number!" and others writing it off as not being predictive. We respect all views, but we will always err on the side of "let's include this" rather than leaving you in the dark. And that's where you get these lovely datasets:
I've sorted it by at-bats in the above image since I do like seeing which guys boast useful sample sizes, but you can use batting average, home runs, RBI, stolen bases and OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage). While we always have to be aware that past ABs will have different context to them -- How many years ago was it? Where were they playing? Was either party hurt at the time? -- it's all part of the bigger picture when trying to determine who could perform on that day.
Rain or Shine! Wait, Rain?
I know this April has led to many a frustrated owner staring down at a litany of postponed games, so getting the weather report is as important as ever. While clear skies are ideal, sometimes you can win out by gambling on a star player who has questionable weather conditions, with everyone else shying away toward calmer waters. The tool also allows you to find the time of the first pitch and whether a hitter has a handedness advantage over the competition!
And now, I'm going to make the dangerous assumption that you like advantages in this wild game of ours. Here's the link! If you haven't signed up yet and can't use it, how about you use this Free One Week Trial and see how long it takes for you to bookmark it. Once you've fallen head over heels in love, support us and help yourself by signing up for a PREMIUM ROTOBALLER MEMBERSHIP and gain access to ALL of our awesome tools! Remember, this was just highlighting the power of one little piece of the gorgeous RotoBaller Premium puzzle.
