Yesterday, I reviewed a handful of hitters whose actual AB/HR marks are significantly different from what ATC had projected during the preseason. What was driving the discrepancy between actual and projected? That was the question I was determined to answer. Since there are a lot of breakouts and busts from an AB/HR perspective, plus a number of names on yesterday’s lists had low home run totals, in which a difference in AB/HR would result in an insignificant change in home run total versus expectations, I’m going to do this again.

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We’re almost a quarter of the way through the regular season, and we still find some surprising names among the home run leaders, while others are mysteriously sitting toward the bottom. Since there are a number of components that drive a hitter’s home run total, I like to understand what’s providing the fuel. Identifying the changes in inputs will give us a better idea of whether the current performance is sustainable or we could expect a reversion back to what the hitter had been projected to do all along. So with that in mind, let’s review the AB/HR breakouts and busts.

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American League

Angels

• Matthew Lugo (2 HR in 13 PA, only 4 HR in 168 PA in AAA) started in three of the last five games in the outfield.

• Yoán Moncada is now batting third.

• Luis Rengifo (.533 OPS) and Tim Anderson (.475 OPS) are splitting time at second base. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I discussed the hitter average bat speed risers and fallers. Thanks to frequent commenter Anon, I discovered that I must have kept the default “Qualified” filter on, which resulted in lots of interesting names being missed. So in today’s review, I’ll discuss the names that would have appeared in yesterday’s list, but were left off. Note that there are lots of bat speed changes, so I’ve kept these posts to changes of at least two miles per hour. Also note that since I relaxed the swing minimum, the lists are now more hand-picked based on fantasy relevance.

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Only a couple of days into the season, I shared the super early hitter average bat speed risers and fallers. Though bat speed does stabilize quickly, it’s still subject to small sample caveats. Now nearly a month and a half later, let’s revisit the metric, as the numbers now will give us a much better idea of which hitters have enjoyed sustainable bat speed increases or suffered from losses.

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American League

Angels

• Yoán Moncada (.826 OPS, 2 HR) with three straight starts at third base since coming off the IL. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the latest playing time projection changes for position players since April 29th. Andy Pages‘ scorching couple weeks has his playing time going way up after looking to be on the precipice of losing his spot for the first three weeks of the season.

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We’re just over a fifth of the way through the season, which feels like prime time to start making trade offers. I typically use this time to identify my team’s overperformers and underperforming targets on my leaguemates’ teams and then send out a flurry of offers. You never know how other owners value your overperforming players or whether they have become impatient with their own underperformers. So it’s worth finding out by engaging in trade talks. Today, I’ll review the top underperformers and overperformers by comparing wOBA versus Statcast’s xwOBA. We know the latter isn’t perfect, but it’s the best metric we currently have to evaluate expected performance to-date.

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American League

Angels

• Nolan Schanuel hit second for the last three games after batting sixth for most of the season.

• Kyren Paris is losing playing time (seven starts over the past 10 games) and his hitting just .033/.065/.067 for the past two weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the latest playing time projection changes for position players since April 15th. Get ready for Nick Kurtz’s debut on Wednesday!

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