Your Last Chance Home Run Buy List
We’re running out of time to improve our teams, so let’s use my xHR/FB rate equation (unadjusted for home park) to identify a handful of hitters potentially due for a home run spike over the remaining month-plus of the season.
| Name | Pull% + Oppo% | Brls/BBE | HR/FB | xHR/FB | HR/FB – xHR/FB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mitch Moreland | 67.6% | 11.7% | 13.3% | 18.5% | -5.2% |
| Kyle Seager | 58.0% | 9.0% | 9.9% | 14.5% | -4.6% |
| Miguel Cabrera | 53.6% | 11.7% | 13.4% | 17.5% | -4.1% |
| Nick Castellanos | 65.9% | 10.3% | 12.7% | 16.6% | -3.9% |
| Manny Machado | 66.9% | 12.3% | 15.4% | 19.2% | -3.8% |
| Yoenis Cespedes | 64.3% | 11.2% | 14.3% | 17.6% | -3.3% |
Mitch Moreland has delivered his typical ho-hum performance, but he has done enough to fend off prospect Sam Travis, who many thought would steal Moreland’s job by midseason. His Brls/BBE, however, suggests that better results should be coming. Interestingly, his Brls/BBE is at its highest mark going back to 2015, the first year we have Statcast data for, yet his HR/FB rate has tumbled. It’s not like Fenway Park has hampered him, as he sports a 15.7% home mark. It’s in away parks he has had issues with, posting just an 11.1% mark. Moreland should come cheap and makes for an excellent target in deep mixed or AL-Only leagues if you need homers.
Though he’s hitting his fly balls into the middle part of the field a bit more often than he has over the previous two seasons, Kyle Seager’s Brls/BBE is identical to his mark in 2015 and just slightly down from last year. And yet here Seager is sitting with a HR/FB rtae that just misses double digits. He’s been the same hitter he has always been, though this version has come with a career high fly ball rate. That’s even better news for his potential home run output the rest of the way as more fly balls plus more of those flies sailing over the wall will really increase that total. Unfortunately, the new batted ball distribution will do no favors to his BABIP, but the increased homers should offset it.
We know that Miguel Cabrera hasn’t been completely healthy and Alex Chamberlain recently used Statcast’s new estimated swing speed to try explaining Cabrera’s career low wOBA. But I keep coming back to this — injured or not, we already know his Brls/BBE, and it suggests his HR/FB rate should be significantly higher. Yes, his Brls/BBE is down dramatically from last season, but that’s solely because it spiked off his 2015 mark. His current mark is slightly higher than his 2015. We would figure injuries may have caused his Brls/BBE to crash, which would explain the power drought. But it hasn’t. So whether he’s injured or not, he’s still barreling up the ball, and often. When you also see a career low BABIP despite a career high line drive rate and career low pop-up rate, you have to believe he’s either the ultimate acquisition target or the ultimate exception to the Statcast rules.
I couldn’t resist the opportunity to include our favorite future breakout star Nick Castellanos on this list. I’m still waiting for an explanation as to why his barrels yield fewer homers than everyone else.
Even after swatting three homers last Friday, Manny Machado is still hitting for less home run power than we should expect. His Brls/BBE actually sits at a career best after remaining just about stagnant the last two years. He’s even pulling it and going the opposite way more often as well. A big rest of the season should be in the cards, especially with some BABIP upside if his line drive rate improves.
Yoenis Cespedes has amassed just 305 plate appearances having missed time to injuries, so he’s been relatively quiet despite generally doing what he has been. But his HR/FB rate is well down from the last two years, even though his Brls/BBE is up from last season. He’s even doing what Machado is doing and hitting it less frequently to the middle of the field. But he isn’t getting rewarded! With the possibility that he’s lost a bit of luster with the missed time and the younger breakout star Michael Conforto shifting the spotlight, Cespedes could come at a reasonable price.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
Has anyone figured out what is up with Comerica’s batted ball numbers? I’ve seen Miggy all over fantasy articles and twitter for his Brls/BBE and Hard hit rate (6th) and other metrics, but there’s been no positive regression and it doesn’t look like it’s getting better.
Someone is always going to be at the extremes of lists like this, so if it wasn’t Cabrera, it would be another name and everyone would be asking about him.
