DFS Baseball 101: Building a System for Cash vs. GPP Hitters

Playing off the team rankings article I wrote last week, I decided to use a similar type of ranking system to determine "cash game" hitters vs. "tournament" or "GPP" hitters. Often, I read an article or listen to Sirius XM Fantasy Sports Radio and I hear "I'd use that guy in a tournament", but there is no context of why or any explanation. It seems to be the popular approach to just classify any big name, non-popular pick for that day as "contrarian" or a "tournament" play, which is flat-out bad advice.

You can't say that Giancarlo Stanton is a tournament play because he's facing an ace like Noah Syndergaard and no one will be on him. What's the likelihood that Stanton can even return value if he's priced at $4800? First off, he's facing an ace right-handed pitcher in a pitcher's park. When he's at the plate, there won't be many runners on base, so the need for him to even see good pitches to hit won't be there.

That being said, what does a cash game hitter look like? What does a tournament hitter look like? I took the most important statistics that correlate to each desired outcome. In cash games, we want hitters that get on base, make contact, and hit in the 1-5 spots of the batting order. Catcher is the one exception where I will use someone in the six-hole if necessary. So, for cash games, we look at wOBA (weighted on base average), contact rate, and bb/k rate.

In tournaments, we want the highest potential outcome possible – so we look at isolated power, hard hit rate, fly ball rate, and weighted runs created plus.

Then, you have the player whose profile actually fits both cash games and tournaments. Their batting profile is such that they rank high in both of the statistical profiles. At that point, it really comes down to price and matchup in that given day.

Below, I will give the top three cash game and tournament hitters at each position, with the exception of outfield which will expand to a top ten. I will also show the rankings that each player had in the particular categories so you can see how I came up with the rankings.

All statistics are taken from Fangraphs and are year-to-date through Sunday, May 8th. The rankings are then averaged together to formulate the overall rankings.

Cash Game Profile

BB/K
WOBA
CONTACT RATE

Tournament / GPP Profile

ISO%
HARD HIT %
FLYBALL %
WRC+

CATCHER

CASH

1) Victor Martinez - 0.73 BB/K, .395 wOBA, 88% Contact
2) Yadier Molina – 1.15 BB/K, .353 wOBA, 85% Contact
3) Jonathan Lucroy – 0.56 BB/K, .390 wOBA, 85% Contact

GPP

1) Jarrod Saltalamacchia – .343 ISO, 46.2 Hard Hit, 71.8 Fly Ball, 137 WRC+
2) Victor Martinez - .243 ISO, 43.5 Hard Hit, 41.3 Fly Ball, 159 WRC+
3) Welington Castillo – .263 ISO, 43.7 Hard Hit, 39.4 Fly Ball, 131 WRC+

We get our first overlap player with Victor Martinez, who is back healthy and tearing the cover off the ball. He has put up zero points just five times this year in 26 games.

FIRST BASE

CASH

1) Joe Mauer – 1.47 BB/K, .356 wOBA, 90% Contact
2) Anthony Rizzo – 1.22 BB/K, .435 wOBA, 83% Contact
3) John Jaso – 0.92 BB/K, .365 wOBA, 90% Contact

GPP

1) David Ortiz - .364 ISO, 47.7 Hard Hit, 46.5 Fly Ball, 192 WRC+
2) Byung-ho Park - .314 ISO, 44.8 Hard Hit, 43.1 Fly Ball, 152 WRC+
3) Anthony Rizzo - .360 ISO, 35.5 Hard Hit, 52.2 Fly Ball, 169 WRC+

Our second overlap player in Rizzo who has been on a tear over the past 10 days.

