Welcome to the 2024 edition of the RotoGraphs Matchmaker Service! No, I cannot find you a date. However, I could hopefully facilitate the marriage of league owner with leagueless owner. If you are seeking an owner to fill your fantasy league or are the owner hoping to be seeked to join that unfilled league, this is your new home.
We know that batter wOBA has a relatively higher correlation than many other metrics. However, it isn’t even higher because there are still many factors outside a batter’s control that influence the final mark. So let’s review the hitters who both underperformed and overperformed their xwOBA marks last year. If we assume a similar level of underlying skills and performance, this makes for the quickest list of hitters who will either enjoy a wOBA surge or decline this coming season.
About two weeks ago, Jordan Rosenblum introduced us to his new projection system, OOPSY, which is now available on every player page that has received a forecast. The system incorporates Baseball Savant data, along with Stuff+, which made me very curious to see which players it was more bullish and bearish on than the Depth Chart projections (which are now 100% matching Steamer, since ZiPS haven’t been published yet). So let’s review the names that fall into each of these groups.
We learned last year that Barrel% is still the most highly correlated Statcast metric with batter HR/FB rate, even more so than the newest metrics such as Blast Per Bat Contact and Fast Swing Rate. Of course, Barrel% does end up underrating extreme ground ball hitters and overrating extreme fly ball hitters, but because these hitters live in the extremes, they are the rare exceptions. To account for the fact that Barrel% is prone to being skewed by a hitter’s batted ball type distribution, let’s instead use a slightly better metric — Barrels per FB + LD percentage, or Barrels/(FB+LD).
Over the last couple of weeks, there have been seven (unless I missed someone!) first basemen that have found new homes that I haven’t covered in my first base rankings or with a separate park comparison article. So let’s now review the park factor comparisons for all these hitters that have either been traded or signed with a new team.
There have been a flurry of trades and signings over the last week, including many involving impact fantasy players. Perhaps the most significant development was the Astros trading Kyle Tucker to the Cubs. It’s a pretty shocking trade considering that Tucker will be entering his age 28 season, has been a consistent 5 WAR player, and is departing a team that won the AL West. Let’s now consult the park factors to find out how the park switch might affect the left-handed hitter’s performance.
You have probably read by now that Juan Soto has agreed to a 15-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets. This isn’t some bizarro world where the Mets are actually bidding gargantuan money for the top free agent, even outbidding the typical teams competing for these names. Instead, this is the new Mets, armed with an owner who ranks as one of the richest people in the world, and is actually willing to spend the money to put a contending team on the field. Luckily for Soto, he doesn’t have to travel very far, or at all, to join his new team. After posting his highest wOBA over a full season, how might the home park switch affect the 26 year-old’s results? Let’s consult the Statcast left-handed park factors.
A week ago, Blake Snell signed a massive five-year, $182 million contract with the Dodgers. Incredibly, that means that Snell will now play for a third team in the NL West division and remain a Californian the entire time. Has this ever happened before?! He’s got two teams in the NL West and two teams in California to join before sweeping the division and the state. Perhaps he could do it by the end of his career.
Last week, I elected the starting pitcher all-profit team, naming the most profitable starting pitchers compared to their NFBC average auction values. Now let’s flip over to losses. Though not as exciting to review, you might take solace in knowing you owned a number of these pitchers if you ended up having a disappointing season.
A couple of weeks ago, I elected the hitter all-profit team, naming the most profitable players at each position compared to their NFBC average auction value. Now let’s flip over to losses. Though not as exciting to review, you might take solace in knowing you owned a number of these hitters if you ended up having a disappointing season.
