Fixing My Fantasy Weakness: Hitter Evaluation

I was recently asked the following question by Werthless.

Jeff, what are you trying to accomplish here? Are you trying to estimate the volatility in an individual player’s projection? That’s an interesting question, and directly related to the risk of the player. Are you trying to do better than Steamer at predicting performance? That’s a big endeavor. Are you trying to predict injuries? Might be better to do that directly. Are you trying to better estimate number of plate appearances by estimating job security? Might be better to do that directly.

Then, you can combine the models to perhaps better quantify a player’s risk of meeting preseason performance objectives. You can apply your model onto a different year’s data to see how well your predictions match reality (ie. Do the higher risk players actually underperform more often than lower risk players).

I do have a plan I’m implementing but it wasn’t known to my readers. Sorry. I want to understand which hitter traits to concentrate on. If they don’t exist, I created some.

For a few season’s now, my hitters have steadily outperformed my pitchers. In my three main leagues, here are the pitching-hitting splits from this past season.

 

In each, I used the league’s average allocation of pitching dollars to build my staffs. With pitchers, I’ve been able to quickly evaluate them via:

• Quick looks
• Checking for velocity changes.
• pERA
• Additionally, I have a couple other projects in the works. I am finalizing the framework to help identify the most likely pitchers to investigate by comparing their pitch characteristics. Also, I want to identify the pitchers who have the most to gain from a third pitch (i.e Robbie Ray and Luis Severino).

With hitters, I felt I needed to do more to improve my evaluation process. Right now, I’m designing a procedure and tools to evaluated hitter faster and better. I know I can just push more resources towards hitters, and I will somewhat, but I am worried I may be dealing with a small sample or a lucky year picking pitchers. If I create a few more tools/metrics now, I can continue to use them into the future and readjust my spending mix as I see fit.

With hitters, I came into the offseason with a few plans to implement. As a rule, it’s tougher to find out if a hitter has changed (e.g. more power or a new approach) compared to a pitcher (e.g. added velocity or new pitch). I always found myself a week or two late picking up hitters or when rookies were promoted, I spent my resources inefficiently. For these reasons, I began to improve my hitter evaluation process in the middle of last season. Here is what I’ve done so far.

• Found breakout traits and how much they stick.
• Determine under and overperformance chances.
• Use prospect grades to better evaluate prospects.
• Use StatCast information to help determine if hitters change their swing path for the better. It’s work in progress which requires me to learn a bit of coding.
• Targeting injury “prone” hitters are an undervalued asset (also included in 2018 BHQ’s Forecaster)
• Hitters who had their projections adversely affected by playing through injuries.

I’m getting near the end of my major planned projects but will go through my notes to see if I have missed anything.

Sadly, I won’t know if these procedures will make enough of a difference until the middle of next season. While I am not 100% sure quickly and correctly evaluating hitters is my greatest weakness (holding onto underperformer players maybe it and a procedure I need to look into also), I can try to improve. None of the above changes are going to make a major difference but several small changes could add up to help bridge my knowledge gap between hitters and pitchers.

This improvement is what all owners should be trying to achieve. I know everyone doesn’t have the time to dedicate to the game like I have but most could find a few ways to improve with the limited time they have available. One of the greatest resources owners have are believable industry experts with great track records. They are great resources who need to constantly provide public knowledge. They can’t hide all their secrets.

Besides believable experts, focused research can lead to major gains. I’m a believer that drafts aren’t won in the first three rounds (they can be lost). Everyone knows the top players. I make a concerted effort to concentrate on players ranked 50th and lower. That’s my focus. For another person, the focus may be on potential closers. Or catching up on rookies called up late last season when football season started. Possibly pitchers transitioning to the starting rotation. No one knows everything.

The focus area can be different for everyone. The key is to identify the weakness and do something about. My goal was to have a better process in place to quickly and accurately identifying hitters on the rise. I hope I do now.