SECOND BASE

CASH

1) Ben Zobrist – 1.77 BB/K, .381 wOBA, 90.2% Contact
2) Jose Altuve – 1.00 BB/K, .452 wOBA, 83.8% Contact
3) Daniel Murphy – 0.57 BB/K, .459 wOBA, 87.5% Contact

GPP

1) Daniel Murphy - .246 ISO, 43.00 Hard Hit, 42.00 Fly Ball, 184 WRC+
2) Robinson Cano - .328 ISO, 31.5 Hard Hit, 42.3 Fly Ball, 182 WRC+
3) Neil Walker - .250 ISO, 36.4 Hard Hit, 49.4 Fly Ball, 112 WRC+

THIRD BASE

CASH

1) Nolan Arenado – 1.00 BB/K, .454 wOBA, 84.6% Contact
2) Martin Prado – 0.67 BB/K, .390 wOBA, 92.9% Contact
3) Mike Moustakas – 0.8 BB/K, .363 wOBA, 87.7% Contact

GPP

1) Nolan Arenado - .364 ISO, 46.00 Hard Hit, 52.8 Fly Ball, 166 WRC+
2) Josh Donaldson - .301 ISO, 43.3 Hard Hit, 46.7 Fly Ball, 165 WRC+
3) David Wright - .213 ISO, 50.00 Hard Hit, 46.4 Fly Ball, 142 WRC+

SHORTSTOP

CASH

1) Aledmys Diaz – 0.67 BB/K, .471 wOBA, 82.3% Contact
2) Yunel Escobar – 0.73 BB/K, .355 wOBA, 82.4% Contact
3) Jordy Mercer – 0.88 BB/K, .331 wOBA, 82.9% Contact

GPP

1) Trevor Story - .352 ISO, 43.4 Hard Hit, 48.1 Fly Ball, 132 WRC+
2) Aledmys Diaz - .292 ISO, 42.5 Hard Hit, 32.2 Fly Ball, 194 WRC+
3) Brad Miller - .205 ISO, 40.7 Hard Hit, 40.7 Fly Ball, 98 WRC+

OUTFIELD

CASH

1) Melky Cabrera – 1.27 BB/K, .346 wOBA, 89% Contact
2) Ryan Braun – 0.71 BB/K, .444 wOBA, 84% Contact
3) Christian Yelich – 0.95 BB/K, .423 wOBA, 82% Contact
4) Nick Markakis – 0.94 BB/K, .351 wOBA, 87% Contact
5) Odubel Herrera – 1.09 BB/K, .388 wOBA, 82% Contact
6) Gregory Polanco – 0.95 BB/K, .379 wOBA, 82% Contact
7) Adam Eaton – 0.93 BB/K, .340 wOBA, 86% Contact
8) Dexter Fowler – 0.81 BB/K, .444 wOBA, 80% Contact
9) Bryce Harper – 1.2 BB/K, .427 wOBA, 78% Contact
10) Denard Span – 1.23 BB/K, .317 wOBA, 87% Contact

GPP

1) Yoenis Cespedes - .402 ISO, 37 Hard Hit, 49 Fly Ball, 183 WRC+
2) Michael Conforto - .252 ISO, 50 Hard Hit, 47 Fly Ball, 145 WRC+
3) Bryce Harper - .367 ISO, 36 Hard Hit, 53 Fly Ball, 163 WRC+
4) Joc Pederson - .288 ISO, 36 Hard Hit, 46 Fly Ball, 149 WRC+
5) Mark Trumbo - .274 ISO, 37 Hard Hit, 42 Fly Ball, 175 WRC+
6) Colby Rasmus - .255 ISO, 37 Hard Hit, 50 Fly Ball, 136 WRC+
7) Giancarlo Stanton - .340 ISO, 34 Hard Hit, 44 Fly Ball, 153 WRC+
8) Adam Duvall - .292 ISO, 41 Hard Hit, 43 Fly Ball, 118 WRC+
9) Mike Trout - .252 ISO, 39 Hard Hit, 36 Fly Ball, 174 WRC+
10) Jose Bautista - .246 ISO, 42 Hard Hit, 42 Fly Ball, 126 WRC