Yesterday, I reviewed the hitters that have most underperformed their Statcast xBA marks. Let’s now flip over to the overperformers.

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While we have all acknowledged that Statcast’s xBA (expected batting average) isn’t perfect, and the reason I created my hitter xBABIP equation, it’s far better than taking a hitter’s current batting average or BABIP at face value. It’s also easy to use — no calculations required, just open the Statcast leaderboard on Fangraphs and you’ll see a bevy of Statcast metrics, including xBA. So as we’re getting close to the one-third point of the season, let’s check out the biggest underperformers. These are the hitters whose batting averages are most below their xBA marks. It’s a good starting list to research further for potential trade target opportunities.

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If you drafted Yasmani Grandal based on Steamer’s 2022 pre-season projections, you were likely preparing to play in an OBP league. Grandal was projected to finish the season with the tenth best (tied with Max Muncy) OBP at .373. The 2021 league average OBP was .317. If you were to now head over to our 2022 leaderboards, you would see Grandal is holding a disappointing .279. But, narrow down that leaderboard to only viewing qualified catchers. The first thing that you may notice is that there are only seven catchers on the list and that Grandal is one of them.

You’ll also notice that Grandal’s .279 OBP is third from the bottom, yet his 12.2% BB% ranks first (high), his 18.4% K% ranks second, and his 7.6% SwStr% (low) ranks first. He’s walking and he isn’t striking out. That marks off two of the three true outcomes. Homeruns, being the third true outcome, have not come more than twice for Grandal, and that coupled with a .210 BABIP and a .180 AVG have probably made those rostering Grandal feel a little uneasy. But, if those same fantasy managers are believers in regresión a la media, then they are sitting pretty.

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Yesterday, I reviewed three rookie hitters, all of whom happened to be top five prospects heading into the season. Let’s review another three today using the same format.

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I can’t remember the last time three of the top five prospects all debuted at the same time. Has it ever happened? I’m sure at some point in history, but it’s pretty awesome. This season, the #2 overall prospect Bobby Witt Jr., #4 prospect Julio Rodríguez, and #5 prospect Spencer Torkelson all opened the regular season in their teams’ starting lineups. Exciting! With just over a fifth of the season in the books, let’s take a gander at how these potential future stars are performing.

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Mike Trout, Yordan Alvarez, Aaron Judge, and… J.D. Davis? As of this writing (5/14/22), Davis is fourth on the Statcast expected stats leaderboard behind three of the best sluggers in baseball. Sure, he has about less than half of the plate appearances (62) as those other three (average of 124), but his .454 xwOBA is bright red nonetheless. Sadly, Davis is only slugging .300. Compare that with Yordan Alvarez’s .697, and you wonder why I’m mentioning Davis and Alvarez in the same paragraph. Somehow, Alvarez is actually expected to be slugging even higher, .082 points higher to be exact. Davis? He’s expected to be slugging .313 points higher, or a total of .613. Davis holds the largest difference between his wOBA (.301) and his xwOBA (.454) among hitters with enough balls in play to qualify for the leaderboard. Ladies and gentlemen, the man has been getting robbed and I give you the first example:

That ball was struck at 102 mph at an angle of 14 degrees. The estimated batting average by Statcast’s combination of hit speed and angle was 0.714. While there was an infield shift on, the outfield alignment is listed as “Standard” in the data. But you don’t have to drill into any data at all after watching the video to realize the ball was smoked, it was just smoked right at an outfielder.

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Yesterday, I looked at the hitter maxEV surgers versus last year. For this comparison, 2022 sample size doesn’t matter, as the smaller number of at-bats makes it that much more impressive that the hitter has already exceeded his 2021 maxEV. Today, we flip to the maxEV decliners. This time, sample size does matter, as hitters clearly had more opportunity to launch that one ball that marked their maxEV last year than this season so far. So take these names with a larger grain of salt and don’t panic nearly as much given the sample size issues. An appearance here could prove to be meaningless, or it could be nothing, and tomorrow the hitter hits that one ball hard enough to move that maxEV up.

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Let’s talk hitter maxEV, which represents the highest exit velocity recorded by a hitter during the season. It could come on any batted ball type, though a high EV on a fly ball, or even line drive, is much more meaningful than on a grounder. Today, I’ll review the hitters whose maxEV marks have already surged versus 2021. The beauty of focusing on the surgers is that we don’t care about sample size this year. Last year, sure, sample size matters. The greater the sample size of balls in play, the better chance the hitter has of exceeding any particular EV. So the thinking goes that if a hitter has already exceeded his mark last year in just a month and change of balls in play, it could mean his power has increased. Let’s get to the names.

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This past weekend, I was trying to decide how much to lean into Oakland’s nine-game week. I didn’t know if just the regulars would start in all the games or should I focus on some of the lesser bats (there are many of them on Oakland). I figured this question would come up several times during the season, so I decided to get an overall view of who sits and plays.

I’ll apologize upfront for most of the article being a big data dump. If anyone is not interested in the numbers, just jump to “Conclusions” for my take on the information. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I reviewed the hitters who have underperformed their xwOBA marks the most. Now let’s flip over to the overperformers. Once again, I acknowledge the flaws in the metric and the existence of consistent underperformers and overperformers. If one of the hitters on this list has consistently overperformed, I’ll note it.

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