Hitter Auction Calculator Awards: The Exceeds Expectations Award

To qualify for this totally made-up award, a player must have earned at least $5 by the end of the season and accumulated at least $5 more than expected. This query logic allows for players who we already knew would be good, but we just didn’t know would be this good.

Finalists: Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt, and Freddie Freeman

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Finalist #1: Paul Goldschmidt, Projected: $19, Earned: $34

The man has never really been bad, but if you had faded him in your rankings headed into his age 35 season due to some of the dips witnessed in 2o21, it’s likely that no one gave you a hard time.

If you didn’t fade, you came out with a player who exceeded his z-scores in every single category excluding stolen bases, but even his stolen base value was nearly average with 7 on the year. Here’s a look at his projected and earned value:

Goldschmidt has very little in his skills profile that would indicate an age decline. There is hardly anything that has gone through significant change or deviation from his career averages. Simply put, he has been one of the most steady and productive fantasy players in history and if you had him on your team, you were likely one of the top teams in your league.

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Finalist #2: Freddie Freeman, Projected: $26, Earned: $33

Freeman was the 12th most valuable player listed on the preseason auction calculator (steamer, default settings) and the fourth best player with 2022 YTD settings. It should not be a surprise that he finished as a top-five hitter, but if you got Freeman and you didn’t overpay, you generated some good value. There was very little time this season that Freeman’s 15-game rolling wRC+ was below 100.

Freeman outperformed his z-scores in every category except for home runs. He was projected for 32 and he only hit 21. While his HR/FB rate may indicate that he was unlucky, his HardHit% declined this season and has been declining over the span of the last four seasons. Freeman ended the year with a 12% HR/FB while the league averaged 11.4%:

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…and the award goes to…

Finalist #3: Aaron Judge, Projected: $27, Earned: $55

Are you surprised? Judge was slept on this season. I write that knowing his ADP was in the third round, but I think many fantasy managers were hesitant due to his injury history. Sure, Judge outperformed all of our projection systems’ home run totals by over 20, but did you see those 16 stolen bases?! This was one of the most dominant fantasy seasons by a single player in a long time. The only player to come close to his end-of-season $55 value was Miguel Cabrera’s 2014 $44.8 and Mookie Betts‘ 2018 $44.0. That’s just what happens when you break the American League (AL) single-season home run record and make a push for the AL triple crown. It is truly remarkable what Aaron Judge did this season from a fantasy perspective. To think that he could have been a 20-20 player with only four more steals is somewhat mind-boggling. Anyone who rostered Judge was taking a risk. Here’s a look at his “Five-Year Injury Log” courtesy of Ron Schandler’s 2022 Baseball Forecaster:

18 – 50 days, right wrist fracture

19 – 62 days strained L oblique

20 – 34 days strained R calf

21 – 12 days COVID-19

Fantasy managers who realized the potential in a healthy Aaron Judge season likely gambled and took him early. If you saw his $27 pre-season projected value and thought, “No, that can’t be right”, and you tacked on an additional $20, you would have still underpaid by $8. Simply amazing.

Congratulation to Aaron Judge on an amazing season and to any fantasy managers that rostered him. Next week, I’ll take a look at the overall largest differences in projections versus earned value with the Nobody Saw You Comin’ Award.