Today I continue the Prospect Scouting & Stats series, sticking with hitter power, but moving to raw power grades. We’ll start with raw power in the present (RPP) and then tomorrow will look at raw power in the future. Let’s discuss the 17 hitters that earned an RPP grade of at least 70. As a reminder, the table is sorted by RPP and then FV.
Yesterday, I listed and discussed the 20 prospects who earned a Game Power – Present (GPP) grade of at least 50. Today, I shift the future and will list and discuss 19 prospects who earned a Game Power – Future (GPF) grade of at least 60 and earned an FV of at least 50. Since the number of 60+ GPF players was 39, I wanted to narrow down the least to make it a similar size as the GPP list.
This week I continue my series on prospect scouting and stats. Today, let’s look at present hitter game power grades. While my High bucket encompassed present game power grades of at least 40, that was nearly a quarter of THE BOARD. So let’s only discuss the top of the top in the power department.
Yesterday, I introduced you to my newest series, Prospect Scouting & Stats, and began by sharing correlations between the various scouting power grades and average exit velocity with minor league HR/FB rate and ISO. I generally found better correlations with HR/FB rate, and average exit velocity (EV), which is completely objective, actually correlated best. During my analysis, I wondered aloud whether we might find better correlations if the scouting grades and EV all agreed. So, I dove back into the data to find out. I decided to only look at HR/FB rate this time since we care more about it as fantasy players and the metrics correlated better with it.
First of all, thanks to everyone who commented and suggested an idea or multiple ideas for myself and my fellow RotoGraphers to write about as we sit here impatiently hoping and waiting for baseball to begin. Unfortunately, the vast majority either required data that would be impossible for me to collect or would require the type of analysis that’s way above my abilities. However, I did come away with one idea that I’m going to run with at some point in the future. Before I do that, a comment actually led me to checking out our THE BOARD: Scouting + Stats!, which reminded me how freakin’ awesome it is.
Sadly, the NFBC team building fun comes to a close. To go along with my splendid $14 offense, I attempted to assemble a $246 pitching staff using NFBC average auction values from March 15 and on. Just as I failed to spend all my money when buying a dominant offense, I left a buck on the table here as well, only spending $245. Let’s see what such an insane staff looks like.
As we continue to maintain hope that there will be a baseball season this year, last week I decided to have a bit of fun and build a $9 pitching staff using NFBC average auction values calculated from March 15. While that was a joy, commenter runningfrog demanded that I share what a $251 offense would look like. If I were to save all those auction dollars by buying such cheap pitching, how incredible might my offense look?! I decided to find out.
Yesterday, I assembled a 14-player offense from the hitters who weren’t bought in NFBC auctions since March 15. Today, let’s flip over to the pitching side.
Last week, I built a $14 offense using only $1 players from the NFBC average auction values starting March 15. The following day, I shared my $9 pitching staff. One commenter asked my thoughts on Taijuan Walker, who I realized wasn’t even rostered in any of the 8 leagues, even for a buck. So I completely forgot about him and hadn’t even considered those not purchased in any leagues. Commenter Johnnie T suggested I perform the same exercise, but this time only select from players not rostered in any of the auctions. Another fake draft?! Sure! There are now nine auctions run since March 15, so this 14-player offense will be solely composed of hitters who failed to be bought in any of them.
It’s a bizarro world we’re living in right now. With no baseball and no set date for baseball to resume at this point, it’s getting more and more difficult to decide what topic tomorrow’s article should be on. Even if I do land on such a topic, I don’t really have any idea if it’s what you actually want to read right now. So help me, and the rest of the RotoGraphs crew, brainstorm content ideas.
What do you want to read from me? Any topic is fair game. In fact, I’m sure no one will mind if we go slightly off-baseball, as long as there is at least some loose connection to the sport.
Feel free to suggest as many players as you want to get a Pod Projections post, so you can learn the details of my forecasting process.
Or perhaps you want a strategy article or even my thoughts on handling a particular situation.
Heck, even if you have keeper or league-specific questions, I could potentially write about it, as long as there’s a way to frame the question so my answer appeals to a broad range of readers, and not just you and your league.
Is there a research project or an xMetric you have been dying to analyze/develop but never had the time or Excel/analytic skills? Now’s the time to tell me!
If you’re not sure whether it’s something I would be willing to write or am capable of writing, publish a comment about it anyway! The worst that could happen is I ignore your suggestion. Even if that happens, I could pass the idea along to another writer.
Thanks for your help in ensuring RotoGraphs remains a daily destination during this difficult time.
Don’t forget to strongly consider becoming a FanGraphs member, if you have the means to do so, to help keep my favorite website and invaluable resource running.
