Now that almost 50% of the season is in the books, it’s a good time to check in on baseball’s top hitting prospects from a projections-based perspective. You can see the preseason list here and last year’s midseason list here. Those articles also feature more methodological detail if you want to read more about the projections process. Briefly, the projections capture prospect performance across the (non-DSL) minor and major leagues in recent years, making use of aging curves, major league equivalencies, league environment adjustments, park factors, regression, and more, to project peak (late-20s) prospect performance in the majors. They do not capture scouting, defense, or amateur performance. Starting this offseason, they also capture bat speed, which was made available for a decent handful of prospects this spring training.
A couple of weeks ago, I examined four starting pitchers using a small sample of predictive data. It was a half-hearted comparison. I’m correcting that today with a simple FanGraphs download to spreadsheet comparison.
I decided on the stats to use based on work I did for The Process. Here is a look at what early-season stats are most predictive of rest-of-season stats (R-squared values).
I used the two overall STUFH values (BotOverall, Pitching+) and the top two ERA estimators (SIERA, xFIP). Additionally, I wanted to weigh the stats that immediately stabilize (Ball%, SwStr%, Fastball velocity).
One major change, I put all the values on an ERA scale for easier comparison. Three values came in an ERA format, but the others need to be calculated. Here are the formulas I used (also in the provided spreadsheet).
Not all the values are in the download, so I created a copyable spreadsheet (File, Create a Copy) to paste the pitchers’ stats (cell L4), and then the various ERA values are calculated along with an overall value. The average ERA can be ordered by using the promote option in cell J4.
In this instance, Brandon Walter stands out with everything looking great, except his 92 mph (4.32 ERA) fastball. He could bomb, but the goal is to make the best decision with little information.
One possible change is to adjust the weightings. I equally weighed the values. Someone can always give more weight to certain values (Pitching+) or just remove others (FBv). For me, the table allows for easy comparison of pitchers. If I were to evaluate each pitcher, I’d look at the above stats. This makes the analysis easier.
Two additions could be included: the first is to add a projection based on the preseason prospect rank (overall and team), the other one is to include the pitcher’s ERA projection (via xlookup).
Let me know if you have any questions on setting up the spreadsheet to help evaluate pitchers with a small MLB data sample.
Below are the latest playing time changes for pitchers in the past week, with a couple of brutal pieces of news — Tommy John surgery for both Corbin Burnes and Jackson Jobe — the unfortunate headliners this week.
Change in Proj. % of Team’s Remaining GS, 6/6 to 6/13
Below are the latest playing time changes for pitchers in the past week, highlighted by AJ Smith-Shawver’s season-ending injury that increases the importance of Grant Holmes and Bryce Elder in Atlanta’s rotation.
Here are the latest changes in projected position player playing time since last Tuesday, led by some Tigers outfielders finally getting healthy and, of course, the debut of Jac Caglianone.
Below are the most significant playing time projection changes for pitchers for the past week, led by Jared Jones‘ season-ending elbow surgery that could keep him out for most or all of 2026, too.