It’s no different from the SIERA outperformers. Whoever is atop the list, some will come up with some explanation unsupported by any sort of data to justify his place and ability to “induce weak contact” or whatever. But since luck plays such a big role in baseball outcomes, it’s always going to be a bell curve and sometimes there’s really no other explanation for the guys at the extremes than good ‘ole lady luck.
The difference here is that the “someones” on lists like this keep calling Comerica their home park. Something is definitely up there – check the splits.
There have been several articles already posted about the parks and any adjustments needed and none of them have proven that Comerica is producing flawed Statcast output.
Pretty well known that Cabrera has been playing hurt all year and it seems to have gotten worse, he was removed from a game on 8/12 and then missed 2 games.
xwOBA through AS Break: .416
xwOBA after AS Break: .340
I would also note that:
– even the .416 number before the AS Break is a big drop-off from the last 2 years when it was .459 (2016) and .446 (2015).
– Miggy has underperformed his xwOBA all 3 years – 60 points this year, 50 points in 2016, 22 points in 2015. AS noted in one article earlier this year, there seems to be a speed component to xwOBA that is missing since so many of the underperformers are slugs – the list of underperfomers is led by Miggy, Avila, Cron, Moreland, VMart, and Morales before you get to someone who isn’t slow in Alex Gordon.
Personally, I look at Miggy’s performance this year and I see all sorts of big, flashing warning signs. . . .
Did you read the article? I specifically said that whether he’s hurt or not is irrelevant because we already know his Brls/BBE. The combo of Pull% + Oppo% and Brls/BBE is highly correlated with HR/FB rate, whether the batter is hurt or not. If he was playing hurt (and he has been), that should already be reflected in his Brls/BBE number. Perhaps you think the injuries will bring his Brls/BBE down further, justifying the lower HR/FB rate, but without a Brls/BBE broken up by date range, I don’t know if he’s been significantly lower recently.
No I get it, I understand what you’re saying. I’ve thought all year that Miggy’s been unlucky. But now, I think he’s just hurt. I couldn’t figure out any way of splitting out Brls/BBE just since the AS Break at Baseball Savant. However, I would assume that is captured in his xwOBA which is way down.
Using fangraphs game logs, I can see that Miggy has done the following since the AS Break:
.248/.315/.350
.307 BABIP (same as pre-AS break, so it’s not some drastic fluky BABIP slump)
8.4% BB (down), 22.1% K (up)
26.7% LD (still very good)
32.2% FB (not much different from pre-AS Break but down from recent years)
35.6% Hard (way down from pre-AS Break)
6.9% HR/FB (also way down)
Kind of a mixed bag, but there are a lot of things moving the wrong direction for him like plate discipline and power. And not just since the AS Break, those things have been sliding for a few years now. Not as dramatically as recently, but sliding nonetheless.
It certainly could be a 6-week small sample size, but I see an aging 34 yo lumbering slugger with a bad back and declining numbers and I am not enthused. Combine that with the fact that he was probably a 2nd or 3rd round pick for whoever drafted him and they are holding onto him dearly (much like stocks, people value players based on what they paid for them not what they are actually worth) and I just don’t see him being a great acquisition target.
Miguel Cabrera’s season:
8/10: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/videos?video_id=1709996083
8/11: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/videos?video_id=1714273283
On 8/12 he launched one against Berrios, 382 feet. Caught. 8/18 he hit one at over 100 mph and 400 feet against Pedro Baez. Out. I don’t have the clips. It isn’t all bad luck, and he is hitting balls to center and right center. Tony B.’s article points out it is time for him to start harvesting some pull power.
Right around when Ortiz was 35ish he had an off season. He had years of excellent hitting left in the tank and I think Miggy will bounce back, if not be the monster he was. Beltre likewise has had a lot of really good seasons in his late 30s.
I had the same exact discussion with my friend re:Miggy and Ortiz. Oritz had that one odd, down season in 2009 (when he was ~33). He was at 100 wRC+ that year. Miggy right now is 34 and is at a 99 wRC+. Weird coincidence. I own Miggy this year (I thought I got him as a steal in the 2nd round, pick 9, 21st pick overall. Little did I know…), so he’s not exactly engendering lots of positive feelings toward him right now, but I’m so tempted to draft him even lower next year in case he follows that Ortiz route.
Oh, and now there’s the fact that Miggy is going to get a 2 week suspension 🙂