MLB Daily Fantasy Strategy: How to use Openers in DFS

2019 is starting to become the "Year of the Opener" as the fad that the Tampa Devil Rays started last season is beginning to catch on with other teams following suit. It's been such an effective strategy for the Rays, that other teams are beginning to copy it, seeing the success that Tampa Bay has had early on this season.

If you're wondering, "what the heck is an opener," it's when a team uses a reliever to open up the game and plans to only use them for 1-2 innings. A long reliever or starter might follow the opener depending on what the team has planned. Using openers is different than the traditional "bullpen games" in that teams have a very specific strategy in mind for these games. For example, Ryne Stanek or Hunter Wood maybe open the game for the Tampa Bay Rays and pitch an inning or two before giving way to Jalen Beeks, Yonny Chirinos, or Ryan Yarbrough.

The logic is that using a good reliever in the first inning or two, you can attack the other teams' best hitters with one of your more effective relievers. The first inning is a dangerous inning for many starters and usually one of the highest scoring innings. When the "starter" or "long reliever" enters the game, they are going to face the bottom of the order first and if they happen to get through the order once or twice, they're going to limit the number of times they have to face the opposing teams' best hitters. It's pretty crafty, and the fad is becoming popular enough that it might not, in fact, a fad much longer. It may very well be a part of major league baseball going forward.

So how are we going to deal with these "openers" and "projected relievers" going forward in MLB DFS? And should we target offenses that are going to be facing teams that are using openers? That is what I'd like to analyze today and hopefully, I can come up with some information that you will find useful when you encounter these situations while playing DFS the rest of the MLB season.

How effective has the opener approach been?

I did some digging on how Tampa Bay has fared using openers this season vs. conventional starters. There have been a bunch of other teams who have experimented with this format, but only a handful of times each. So I wanted to keep my sample size to Tampa and the 15 times they've employed this strategy thus far this season. As the year goes along and we see more teams trying it, we will simply have more data that we can use to draw further conclusions about its effectiveness.

In 31 games started by conventional starters, the Rays are allowing 2.93 runs per game.

In the 15 games started by openers Stanek and Wood, the Rays are allowing 3.86 runs per game.

The league average for runs scored per game is 4.59, with Texas being the highest scoring offense at 5.85 and Miami being the worst at 2.73.

So Tampa is allowing more runs per game with openers than starters but is also well under the league average for runs allowed per game in those games. One thing we have to consider is that the traditional starters for Tampa Bay are having excellent starts to their seasons. Tyler Glasnow (1.86 ERA) is enjoying a major breakout, Blake Snell (3.31 ERA) is picking up right where he left off last year, and Charlie Morton (2.65 ERA) has been an excellent veteran addition to the rotation.

What's even more confusing about the Tampa situation is they have experimented with Chirinos and Yarbrough as starters and relievers, while Beeks has only pitched out of relief thus far. Is their success with openers a product of the strategy, or do they just have a talented group of pitchers who would also be putting up good numbers if used conventionally? Yarbrough pitched really well in his only start so his stats are skewed towards being better as a starter, while Chirinos has also been slightly better in his four starts (2.52 ERA) than in his six relief appearances (3.96 ERA).

The results are pretty inconclusive, but the fad is catching on. And some teams are clearly trying to use it to hide the fact that they don't have a quality fourth or fifth starter in their rotation.

How do we can approach the pitchers from these games?

1. Ignore them and don't use the opener or projected reliever.

This is probably too simplistic of an answer, but I think many people are going this route. The Rays have duped us a few times with who their reliever is going to be, leaving people rostering a player who doesn't even pitch. And if you roster an opener, they better be really effective in their time out there or they are simply not going to score you enough fantasy points.

2. Roster an opener on DraftKings when there aren't many decent SP2 options.

I've done it before, and it's not the worst move in the world. However, understand that it's not an upside play. In Ryne Stanek's 21 appearances, he's only topped 10 DK points in two of them and has gone negative in three.

3. Roster a projected reliever when it's a pitcher with upside and the team has been transparent about the number of pitches or innings they can go.

If other teams are going to follow the Tampa Bay model, then it's likely that we see other pitchers like Chirinos and Yarbrough who might be useable in DFS. The key is really going to be information and hopefully, managers will be forthcoming with how they intend to use the projected reliever. If you don't see a pattern emerge as far a pitchers' innings or pitch count, then it's going to be hard to rely on these pitchers on a regular basis.

How do we approach opposing hitters in these games?

1. Ignore offenses facing openers.

This feels pretty shortsighted, but I understand why DFS players may just cross off a team stack because it can be frustrating to try and project how their lineup will fare against more than one pitcher. The truth is in most games, a starter only pitches 4-6 innings anyway and teams face bullpen arms for the other half of the game.

2. Use offenses against openers at low ownership.

I don't have the numbers to back this up, but I am willing to bet that offenses that face openers are lowered owned than other offenses in many cases. If we get a situation where we like the matchup with the projected opener or reliever, then it makes sense to attack these pitchers with good offenses. I think this is especially true if we have data that suggests the opposing team's bullpen is also vulnerable. Good hitting teams can usually hit right-handed or left-handed pitching so getting hung up on platoon splits might be an exercise in futility.

I hope this information helps you with how you approach DFS this season and hopefully I will be able to follow up on this phenomenon later this season with some more data to crunch.

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