It’s been about a month and a week since I last reviewed the hitter xwOBA underperformers, so let’s get back to it. If you’re looking for the quickest way to identify a list of trade targets, this may be where you start. As a reminder, xwOBA isn’t perfect, so I do like to peruse the hitter’s xwOBA vs wOBA history to see whether he has been a consistent underperformer, which might suggest the formula is missing something the hitter is or isn’t doing that is legitimately dragging down his performance.
Last Thursday, I reviewed and discussed the hitters whose FB% has increased the most versus last year. Now let’s flip to the FB% decliners. Wondering why your supposed power hitter has disappointed in the home run category? Perhaps it’s because he’s hitting fly balls at a lower rate than he did last year.
There are three metrics that directly drive a hitter’s home run rate — strikeout rate, HR/FB rate, and FB%. Strikeout rate ties to balls in play, so the more balls in play, the greater the home run rate, all else being equal. The hitter’s HR/FB rate is obvious, as that’s literally telling us what percentage of fly balls have left the yard. Finally, FB% is the percentage of balls hit in the air. While a small percentage of line drives do end up as home runs, the vast majority come from fly balls. We typically think a hitter increased his power by raising his HR/FB rate when we see a home run spike. But as there are actually three metrics driving home run rate, that’s not always the case. So let’s focus on the hitters who have increased their FB% marks the most versus last year. More fly balls equals more opportunities for a home run.
Yesterday, I reviewed four rookie hitters that were former top prospects. Today, let’s continue with the rookie hitter reviews, this time mixing in some surprising top performers with additional former top prospects.
Last week, I reviewed a number of rookie starting pitchers. Now let’s flip over to the hitters. I’ll begin by reviewing some of the top prospects before switching over to the top performers that weren’t top prospects in an effort to cover everyone you care about.
I have a short amount of time to get this done today (son’s final track meet) so I’ll give each team a quick look and move on. I’m not going to include any stats. I might look into lineups a little more at the meet on Twitter.
There are still a number of hitting metrics to review the extreme cases, so let’s continue the weird and the wonderful on the batting side before moving over to the pitching side.
Today is Statcast day, so I’ll review hitters at the extremes of the various Statcast metrics we share on FanGraphs.
