The season is starting to wind down and, likewise, our series on the various daily sites, their quirks, and which players are strongest plays on each is winding down as well.  It's interesting because now the tables are starting to get filled out, which allows us to see how various sites are stacking up and comparing to each other. Previous Profiles: FantasyAces | FanDuel | DraftKings | Draft Day | Fan Throwdown

DraftStreet Profile

Uniqueness: 2nd (Hitting), 7th (Pitching) Scoring System Quirkiness: 1st (Hitting), 1st (Pitching) Roster Quirkiness: 7th Pitching Premium: 7th DraftStreet is very polarized in one direction or the other in every single one of our metrics.  Let's dig deeper to see what that's all about. Uniqueness Uniqueness is a measure of how differently players score on a particular site relative to the average daily site. Uniqueness serves as a good estimate for how much your strategy needs to change when playing on a given site. (Note: Pitching Uniqueness only includes starting pitchers despite some sites utilizing relievers.)

Site	Hitting Uniqueness
DraftKings	3.7%
DraftStreet	3.6%
FantasyAces	2.9%
	2.7%
	2.6%
Fan Throwdown	2.5%
FanDuel	2.2%
DraftDay	1.7%

We're seeing an interesting trend in that Hitting Uniqueness and Pitching Uniqueness appear to be significantly negatively correlated.  That is to say a site that's very unique in terms of hitting is likely to not be very unique in terms of pitching (and vice versa).  We've seen this with DraftDay, DraftKings and FanDuel; here, we see it with DraftStreet.  If you've never played daily fantasy baseball before or never played on DraftStreet specifically, you're going to be fine going in with your preconceptions about pitchers -- but you'd likely be wise to examine DraftStreet's quirks when it comes to hitters since they produce very different scores than you might expect.  Which leads us to... Scoring System Quirkiness (Hitting) Scoring System Quirkiness is a measure of how much a given site's scoring system differs relative to the average daily site. Since sites award points on different scales (i.e. DraftDay gives 20 points for a HR; FanDuel gives 4 points for a HR), category values are listed in relative terms (all relative to the number of points awarded for a home run -- so if a single is worth 1 point and a home run is worth 4 points, the value of a single is said to be 25 percent.)

Category	DraftStreet	Average
1B	25%	26%
2B	50%	50%
3B	75%	76%
HR	100%	100%
RBI	38%	31%
R	38%	27%
BB	19%	22%
SB	50%	50%
CS	-25%	-12%
HBP	19%	20%
K	-19%	-5%
GIDP	-19%	-4%
SAC	-19%	2%
Out	Not Used	-3%

It's not hard to see why DraftStreet has such a high Hitting Uniqueness and Hitting Quirkiness score.  They use every single category except one and have wildly different values for many of them.  DraftStreet places more emphasis on RBI and runs scored than other sites do, making prime lineup spot hitters (i.e. batters in the 1-through-5 spots) more valuable than they are on other sites, particularly 3rd and 4th spot hitters (and those in the 6-through-9 spots less valuable).  The value of these hitters is hurt a bit with the high strikeout penalty and slightly lessened walk reward (general traits of big-bopping cleanup hitters), but high-speed hitters have their value decreased as well by a large caught stealing penalty. Ideally, you're looking for a high-average hitter who derives his average from making contact (not necessarily making hard contact -- low K percentage and low BABIP over high K percentage and high BABIP) and who bats in the heart of the batting order.  Think Edwin Encarnacion, Ian Kinsler, Yadier Molina, and Dustin Pedroia types.  Unless speed guys are batting in the top third of the order and have a low strikeout rate, they may be best left on the shelf since their value will be diminished. Scoring System Quirkiness (Pitching) Scoring System Quirkiness is a measure of how much a given site's scoring system differs relative to the average daily site. Since sites award points on different scales (i.e. StarStreet gives 15 points for a win while DraftStreet gives just 1.5 points for a win), category values are listed in relative terms (all relative to the number of points awarded for a win).

