Early Barrels Per Batted Ball Event (Brls/BBE) Leaders

Late last season, the wonderful people at MLBAM graced us with a gift from the heavens — a new stat called Barrels. While there’s specific criterion that must be met to be considered a “barrel”, essentially, it’s a ball that a batter hits the crap out of. The stat is available on the Statcast leaderboard, which also includes the total number of batted ball events recorded for the batter. That allows for the calculation of an easy ratio, dubbed Barrles per Batted Ball Event, or Brls/BBE. I used this metric as the primary component of my Statcast-fueled xHR/FB rate. So now that the fine folks over at MLBAM have updated the numbers for the season, it’s time to dive in. Let’s begin by simply checking in on the leaders.

A lot of the hitters on this list are not surprising. But there are quite a few who are. Let’s focus on those that are.

Miguel Sano, duh. It’s been an incredible start so far, as he has posted a .468 BABIP, and 18.6% walk rate, and has yet to hit a pop-up. But perhaps the craziest stat? He owns the lowest Soft% among qualified batters…by far. His 1.8% mark is microscopic and really just unbelievable.

If you were still on the fence as to whether Aaron Judge was for real (you’re not on the fence, right?!), then his Brls/BBE mark should confirm for you that he is, indeed, for real. He’s a good example of why scouting is still beneficial, as he was never an elite power source in the minors. Good, yes, but not at the level you would expect given the expectations of his eventual peak production.

So maybe Matt Davidson can sorta keep this up. His BABIP isn’t seriously inflated and his HR/FB rate is just barely over 20%. The only question mark is the fly ball rate, as it’s highly unlikely he could sustain a near 60% mark. When that drops, his offense is going to decline and all the strikeouts are going to be problematic.

I’m just surprised that Joey Gallo isn’t higher! His profile has been very Davidson-esque with tons of fly balls boosting the power. He even has some offensive upside when that .234 BABIP improves.

How is it that I liked Ryan Zimmerman as an undervalued choice the last two years and now he goes off after I lost interest?! Sure, he’s obviously healthy now after several injury-marred seasons, but he was never this good during his peak years!

BUY Nick Castellanos. His batted ball profile is pristine, but somehow his HR/FB rate sits at just 10.7%, despite sitting near the top of the Brls/BBE leaderboard. He has yet to hit a pop-up, has been hitting line drives like mad, and sits with a near league leading 6.0% Soft%.

I purposely expanded the list to get to Yonder Alonso, who homered again yesterday. We know that he has changed his swing to increase his launch angle, aka boosted his fly ball rate, but his fly balls are flying over the fence five times as often as they did last year! Since he’s swinging and missing more, this looks like a complete change in plate approach. I wouldn’t expect a sustained 20%+ HR/FB rate, but he’s looking like a buy high.