This article takes a look at some of the new bat tracking metrics published this week at Baseball Savant. It aims to help readers incorporate the new metrics into their analysis toolkit.
Bat tracking metrics have now been published for 2024, starting on April 3rd. Last year, Baseball America published a test version of average bat speed as well. The operationalization of the bat tracking metrics has been tweaked since the Baseball America version was published, but so far, this is the data we have to work with.
What a treat on Thursday night. It’s a short slate, so you can focus all your attention on Jared Jones for the early game and then end the night with Tyler Glasnow’s start against the Reds.
Please pardon the Wednesday morning posting, I won’t name names but someone fell asleep.
“Hey Paul, you’re the only one who works on this piece, so if someone falling asleep prevented it from being posted, it can only be YOU.”
Oh… right. Well, I guess we’ll never get to the bottom of why it was posted late, but here it is nonetheless!
Deep board on Wednesday with all 11 of the 2-x guys being viable for 10-teamers but none being must starts in those shallower formats. Eager to see how Bradley and Gasser follow up their strong season debuts (MLB debut in the case of Gasser). I know Rogers gets the Tigers, but I just don’t trust him much anywhere at this point so even the 1-x reco is tepid. Let me know if you have questions on anyone else here in the post or later today in my chat!
The chart includes their 2024 stats (this changed over from last year’s stats on April 22nd), their opponent’s wOBA versus the pitcher’s handedness from this year so far (this is changed as of April 11th), my general start/sit recommendation for 10-team, 12-team, and 15-team (or more) leagues, and then a note about them. Obviously, there are league sizes beyond those three so it’s essentially a shallow, medium, deep. If a pitcher only has an “x” in 15-team, it doesn’t mean there’s no potential use in 10s and 12s, but that just means it is a riskier stream as the league gets shallower.
These are general recommendations, and your league situation will carry more weight whether you are protecting ratios or chasing counting numbers. This is for standard 5×5 roto leagues. The thresholds for H2H starts are generally lower, especially in points leagues so I thought there would be more value focusing on roto and then you can generally expand these recommendations a bit for points leagues.