Category	DraftStreet	Average
W	100%	100%
Outs	20%	13%
K	47%	30%
ER	-50%	-31%
H	-17%	-8%
BB	-17%	-8%
HBP	-17%	-7%
SV	200%	38%
BS	-50%	-10%
CG	67%	26%
SH	Not Used	14%
L	-40%	-15%
No No	Not Used	22%
PG	Not Used	6%

DraftStreet has a low Pitching Uniqueness score but a high Pitching Quirkiness score.  The main reason for this is that I didn't include relievers in calcualting Pitching Uniqueness, but DraftStreet's inclusion of saves and blown saves (one of two sites to use saves and the only site to use both) rockets its Quirkiness score to the top.  They also make liberal use of bonus categories (high reward for Complete Games, huge penalty for Losses), which pushes up the Quirkiness.  Oh, and the regular categories?  Yeah, they're all valued pretty far away from the eight-site average.  There's a lot of canceling out involved here (thus the low Uniqueness score), but there are some things to keep in mind. Because of the extreme point structure of the non-Win categories, it's far more important to select a good pitcher on DraftStreet than it is to select a pitcher who's likely to win (yes, there is a distinction).  Don't be too afraid of selecting good pitchers on bad teams like Chris Sale of the White Sox or Madison Bumgarner on the Giants.  Even if they don't get any offensive support, they don't need the Win as much on DraftStreet as they will elsewhere (though avoiding the Loss would be nice).   The gain for strikeouts is larger, but so is the loss for walks, so you may think it doesn't matter what kind of "good" the pitcher is as long as he's actually, well, good.  The way the math works out, though, is that a high-strikeout/high-walk pitcher will be better on DraftStreet than an equally skilled low-strikeout/low-walk pitcher.  So go for the Ks. And, of course, closers have value here.  Blown saves are pretty rare (something like 10 percent of the opportunities get blown) but that should still factor into your decision-making a bit. Roster Quirkiness Roster Quirkiness is a measure of how the roster structure of a given site differs from the average daily site.

Position	DraftStreet	Average
C	1	1
1B	1	0.4
1B/DH	0	0.5
3B	1	0.9
1B/3B	0	0.3
2B	1	0.9
SS	1	0.9
2B/SS	0	0.3
OF	3	3.0
U	1	0.8
SP	2	1.4
P	1	0.6
Total	12	10.8

DraftStreet decided to take a breath when it was building its product after putting the extremely quirky scoring systems together, opting to go with a very vanilla roster structure.  They follow the norm everywhere except for the inclusion of an extra, generic pitcher spot, which can either be used on a third starter or a closer.  The kind of strategy to determine which is the superior choice is better suited for another day (and an article of its own), so for now it's enough to simply know that you have this option if you're playing DraftStreet.  There's nothing to note anywhere else on the diamond for DraftStreet players.     Pitching Premium Pitching Premium is a measure of how valuable each pitcher spot is relative to each hitter spot based on each site’s scoring system. So on Fan Throwdown, for example, the average pitcher is 47 percent more valuable than the average hitter.

Site	Pitching Premium
	76%
FantasyAces	75%
FanDuel	71%
DraftKings	62%
DraftDay	49%
Fan Throwdown	47%
DraftStreet	34%
	25%

DraftStreet posses the lowest Pitching Premium score we've yet to see and the second-lowest overall.  The average (starting) pitcher is just 34 percent more valuable than the average hitter on DraftStreet, which is a very low number indeed.  Of course, DraftStreet compensates by requiring the use of three pitchers and forcing the dreaded "starter or closer" conundrum onto you.  Still, we saw a ridiculous 9-to-1 hitter-to-pitcher spot ratio for FantasyAces last week, and DraftStreet is just 4-to-1.  Hitters are important, but don't think you can get away with skimping on your pitcher evaluation prep.         Methodology for Creating Each Stat If you’re like me and want to know what goes into the sausage, here is how I arrived at each stat that I created. If you don’t care, then you’ve reached the end of the article. You are now free to leave. Uniqueness is calculated by first looking at how every player scores in each of the eight systems. They are then re-calculated on an index scale, comparing each player to the site’s average player so that all sites are using the same scale. Then a new average is created for each player of his score on each of the eight sites. We examine how far each site’s score is from the eight-site average as an absolute value. When we average these out for all players for all sites, we get an estimate of each site’s “uniqueness.” I used full-season data for all hitters with at least 300 PA, all pitchers with at least 10 Games Started in 2012. Scoring System Quirkiness is calculated by first putting all stats on the same scale (relative to Home Runs for hitters and relative to Wins for pitchers). I find the eight-site average value of each stat, compare how each stat’s scoring varies from that average, then average out all the categories for each site (with each category weighted the same). Roster Quirkiness is calculated by finding the eight-site average of how many players are required at each roster position, then comparing how each site’s roster structure varies from that average, and average out all the roster spots for each site. Pitching Premium is calculated by first scoring out the average daily line for all hitters with at least 3 PA in game (a proxy for starting the game) and all starting pitchers for each of the eight sites. I then compare how much more valuable pitchers are than hitters using data from a recent six-year stretch of games.