Like a kindergartner who just discovered boogers, I was digging into exit velocity and launch angle, because, ya know, these are important things now. Is it me or does it feel like sabermetricians think they’ve reinvented the wheel every six months only to abandon all the new stuff in six months for something else? “This is Marvin! Marvin Berry, your cousin! Yo, put down your ERA+ and VORP, I need you to hear about exit velocity!” So, Nick Castellanos is regularly talked about when exit velocity and launch angles are brought up. His average exit velocity is 90 MPH. The top is Aaron Judge at 95 MPH, and Castellanos looks to be about 40th on the list (it wasn’t numbered, and I’m too lazy to count). The top 40 is filled with hitters who are excelling at ghosting faster than others, but is also littered with disappointing names: Machado, Gallo, Sandoval and Miggy, to name a few, and there is at least half you don’t want. I could make a case that Adam Lind is as enticing as Castellanos using just exit velocity, which I guess is my point. It’s a fun new metric (not that new, not that fun), but, in my estimation, it’s like a piece of evidence found at a crime. It’s got the victim and suspect’s DNA on it, but if it doesn’t fit you can choose to ignore it. Granted, that doesn’t rhyme quite as well. Castellanos is 2nd in the majors for Hard Contact%. Right in front of Miggy. Again, you can read into that anything you want. I still believe the Castellanos breakout is coming one of these years (he’s still only 25), but if you watch him hit, he has a line drive stroke, not a home run one. The launch angle data is even less compelling for Castellanos because he drives balls the opposite way. You can mollywhop, but if you’re going the other way, it’s not going to do as much damage unless you are Giancarlo or Judge, i.e, a giant living amongst Lilliputians. The Greek God of Exit Velocity pulls line drives and hits fly balls the other way. It might be the leg kick, it might be his natural swing tendencies, but it’s obvious if you look at his spray charts. With all that said (here’s where Grey throws everything out), there’s no one hotter right now and it’s silly he’s only owned in 40% of leagues. Okay, enough of Grey’s impersonation of Fangraphs… Anyway, here’s some more players to Buy or Sell this week in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?