We’re already about 10% into the season, so it’s time to take a look at some of the weird, the wonderful, and most extreme of performances. For as long as these types of results remain atop and at the bottom of the leaderboards, we know we’re still in small sample size territory! So let’s review some of the hitting outliers through a couple of weeks of the 2024 season.
This article ranks the game’s top projected hitting prospects by peak wRC+ heading into 2024 (it does not incorporate any 2024 data). It is a counterpart to this February piece on baseball’s top projected pitching prospects. I only just got done with my offseason methodological updates for hitters–please forgive me for publishing this one week into the season!
It’ll be a while before we have enough plate appearances in the books to start digging into most of our hitting metrics, but there’s a Statcast metric that could be evaluated without any sample size caveats! It’s maxEV, or the highest exit velocity a hitter recorded on any batted ball. Here, sample size only matters on one side of the coin — the decliners. That’s why today we’re going to dive into the gainers. Surprise, surprise, even after just a handful of games and batted balls, 13 hitters have already hit a ball with a greater exit velocity than last year! Let’s identify the top nine of these names.
Several projections became publicly available this week (THE BAT X and ZiPS) so my overall valuations changed. I only noted the early players who have moved by 10 or more spots and 20 spots for the tiered or worse hitters.
There are a few players who are showing off this spring. First, the Orioles need to make room for Colton Cowser. This dude is slashing .478/.586/1.000 with four home runs and a spring training leading (qualified hitters) wRC+ of 307. How about Miguel Andujar? He has also hit four home runs and has 13 hits in 32 at-bats, good for a .406 batting average. Unlike most of the hitters who have high batting averages this spring, Oneil Cruz has a very low BABIP, .182. That, compared to Cowser’s .583 BABIP is night and day different. Yet, Cruz is still hitting for a very impressive slash line of .300/.440/.900.
Hate on ADP all you want, but it provides valuable information. In no way, shape, or form should an ADP list ever be used as your official rankings to draft off of. However, it absolutely should be consulted to learn how the market values a particular player, a type of player (power or speed, etc), or even a position group. That could help inform your decision on whether to draft a player now or risk waiting another round. It’s also fun to find out which players are the most polarizing, as in, which players fantasy owners don’t seem to agree on a value for, and therefore end up with large differences between their Min Pick and Max Pick numbers.
Let’s start looking toward 2024 and dive into the projections that are now all available on individual player pages and on the 2024 Pre-Season Projections page. It’s pretty clear that the projection systems are all pretty darn similar, or you would see far more variation between forecasts for individual players. That doesn’t mean they are identical, of course, with some regressing certain metrics more aggressively, or perhaps using Statcast metrics more than others. I don’t know all the ins and outs to compare, so instead, we’ll just focus on the players that THE BAT X and Steamer disagree on most.
Amid a flurry of free agent signings over the past week, we got a blockbuster trade snuck in as well! Former Brewers ace Corbin Burnes was traded to the Orioles, a team that’s still going to take a while longer for me to recognize as being good now. Justin Turner also signed a one-year contract with the Blue Jays, where he figures to rotate between DH, 1B, and 3B. Let’s review the park factors to determine how the change in home parks might affect their results.
Since Friday, there have been two fantasy relevant free agent signings. On Friday, Rhys Hoskins, who missed all of last season due to a torn ACL in his left knee, signed a two-year, $34 million contract with the Brewers. Then on Saturday, Joey Gallo signed a one-year, $5 million contract with the Nationals. Let’s consult the park factors and determine how their new home parks might affect their results.
Let’s start reviewing 2023 performance. We’ll start with hitter wOBA, comparing it to Statcast’s xwOBA. Why should we care how a hitter’s actual wOBA compared to his xwOBA? Because if you’re reading this, you’re probably a fantasy baseball player, and if you’re a fantasy baseball player, you probably want to either get your hands on a good set of projections or forecast players yourself.
Identifying the hitters who both underperformed and overperformed their xwOBA marks might help you recognize hitter projections that might be too optimistic or pessimistic, if your source isn’t incorporating Statcast data. If you’re manually projecting players yourself, you might want to weigh the player’s actual performance less heavily, and rely more on how that hitter was expected to perform given the underlying drivers of the xwOBA calculation.