MLB DFS Strategy: Why I Fade Coors Field

Mark Kieffer gives some tips on how to be a successful and profitable MLB DFS player in the fifth part of his MLB strategy series.

This is the next installment of my MLB DFS Strategy Series. If you missed the first one about Bankroll Management and Contest Selection you can check it out here. The second installment about Contest Selection and Single Entry success is here. The most recent installment about leverage can be found here.

Hello, RotoBallers, and thanks for taking the time to read this MLB DFS strategy piece! If you're here, it's likely because you want to be a better DFS player and learn more about how to be a sustainable DFS player who doesn't have to deposit more money in their account every week.

So far in this series you've read about bankroll management and contest selection. Last time I talked about how to find leverage in tournaments. Today I am going to discuss why I fade Coors Field (gasp!)

The Background

If you know baseball (and maybe even if you don't), you know that Coors Field in Denver, Colorado is the best run-scoring environment in baseball. The altitude carries the ball, affects what happens to certain types of pitches, add typically the Rockies have poor pitching, and you get a recipe for runs.

When people play DFS they want to stack teams that they think will score runs. Usually, the projected highest run total on the evening happens at a game in Coors Field. We should stack Coors Field every time we can, right?

The short answer is no, but let's dive into this a little further so I can prove that I am not crazy!

What impact does stacking a team playing in Coors have?

DFS providers know that games played at Coors are of high interest due to high run totals. To account for this, they generally inflate the prices of the players on both of the teams playing in Coors. For example on June 1st, the 1-5 Rockies Stack was $24,000 on DraftKings which is 48 percent of one's salary cap. That leaves $26,000 on three other batters and two pitchers (and we know pitchers are more expensive than hitters).

What does that force one to do? Avoid a bona fide SP1 and/or have to play some kind of a punt option as the SP2 on DraftKings.

Going to thinking about how people tend to play cash games: spend up at pitcher, because pitching is more stable, and then find the best hitters for the money. In the long run, this is a profitable strategy in cash games, it has a positive expected value.

Playing Coors Field Stacks in Tournaments can force you to play suboptimal pitchers, putting your lineup at a disadvantage because the high dollar amounts of the stack forces one to play a low-priced pitcher, which is usually very risky. In the long run, this does not have a positive expected value.

But we know that in DFS we often don't have a "long-run" and in tournaments, we are trying to take advantage of one-day variance in a very high variance sport.

Let's combine that idea with another idea I have talked about in the past - leverage.

Does Coors Field Have Leverage?

If you read my article about leverage, you'd notice that leverage on the field is pretty important. As just a regular player, I don't have access to data from DraftKings but we can look at things we do know.

On the DraftKings website, Jonathan Bales wrote this article about park factors at the beginning of the 2020 season looking at 2019 season data. The data shows that a lineup with Coors Field won 8.5 percent of all GPPs during the 2019 season. Considering that Coors Field is on only approximately 50 percent of the slates, this data can be translated to saying "on slates with Coors Field, a lineup with a Coors Field stack wins 17 percent of the time" (8.5 percent of 50 percent is 17 percent for all my math peeps out there).

What does that mean?

It means that you won't get leverage at Coors Field often. There are many times that a Coors stack will have 100 percent or more total ownership, sometimes in 130, 140 percent territory. This equates to at least 20 percent ownership per roster spot in a 1-5 stack with the chance of certain players being close to 30 percent owned.  If a Coors stack has a 17 percent chance of winning a GPP and the ownership is between 20 to 30 percent (per position), I don't have any leverage on the field.

Another thing to think about is this: if something has a 17 percent chance of happening, it means there is an 83 percent chance of it not happening. If "the field" wins 83 percent of the time, and I can get exposure to 3 to 6 teams in "the field", I think it has better odds.

"So avoid Coors Field no matter what and I am good?"

Like all things in life, not always.

I really wanted to title this article "Why I ALWAYS Fade Coors" but then I played a Coors Field lineup and didn't want to be a hypocrite (although I didn't win and it helped me reinforce the Coors fade).  But there are times to get Coors exposure:

1. Cash Games - I write tournament advice. You want to plug in a couple good hitters in Coors, knock yourself out.

2. When leverage exists and an example was tonight (June 1, 2021). The Rockies were implied for the fifth-highest run total on a 14 game slate, and the total ownership was 25 percent on the 1-5 stack, which is about 5 percent per player. Compare that to the Rangers, who had about 3 times the ownership as the Rockies and had the same implied total of 4.75 runs. I will roster a Coors Stack in a Tournament where my side has the same probability of winning as the chalk side and one-third of the ownership. I also will roster a Coors Stack when ownership is projected to be 5-8 percent per position for total ownership of 25 to 40 percent. This isn't a hard and fast rule but that's when I get interested. It doesn't happen often.

Final Thoughts

Playing Coors isn't a guaranteed ticket to winning a tournament. Coors stacks in 2019 won GPPs 17 percent of the time Coors was on the slate, while most of the time Coors ownership is 20-30 percent per player. If you roster 5 players that are 20 to 30 percent owned, what are you going to do to get leverage on the field in order to win a tournament? Can you be different enough in the other five spots to take one down? With the typically limited salary that comes after rostering a Coors stack, it's tough.

Maybe it's better to go with the 83 percent chance of winning "field" and find some stacks that are in good spots, that are being overlooked.

That's why I fade Coors over 90 percent of the time in tournaments.