6/14/21
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to our Patreon!!
Follow us on Twitter
SUMMER STUDS: 4 BUBBLING BREAKOUTS
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Yesterday, I perused the Triple-A hitter HR/FB rate leaderboard and discussed the AL hitters at the top. Now let’s jump to the NL and determine whether any of these sluggers could find themselves in the Majors within the next month. Once again, I have excluded any hitters who are already in the Majors and this list only includes qualified hitters.
Not everyone is playing in a high-stakes NFBC league. Some of us are just trying to beat our family members, friends, or random strangers who have agreed to play fantasy baseball with us. In addition, not all of us are in deep leagues. Sometimes it’s hard getting even 10 people to pay enough attention to baseball for a full season to make your league competitive. If you just so happen to find yourself in one of these shallow leagues, like an ESPN or CBS league, where the stakes are low, the waiver wire is full of talent and everyone is bought in, consider yourself lucky. But, don’t consider yourself in an easy league.
Let’s continue our future minor league callup series, this time moving to the metric I probably care most about — HR/FB rate. Since home runs is a category and wOBA is not in the majority of fantasy leagues, we could directly understand the potential impact a high (or low) HR/FB rate could have for fantasy teams. So let’s now begin in the American League by reviewing and discussing the Triple-A HR/FB rate leaders. Once again, I have excluded any hitters who are already in the Majors and this list only includes qualified hitters.
Yesterday, I discussed the American League Triple-A hitters leading in wOBA and their chances of being recalled in the coming weeks. Today, let’s switch over to the National League. As a reminder, I’m excluding any hitters currently in the Majors.
Chances are if you picked up Trevor Larnach in a shallower league, you cut him after a couple of weeks due to poor performance. Two weeks in he was running a .186/.314/.326 with just a single homer. A week later he was at .228/.389/.456 so he was still hitting a lot of waiver wires despite some OPS improvement. The walks were great but there was little else in terms of production. Hell, even his .247/.389/.438 to date doesn’t scream “pick up!” And yet, that’s exactly what I’m doing because I see Larnach having a strong summer that will make him relevant across many formats.
Now that we’re more than a third into the season and we’re approaching the date in which teams no longer have to worry about Super 2 status, let’s turn to the minor league leaderboards to try identifying who may get promoted over the next couple of weeks. I’ll start in the American League and review the wOBA leaders. I only care about prospects who are earning a call-up. If the hitter in question is not performing well in the minors, regardless of his prospect pedigree, why would we expect the hitter to suddenly perform well in the Majors? For each prospect, I’ll list his age, rank on our prospect lists and current MLB incumbent ahead of him. I’ll exclude any hitters already in the Majors, as some were just recalled this weekend.
In one of the most iconic and artistic pieces of American cinematography of all time, power-hungry aliens travel to Earth from Planet Moron Mountain and drain NBA basketball all-stars of their talent. While I still hold out hope that there will be a baseball version of SpaceJam within my lifetime, I can only imagine who amongst MLB’s stars would be cast. One look at statcast leaderboards could help. Here are the 10 qualified hitters so far this year who have seen the largest drain in hard-hit rate:
Today, I’m going to take a stab to answer the simple question:
“Do hitters perform better with regular at-bats?”
While the question is simple, finding an acceptable answer is not so easy. While my final approach is far from “perfect”, it verifies the statement is true to a small extent.
The concept behind the rule-of-thumb is that with regular at-bats, a hitter can get into a groove and perform better. Usually, the idea references a hitter in a platoon.
Besides being in a platoon, he could be in the National League and used primarily as a pinch hitter. Anyone going from mainly being a pinch hitter to a full-time role will no longer occur the pinch hitter penalty.
Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s continue our search for new everyday hitters, which continue to pop up on a seemingly regular basis.
