The Z Files: Finding Viable DFS Pitchers

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Updated on April 7, 2016 3:53PM EST

Let's change things up a bit and talk a little DFS, specifically cash game pitchers. The general mantra is to pay up for pitching in cash play and for good reason. Trying to find spots to earn a nice potential return on investment is integral to success. However, in cash games, the optimal approach is taking advantage of a pitcher's floor as opposed to looking for bang-for-the-buck from arms and paying up for sticks. It doesn't matter who the hitter is, their floor is zero or even negative, depending on the site. With innings and punch outs the prime means of accruing pitching points, you want to lock in a baseline of pitching points and hope your offense comes through.

To that end, there's a down and dirty means of identifying viable cash game pitchers – The Rule of 13. To be safe for cash play, the pitcher should be expected to total 13 innings plus strikeouts. That's it, simple as that.

To be clear, 13 is something more than arbitrary but less than the ideal gas law. It's empirical but has worked quite well as a guideline.

So what pitchers make for reliable cash game starters? Here's a table showing 2015 data, including the percentage of starts satisfying the Rule of 13, the percent of those at home, average innings pitched per start, strikeouts per start and the all-important sum of the average innings and strikeouts per start.

NAME	GS	R13 PCT	HOME PCT	IP/GS	K/GS	(IP+K)/GS
Clayton Kershaw

To be clear, 13 is something more than arbitrary but less than the ideal gas law. It's empirical but has worked quite well as a guideline.

NAME	GS	R13 PCT	HOME PCT	IP/GS	K/GS	(IP+K)/GS
Clayton Kershaw	33	85	54	7.1	9.1	16.2
Max Scherzer	33	85	43	6.9	8.4	15.3
Chris Sale	31	77	50	6.7	8.8	15.6
Jake Arrieta	33	70	43	6.9	7.2	14.1
David Price	32	69	55	6.9	7.0	13.9
Carlos Carrasco	30	67	40	6.1	7.2	13.3
Cole Hamels	32	66	52	6.6	6.7	13.4
Corey Kluber	32	63	50	6.9	7.7	14.6
Jacob deGrom	30	60	50	6.4	6.8	13.2
Gerrit Cole	32	59	42	6.5	6.3	12.8
Jon Lester	32	59	53	6.4	6.5	12.9
Chris Archer	34	59	65	6.2	7.4	13.6
Felix Hernandez	31	58	61	6.5	6.2	12.7
Dallas Keuchel	33	58	68	7.0	6.5	13.6
Madison Bumgarner	32	56	61	6.8	7.3	14.1
Zack Greinke	32	53	41	7.0	6.2	13.2
Matt Harvey	29	52	67	6.5	6.5	13.0
James Shields	33	52	53	6.1	6.5	12.7
Tyson Ross	33	52	53	5.9	6.4	12.4
Danny Salazar	30	50	47	6.2	6.5	12.7
Francisco Liriano	31	48	47	6.0	6.6	12.6
Collin McHugh	32	47	53	6.4	5.3	11.7
Sonny Gray	31	45	43	6.7	5.4	12.2
Johnny Cueto	32	44	50	6.6	5.5	12.1
Garrett Richards	32	44	64	6.5	5.5	12.0
John Lackey	33	42	71	6.6	5.3	11.9
Jeff Samardzija	32	41	54	6.7	5.1	11.8
Shelby Miller	33	36	75	6.2	5.2	11.4
Wade Miley	32	34	64	6.1	4.6	10.6
Mike Fiers	30	33	70	6.0	6.0	12.0
Jose Quintana	32	31	50	6.4	5.5	1
Alex Wood	32	31	50	5.9	4.3	10.3
Rubby De La Rosa	32	31	60	5.9	4.7	10.6
Jordan Zimmermann	33	30	50	6.1	5.0	11.1
Kyle Gibson	32	28	44	6.1	4.5	10.6
Bartolo Colon	31	26	50	6.3	4.4	10.7
Wei-Yin Chen	31	26	63	6.2	4.9	11.1
Julio Teheran	33	24	63	6.1	5.2	11.3
Edinson Volquez	33	24	38	6.1	4.7	10.8
Colby Lewis	33	24	38	6.2	4.3	10.5
R.A. Dickey	33	21	71	6.5	3.8	10.3
Mike Leake	30	17	60	6.4	4.0	10.4

Of pitchers with at least 30 starts, only 20 met the criteria in half their outings. This feeds into the notion of paying up for reliability. Look at the top five. It pretty much resembled the top five in most seasonal drafts with the omission of Madison Bumgarner whose (IP+K)/GS was tied for fifth best.

Computing the percent of Rule of 13 successes at home is based on the notion that pitchers' peripherals are, on average, 10 percent better at home than on the road. Of the pitchers looked at, 53 percent of those following the Rule of 13 were at home. Intuitively, that would go up if it were calculated for every pitcher since the lesser arms need that skills boost to succeed. While ultimately every decision is contextual, sticking with the philosophy of using a cash pitcher at home makes sense.

Looking at the two components of the Rule of 13, the strikeout element correlates much better than the innings aspect:

IP/GS: 0.62
K/GS: 0.94
(IP+K)/GS: 0.95

That's pretty telling, albeit intuitively obvious. For the most part, the higher the K/GS, the better a cash game option. If you re-order the above table by average (K+IP)/GS by clicking on that header, it can help you eyeball the K/GS data.

Looking at the K/GS of those most likely to meet the Rule of 13, 6.5 is a reasonable filter. The initial study was conducted on only those tossing 180 innings or amassing 30 starts. There are five others that started at least one game last season that didn't meet that filter. I think we all can agree Jose Fernandez, Noah Syndergaard and Stephen Strasburg are cash game options. The other two were Rich Hill and Brandon McCarthy, both of whom started just four games. The take home lesson again here is don't get cute and try to find that hidden gem to anchor your cash lineups. Pay up for the name brand and save the dart throws for tournament play.