If you’re like me and you find yourself playing around on different daily sites to find which ones you like best, you’ve likely noticed that a few sites include some out-of-the-ordinary stats or bonuses in their scoring systems.  While some of these stats are rare and unpredictable (Draft Day offers bonuses for No-Hitters and Perfect Games, for instance), others are uncommon but still may be within the acceptable range for stats we should care about.  There are two in particular that I’d like to look at today and examine 1) whether they’re worth your attention and 2) if there are any ways to maximize your chances of receiving the bonus.

Draft Street, Draft Kings, Draft Day, and Fan Throwdown (way to go ruining the poetry, Fan Throwdown) all include Complete Games as a category for pitcher scoring.  Draft Kings and Draft Day also offer bonuses for Shutouts.  I bet most people ignore these entirely, chalking them up to being too random, and in some ways, they may be right:



Just over three percent of all starts end in a Complete Game and barely one percent are Shutouts.  So why should you care about them?  For one, these numbers take into account all pitchers… even the Dallas Keuchels and Brad Peacocks.  If we only look at elite pitchers (defined here as pitchers with seasonal ERAs under 3.25), these numbers get a small boost:



We’re still not talking great odds, but I’ve heard one theory lately that may help us improve them enough to bump up into “you should care” territory.  Similar to the theory I tested last time I was on the hill, pitchers who are starting at home will always have to throw a full nine innings to record a Complete Game.  Pitchers on the road, however, occasionally record Complete Games in just eight innings since the bottom of the ninth isn’t always necessary to play.  Let’s see how this affects our numbers:

All Pitchers

Elite Pitchers

Like we saw in our home/road study on hitters who didn’t always play the ninth inning, home-field advantage is not to be underestimated.  While Complete Game percentage is pretty much a dead heat between the average home and road pitchers, home pitchers throw more Shutouts.  And when it comes to elite pitchers, the home pitchers also throw more Complete Games despite always having to go 9 innings for them.  In my sampling of all pitchers, the average home ERA was 4.21; the average road ERA was 4.71.  We’ll talk more about home-field advantage at a later date, but suffice it to say, it’s super important.

In our last study, while the road hitters were the worse probability play, they were useful if you were adopting a high-risk/high-reward strategy.  That’s not the case here, though.  Consider that if a road pitcher only has to throw 8 innings for a complete game, it’s because the home team was winning in the middle of the ninth inning and the bottom of the ninth didn’t have to be played.  Naturally, this means that even if the road pitcher records a Complete Game, he’s not going to get the Win and is probably going to get the Loss.

And since a Complete Game awards a daily league player, at most, 67 percent of the points they’d get for a Win (Draft Street offers 1.5 points per Win and 1 point per Complete Game) and, at worst, just 25 percent of the points (Fan Throwdown offers 4 points per Win and 1 point per Complete Game), actively trying to get an 8-inning Complete Game is a bad strategy.  (And that’s not even mentioning Draft Day, in which minus-5 points for a Loss nullifies the value of a 5 point Complete Game entirely.)