The Daily Spin – Optimal Lineups and GPP Player Pool

This week, the tour makes its final stop before the start of the FedEx Cup playoffs and with that, we get a strong field looking to build some momentum at the Wyndham Championship held at Sedgefield Country Club in North Carolina. As many of you know, this is the last week that players are able to gather points towards finishing in the Top-125 for the FedEx Cup standings which for most is the difference between keeping and losing their tour card. This provides us with a completely different dynamic on Sunday afternoon as the ‘mail it in’ factor is greatly reduced for players who are fighting for every last possible point.

Take note of the players ranked in the range between around 115-145. For those inside 125, making the cut is all that will be needed to hold ground and get into the playoffs. For those just outside the number, they will need to finish somewhere around the Top-40 to feel comfortable about their prospects. For players near 140 or below, only a finish near the top of the leaderboard will be enough to vault them into next week’s 1st round playoff event. While this is something that is worth keeping track of, I would not overemphasize it in your rankings this week. Nearly every player on the bubble is playing this week so all have the same motivation to do well, making it tough to feel out how any one player in particular would elevate his game above and beyond another player facing the same possibility of elimination. However, this is one of those situations where if you have two players that you are looking at and each seems to be relatively close in your rankings, it makes sense to give the tie breaker to the player that has a little more on the line.

Another area to look at, but not obsess over is that these are the last two weeks to pick up Ryder Cup points. Several notable players are in the event this week specifically with the thought in mind that they can pick up these points to help secure their spot on Team USA this fall. However, I will not be letting this dictate my selections at all as most of the players still in the mix would need to do extraordinarily well to greatly change the standings. The bubble players that are affected most are: JB Holmes (7th), Patrick Reed (8th), Brandt Snedeker (9th) and Rickie Fowler (12th). The Top-8 will automatically qualify, but anyone lower than Rickie does not really have a reasonable shot at making it. When looking at these players, I simply chose to evaluate them based upon how they stacked up in the model and how I feel about their game right now.

Sedgefield Country Club is not a terribly difficult course among the many stops on tour each season. Old man, Davis Love III was able to win the event a year ago at age 51 so that should tell you immediately that you do not need to a big hitter to have success here. The course plays at just over 7,100 yards and is a Par 70 course. When looking at the results over previous years, several areas stood out but the one I really focused in on was the mid to long iron approach game of each golfer. When looking the Strokes Gained Approach statistic this week, you get a real feel for why certain players have been successful over the years. Accuracy and precision are rewarded over distance this week and while Par 4 scoring did not show up as statistically significant, there are twelve such holes on the course and so when paired with Strokes Gained Approach, it captures most of the players that I wanted to focus on for the week.

The key stats from our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics are as follows:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
Strokes Gained Putting: 25%
Birdie or Better %: 15%
Strokes Gained Approach: 15%
Driving Accuracy: 10%
Proximity 150-175: 5%

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The pricing for the week creates some interesting opportunities for us in terms of what we can create for an optimal lineup. With so many more quality players priced in the middle 7k range down even to the upper 5k range, we can get a little bit creative with our teams this week and I show that with each team. The first roster is obviously the one generated directly through the results of the model where it compiles for us the highest ranked players possible while arriving under the salary cap. It was interesting to me that the model did not pick up either Webb Simpson or Bill Haas given their amazing success at the course, but upon further review, Webb ranked 3rd in the model while Haas ranked 9th so it was really just a question of being ranked slightly lower than other available options. Ryan Moore earns the nod over Simpson through the computer’s eyes with a better putter…an overwhelmingly good putter in comparison with one of the worst putters on tour.

However, I do not think we can ignore the progress we have witnessed out of Simpson over the last couple of months as he has seemingly found his game again after making some small adjustments to his putting grip which seems to have calmed his nerves and allowed for him to put up strong finishes over the last twelves weeks. Also, both Webb Simpson and Bill Haas are originally from North Carolina and went to school at Wake Forest. While I would not always use this factor when evaluating players, it seems to be at least somewhat useful here as each has enjoyed success at Sedgefield far beyond what their normal results would indicate at other courses. This led me to want to include them at the top of the other two optimal lineups.

The lineups this week are built somewhere in between a stars and scrubs lineup and a balanced lineup. Each team is led by at least one player above $9,500, but from there, you can be somewhat flexible in how you construct yours teams. It is really easy this week to build a team where you do not need to drop below the mid 7k range in order to feel good about finding six players to make the cut. Obviously, seeing Robert Garrigus in a cash lineup feels a little alarming, but the numbers just lined up again and he is playing really well right now. The two lineups that I constructed from the data remain fairly balanced overall. The range for the second lineup gets stretched just a little to include Henrik Norlander, but he has been an incredibly consistent cut maker over the last three to four months so I am comfortable including him here. The final lineup is very balanced and does not even dip below $7,500 which is comforting, but as always, you can never tell which player is in line to ruin that and you just hope it is not one of the players we have used twice. If you wanted to get particularly aggressive, you could even drop down and use a player like Spencer Levin or Harold Varner III, both of whom are priced down at $5900 this week. If you do that, and they make the cut, it sets you up really well as you can absolutely load up the rest of your roster.

Optimal Lineups

Ryan Moore – $10,600
William McGirt – $8,700
Kevin Kisner – $8,300
Jason Dufner – $7,900
Harris English – $7,500
Martin Laird – $6,900

Webb Simpson – $10,200
Bill Haas – $9,600
Kevin Kisner – $8,300
Jason Dufner – $7,900
Adam Hadwin – $7,400
Henrik Norlander – $6,600

Bill Haas – $9,600
Rafael Cabrera-Bello – $8,900
William McGirt – $8,700
Robert Garrigus – $7,700
Billy Horschel – $7,600
Harris English – $7,500

Player Pool – Wyndham Championship

CORE

Brandt Snedeker – 60% ($9,800)
Rafael Cabrera-Bello – 60% ($8,900)
Kevin Kisner – 60% ($8,300)
Jason Dufner – 60% ($7,900)

SECONDARY

Webb Simpson – 35% ($10,200)
Kevin Na – 30% ($9,100)
William McGirt – 30% ($8,700)
Bill Haas – 25% ($9,600)
Tyrell Hatton – 25% ($9,400)
Wesley Bryan – 20% ($9,300)
Robert Garrigus – 20% ($7,700)
Harris English – 20% ($7,500)
Harold Varner III – 15% ($5,900)

TERTIARY

Billy Horschel – 15% ($7,600)
Adam Hadwin – 15% ($7,400)
Martin Laird – 15% ($6,900)
Henrick Norlander – 15% ($6,600)
Justin Thomas – 10% ($8,600)
Graham DeLaet – 10% ($6,900)
David Hearn – 10% ($6,500)
Chez Reavie – 10% ($6,300)
Jerry Kelly – 5% ($7,300)
Camilo Villegas – 5% ($6,400)
Kyle Reifers – 5% ($6,000)
Roberto Castro – 5% ($6,000)
Spencer Levin – 10% ($5,900)
Miguel Angel Carballo – 5% ($5,900)
Michael Kim – 5% ($5,400)

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