When I’m writing my Strong Plays, in addition to the slew of contextual factors that I examine on any given day, I also try to pay attention to what I perceive a player’s true talent level is relative to daily site salaries. If a player is playing over his head this year, for instance, I may not recommend him even if he has a good matchup that day because his salary may be so inflated to begin with that he’s not actually a “Strong Play” in a return-on-investment sense.  A lot of this is guesswork, though.  And because we cover nine sites here at DFSEdge, I’m not able to dole out much individualized advice, at least in the Strong Play articles, so I tend to make generalizations like “Cold Player X is a better play on the sites that will put a lot of weight on his poor season thus far.”  But what games are those?  Heck if I actually know… which means I want to find out.

We recently passed the 50% mark of the season, on which day I grabbed player stats plus salaries from all nine sites (there’s some unimportant mathematical relevance there).  I then calculated every player’s Points Per Game (PPG) for each of the nine sites.  From there, I ran some simple correlations to decipher which sites place the most emphasis on current-season stats.  This is, of course, a crude method and won’t tell us everything that goes into a specific site’s salary system, but it will serve us well for our purposes and for the sake of comparison.

Hitters

Site	R-Squared
Fantasy Feud	0.84
DraftDay	0.84
FanDuel	0.81
Fan Throwdown	0.78
StarStreet	0.71
Fantasy Aces	0.71
DraftStreet	0.68
Daily Joust	0.64
DraftKings	0.51

I started with hitters, using all players that have accumulated at least 150 plate appearances this year and who have a daily site salaries on all nine sites. To the left, you’ll see a table with some fancy statistical jargon (“R-Squared”), which basically tells us the percentage for which the current year’s stats matter.  So for Fantasy Feud, 2013 stats explain 84% of the difference between player salaries.  Draft Kings, on the other hand, is barely over 50%—the rest being explained by other factors (perhaps past year data, regression, hot/cold streaks, contextual data for each day, etc.).  This is a finding that should prove very valuable to anyone who is grinding it out on multiple sites.

For example, Chris Davis is having an exceptional season, and I buy into his power to a large extent, but he’s also batting .331 thanks to an inflated .372 BABIP.  Chris Davis should not be expected to hit .331 going forward, but his Fantasy Feud and Draft Day prices are going to be based heavily on that baseline.  In these games, it’s probably best to leave Davis on the player selection list, even if he has a good matchup, because his salary is going to be higher than it should be and even a great matchup may not be able to compensate.

Pitchers

Site	R-Squared
DraftStreet	0.89
FanDuel	0.84
Fantasy Feud	0.81
Fan Throwdown	0.70
DraftDay	0.67
DraftKings	0.67
Fantasy Aces	0.64
Daily Joust	0.63
StarStreet	0.61

With pitchers, I included all that have pitched at least 50 innings, with at least 5 starts and who have a salary on all nine sites.  We see that the range is slightly smaller for pitchers and skewed upward a bit.  Nearly 90% of a pitcher’s Draft Street price can be explained by his 2013 stats, and the site that places the least emphasis on 2013 stats, StarStreet, is still placing 10% more emphasis than the most ambivalent site for hitters, Draft Kings.

How To Use This Information For Daily Site Salaries

Now on to actionable advice.  When you’re deciding which site to play on for a given day, there are two rules you should follow: 1) If the pitchers with the best matchups have been unlucky this year, your best bet is likely going to be heading over to Draft Street, FanDuel, or Fantasy Feud, since their salaries will be depressed by the unlucky performance. 2) If the pitchers with the best matchups have been lucky this year, you’ll be better off playing on StarStreet, Daily Joust, Fantasy Aces, Draft Kings, or Draft Day since that good luck will drive their salaries up much less.

So if Clayton Richard is playing Miami at home, you’re going to want to follow Rule #1.  His 7.01 ERA is much higher than his 4.71 xFIP or 4.37 Steamer ERA projection.  Indeed, if you go to Draft Street, Richard’s $4,159 salary is the fifth-lowest, kept company by the likes of Chien-Ming Wang and Mike Kickham—common guys I recommend against in my Strong Plays. Conversely, if Clay Buchholz is playing Miami at home, you’re going to want to follow Rule #2.  His 1.71 ERA is well below his 3.23 xFIP and 4.08 Steamer ERA projection.  And despite having the second-highest PPG score of any pitcher on StarStreet, his salary is just 25^th highest.  On Draft Street, his PPG is 4^th highest and his salary is 9^th highest. Closing advice: Essentially, once you decide which players you like the matchups for on a given day, figure out where you can buy them the cheapest.  These lists should give you a guide to figuring out cheap players and expensive players when looking at daily site salaries.