As I watched Felix Hernandez and Andrew Cashner get their clocks cleaned on Monday night, I first began to cry because I was rostering yet another sub-zero pitching performance in DFS (thanks, Feefers… that could be a nickname for Felix, you don't know), but I also started to think about how frequently these were happening and seemingly among quality arms. OK, that's a lie. I have been thinking about this phenomenon a lot recently, but it wasn't until last night that I decided to write about it.

Saying it's more frequent among "quality arms" is a little vague since it's hard to determine what exactly is a quality arm, but the reason I feel it's happening among better pitchers more often is because I've rostered so many of these in DFS and I play cash games almost exclusively so I'm constantly in the upper tier for pitchers, at least cost-wise. At any rate, let's first check if we're actually seeing more of these shellackings or not.

For me, I basically consider five innings or fewer and five earned runs or more as a shellacking. In fact, let's officially call them that, Shellackings. You're looking at an average of 10 base runners and probably five strikeouts at best so the night is sunk (avg. is actually three, but let's be generous since we're likely using the upper echelon pitchers likely to yield a Shellacking when it comes to DFS). That's a 5.25 at DraftKings and a flat 5 at Fanduel and if you're trying to win anything with that, well… that's a bold strategy, Cotton. So with that as our definition of a Shellacking, let's see if we're getting more than usual this year:

Well, sorta. We are definitely getting more than last year, but not at a rate that is out of line with recent history. Although, I was really only comparing to last year especially since that was my first year of every single day DFS where I was and currently remain more in tune with the goings on of every single game instead of merely 90% of them. As I researched further, this finding was particularly interesting:

OK, 50 is probably overstating it. But I really do feel like an inordinate number of these disasters are coming from higher quality arms. Unfortunately, that's where this goes from a feature to a blog post. I don't believe I have the mathematical aptitude to figure out the quality of pitcher throwing these Shellackings.

Anyone can have one so maybe we've simply seen the one from Hernandez (though he had zero last year), Matt Harvey, David Price, Chris Sale, Madison Bumgarner, Jeff Samardzija, and Jordan Zimmermann. Cashner now has two after one in all of 2014. The eight of them had nine Shellackings as a group last year, though it's a little skewed by Harvey not pitching so let's say the seven had nine.

I rostered at least one of Bartolo Colon's pair, but I'm not really griping about that one as I know that's a downside with him, but Anibal Sanchez has two – both rostered by me – after logging zero in 50 starts from 2013 through 2014. Stephen Strasburg has two and teammate Gio Gonzalez has three (matching his 2014 total already), I have at least one from each of them.

So yeah, we are seeing Shellackings at a higher rate than last year, but not at some exorbitant rate and anecdotally they might be coming from better pitchers more often. But honestly, this all might just be a long, painful reminder that I'm severely over-invested in Shane Greene. He is among the league "leaders" in Shellackings with four, tied Ian Kennedy and Kyle Kendrick.

See the full Shellacking "leader"board.