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.

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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:

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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.
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Let’s continue our search for new everyday hitters, which continue to pop up on a seemingly regular basis.

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I’m sure I’m not the only fantasy owner ravaged by injuries this year. With multiple injuries seemingly occurring every day, new players are getting opportunities for regular playing time. Of course, poor play by the incumbent may be another reason for new opportunities. Let’s discuss a bunch of these new everyday starters and determine whether they are worthy of your attention.

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Yesterday, I used Statcast’s xBA calculation to discuss the hitters whose batting average’s have most underperformed and could be due for a surge over the rest of the season. Today, let’s flip over to the hitters who have most overperformed their xBA marks as calculated by Statcast. This group could suffer a batting average decline over the rest of the season, and perhaps a significant one, without a dramatic change in underlying skills, like strikeout rate.

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There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to fans. It is a dimension as vast as the width of two balls and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and dark, between strike and ball, and lies between the pit of a batter’s fear and the summit of his bat’s knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Shadow Zone.

The entire zone can be divided into four attack zones, starting at the heart, and moving out to the shadow zone (the width of a ball on the inside and outside of the strike zone), which is followed by the chase and waste zones.

We’ll be focusing on the shadow zone, home of pitcher’s pitches and balls framed to strikes, looking first at the players who are offering at these borderline pitches the least in 2021. However, swinging less at shadow pitches doesn’t guarantee success and some hitters are better served by being more aggressive. Like most things, it’s a case-by-case situation. Read the rest of this entry »

While we know that ratios like batting average bounce around during the year, it still takes discipline to look past your hitter’s .194 average through a quarter of the season and vow to hold him, waiting patiently for the rebound you hope occurs. Sometimes, that .194 average is deserved, though that still doesn’t necessarily mean we should expect it to remain that low. Other times, a heaping of poor fortune is mostly to blame for the low average as the hitter actually deserves a higher mark. In the latter, you might have more confidence in a rebound. Let’s use Statcast’s xBA and compare it to actual BA to see which hitters have the most potential for a BA surge over the rest of the season, according to its calculation. Since Statcast isn’t recalculating a balls in play number, then this all falls onto BABIP, so I have included that mark in the below table as well. Just keep in mind that Statcast ignores anything shift-related, so on the whole, hitters most prone to grounding into the shift are going to going to underperform their xBA marks.

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Let’s continue our look into the hitters who have been starting regularly that you may not have even realized. Will their every day playing time continue, and if so, in which leagues, if any, are they worthy of your starting roster?

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Injury and poor performance results in a constant stream of new everyday starters in team lineups. It could be difficult to keep up and notice these changes unless you own the guy who no longer has a starting job. So let’s dive into some of the hitters who are now getting an opportunity to play every day and figure out whether that playing time will continue and whether there’s potential positive fantasy impact.

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