2023 Projection Showdown — THE BAT X vs Steamer Home Run Forecasts, Part 1, A Review

Now that the regular season has ended, it’s recap time! Over the next couple of weeks (months?), I’ll be reviewing all my preseason articles. I want to always be held accountable for the advice I provide, but also it’s fun to find out what actually happened and if I was right. We’ll start with the first in my new series this year, the 2023 Projection Showdown, which pitted THE BAT X against Steamer in various hitting categories. We begin with the first category of home runs. In part 1, I identified the hitters who THE BAT X projected for a higher 600 at-bat home run pace than Steamer. Let’s find out which projection system proved closer.

In typical fashion, we ended up with a perfect 50/50 split. I’m actually not sure what this might tell us, even if the sample size was larger. Remember, these were THE BAT X home run favorites, which means they were much more optimistic about these players than others compared to Steamer. So on the one hand, you might believe THE BAT X’s methodology accounts for some hidden traits that Steamer is not and therefore THE BAT X might be the more reliable forecaster for these players. On the other hand, it’s riskier going out on a limb in any projected metric, and it’s likely that the odds are when standing out from the crowd, you don’t perform very well. So perhaps we would have expected THE BAT X to fare worse, as Steamer’s projection was closer to the rest of the systems, which might make us believe it would prove to be more accurate.

Instead, we end up with a tie! So let’s just discuss these players.

The top of THE BAT X’s favorite list was a surprising name — veteran Chris Taylor. It’s a good thing the system got their #1 right! Taylor actually beat THE BAT X’s already optimistic projection as his HR/FB rate rebounded and actually tied for the second highest rate of his career. His FB% also hit a career high, which isn’t likely something any system was forecasting. He turned into a nice little power/speed contributor in deep leagues in part-time play.

Once again, Mike Trout failed to complete a full season due to injury. It’s unfortunate that he has become so injury prone, as the last time he recorded 600 PAs was in 2019. Both systems prove too optimistic here, giving Steamer the win, as his HR/FB rate slid to its lowest since 2016, while his FB% dropped to its lowest also since 2016, if you exclude his small sample 2021. So fewer flies, plus a lower rate of those flies flying out of the park, resulted in a disappointing home run total. Since he stopped stealing bases years ago, his fantasy owners are now counting on him for four category production…and that he could stay on the field long enough to earn his draft day cost!

What the heck happened to Matt Chapman?! He hit five homers over the first month, leading to a 30-homer pace which would have placed him right around the projections. He then failed to hit five or more in any other month, and even finished a month with one homer and another with two. His HR/FB rate in any individual month never exceeded 14.8%, despite averaging just above that over the previous two seasons. It’s totally bizarre too, as his maxEV was as strong as it’s always been, while his Barrel% settled in at the second highest rate of his career and an elite rate. It’s baffling that this maxEV and Barrel% combo failed to produce a double digit HR/FB rate! I think he’ll make for a nice buy at a discounted cost next year, particularly in leagues that use OBP instead of batting average.

As I mentioned in my original write-up, Kyle Schwarber’s home run total was really going to come down to how much of his FB% gains he enjoyed in 2022 were maintained in 2023. Well, he held onto nearly all of them, as his FB% only dropped from 51.1% in 2022 to 49.5% this year, which resulted in a win by THE BAT X. If he had dropped back to his career rate, it’s very possible that his home run total would have been closer to Steamer’s projection. Unfortunately, all those fly balls killed his BABIP, so he failed to reach the Mendoza Line while notching a new career high home run total.

Enrique Hernández was an odd name to see here, but after a down 2022 with a single digit HR/FB rate for the first time since his small sample 2014 debut, it was clear that THE BAT X was projecting a more meaningful rebound than Steamer was. Sadly, that did not happen. While his HR/FB rate did increase marginally, it remained stuck in single digits and caused him to miss both home run projections.

Taylor Ward got off to a relatively slow start in the power department over the first three months, before finally getting hot in July. Unfortunately, he got hit in the face with a pitch at the end of the month, and that ultimately cost him the rest of the season. Perhaps the improved power would have continued and put him on a better pace to eventually prove THE BAT X’s projection closest, but as it ended up standing, Steamer almost nailed it. It appears that a drop in Barrel% was the culprit behind his HR/FB rate decline.

After entering June with just five home runs, it appeared that Nick Castellanos wasn’t going to rebound significantly off last year’s disappointing power performance. Then he got scorching hot over the final two months, hitting 15 homers thanks to HR/FB rates that jumped above 20% for the first time in a month during the season. And now suddenly, 2022 looks to be the random fluke. THE BAT X took home the win here thanks to being more confident in a rebound, even as Castellanos actually outhomered both systems’ projections.

Getting a late start in 2022 as he recovered from injury, Ronald Acuña Jr.’s power failed to return. So it was reasonable to wonder how much he would rebound in that department. The answer is — all the way. His HR/FB rate jumped right back to where it had been, driven by another elite Barrel% and an absolutely nutso maxEV of 121.2 MPH. His FB% did drop to a career low of just 30.4%, but it didn’t matter because of something else he did, or technically, what he didn’t do. That something else that he stopped doing was striking out. His strikeout rate sat in the mid-to-high 20% range for his career through 2022. Then suddenly this year, he apparently decided he didn’t like walking back to the dugout after strike three. He cut his SwStk% into single digits for the first time and his strikeout dropped by more than half off his 2021 and 2022 levels to an elite 11.4%. That’s an unheard of rate for a hitter who also posted a .258 ISO and mid-20% HR/FB rate. No one could have predicted the strikeout rate improvement, but that’s what led to THE BAT X’s winning projection here, even though he beat both systems.