As the kids start going back to school and with Labor Day right around the corner, we get our annual reminder that the baseball season is entering the home stretch. As I pen this week’s edition of Analytics Anonymous, I wonder where the season went. With only 5 weeks left to decide the MLB playoff races, and all of our fantasy baseball titles as well, the dog days of trades, waivers, and lineup shuffling is rapidly coming to a close. It’s also a sign that I have to really start paying attention to football again, but that’s a discussion for another place and time.
No, today is all about baseball. Paraphrasing an old saying, we in the fantasy sporting world know “days are long, weeks are short.” Even though there’s only 5 weeks left to decide your league titles, it’s not time to throw in the towel. With a little tinkering, even with Labor Day right around the corner, you can still make a push toward the championship – or at least find the money as a small consolation. Today, I’m going to help you with that.
Like always, I spent time early in the week just picking through the available data out there. If you’re a frequent reader, you know there have been many times where I start out combing through numbers, not really sure what my article’s topic will be. This was one of those weeks.
Sorting through analytics since the All-Star Break, I began noticing a number of surprising names mixed in with the stars. Many of these players are surging right when we need them to you. The best part? Some of these names may still be available to you off the waiver wire. So, for today’s edition of Analytics Anonymous, I’ll break down some of the common analytics I write about and share names of players who may just give your squad the boost it needs to finish in the money. If even one of you “cashes in” off this information, my time and efforts are more than justified. This should be fun. Let’s get going…
wRC+
I’ve written about Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) a couple times this season. The best, in my opinion, was back on May 5 in Blake’s Gone Fish’n For Carp’s wRC+. In that one, I broke down this complex calculation and talked a bit about Park Factors. It’s way too much to regurgitate but I encourage you to go back and read up on this very useful analytic.
As a short reminder though, wRC+ is a statistic which attempts to credit a hitter for the value of each outcome (single, double, etc.) rather than treating all hits or times on base equally, while also controlling for park effects and the current run environment.
wRC+ is scaled so that league average is 100 each year and every point above or below 100 is equal to one percentage point better or worse than league average. In theory, this makes wRC+ a better representation of offensive value than AVE, RBI, OPS, or WOBA.
Since the Break, the MLB leaders in wRC+ include Corey Seager (205), Mookie Betts (192), Shohei Ohtani (186), Matt Olson (179), Ronald Acuna Jr. (167), Pete Alonso (159), and Bryce Harper (154). None of these names should surprise you. Well, how about these players mixed into that list:
Power
You also know I like looking at power, and specifically Isolated Power (ISO). I’ve written about this a couple times this season as well. You can go way back to February 25 for my initial ISO article, In Search Of…ISO, or read the update to it from April 21, Still In Search Of…ISO.
Anyway, you may recall from those masterpieces that ISO is calculated one of two ways:
- ISO = (2B + 2 x 3B + 3 x HR) /ABs
- ISO = Slugging % (SLG) – Batting Average (BA)
Once again, here is how we rate ISO:
True, the sample size from the All-Star Break is a little small to adequately rate the players based on the table above. Therefore, I’ll just look at those on the top shelf. Corey Seager (.426), Matt Olson (.362), Pete Alonso (.353), Shohei Ohtani (.342), Austin Riley (.336), Rafael Devers (.294), Kyle Schwarber (.286) and Mookie Betts (.268). We’ve seen many of these names in just the past few minutes, right? How about these:
Moving right along to…
More Power
Did You Say…More Power. I sure did. This was a piece I wrote where I analyzed differences in Batted Ball data – Hard%-Soft%, Barrels%, MaxEV, and HardHit%. In summary, I set some thresholds for the various analytics and looked at how the top HR hitters were ranking amongst the leaders in each. It produced some interesting results and I’d recommend a quick read to see for yourself.
We all need power, don’t we? If your teams are like mine, that’s a resounding “YES” to the question. In the interest of time, since time is running short on our title hopes, I’ll just do an abbreviated version of that earlier article. No analysis, just names and numbers. However, take notice of the names that keep showing up in these tables. Those are the ones to target first.
Hard%-Soft%:
Barrel%:
MaxEV:
HardHit%:
Speed
Lastly, let’s take a quick look at speed – Stolen Base Opportunity (SBO) and Speed Score (Spd)
To read my original piece on SBO, refer back to the February 18th article, My Name Is TLB And I’m An Analytholic.
As the abbreviation implies, the SBO attempts to quantify the opportunity a player has to steal a base. Since most SBs occur when a player steals second base, it is heavily dependent on how often the hitter reaches first base. SBO is calculated as:
- SBO = (SB + CS)/(1B+BB)
A SBO of 20% (0.20) or more is a common threshold for identifying players to target. Ultimately, we want players who not only have the OPPORTUNITY but also a high EFFICIENCY for achieving SBs. So, instead of just looking at SBO, I included the player’s Spd as well.
Spd is a statistic that rates a player on their speed and baserunning ability. The Spd score below includes other analytics like SB%, frequency of SB attempts, 3B% and R%. So, we have a little overlap between the two analytics so primarily target those with higher numbers in each. Here they are:
There you go folks, I hope you can find some available names from these lists to meet your needs. Most importantly, keep grinding. The finish line is right around the corner. And as always, keep sifting through the number. That’s where you find the gems!
Follow me on Twitter/X: @Derek_Favret.
Until next time, my friends!
