Man, it feels so good to have baseball back. Grey killed it with his positional rankings (#1 in 2023, the Fantasy Master Lothario’s rankings made us all tingly in our nethers), MarmosDad is getting us ready to field the best pitching staff we can, and Itch allows us to keep one eye on the present with another eye on the future in his prospect rankings.
If you somehow ended up here, I hope it’s because you visited the site or saw the article on Razzball’s social media. If you ended up here because you did a Google search and the search led you to this headline…then delete your browser history immediately.
During the preseason, we’re rightfully focused on drafting our teams and finding our “diamonds in the rough.” It’s relatively easy to draft in the first few rounds (how many people do you need to advise you to take top-50ish players?), but once you’ve picked among the cream of the crop, you’re relying more on your own set of criteria, data, and biases to differentiate between guys that your favorite writers/”the industry” may have very different opinions on.
What I aim to do in my pre-season writing is to take two or three sets of data/criteria that I think have correlation, if not causation, to positive hitting outcomes, jam that data together, and find you some guys who can give you some really good value relative to ADP vs other players at their position being taken earlier. As we go through the season, I plan to do similar things with the current data and try to help you find guys to acquire who are due for some positive regression.
For today’s article, I’m looking at hitters who did three things really well in 2023–pull the ball, hit it in the air, and hit it hard. When you’re pulling the ball, your bat is out in front of the ball and generating higher bat speed, leading to a higher hard-hit rate. If you can do that *and* get the ball in the air, now you’re cooking with grease. Your fences are typically shortest down the lines, so if you’re generating higher bat speeds, getting the ball in the air, and pulling them to the shortest parts of the ballparks, it stands to reason you have more opportunities to contribute in four categories–HRs, runs, RBI and AVG/OBP.
Obviously, this is not all-encompassing; as I said, I’m using what I think are a couple of useful, related sets of data, but not *every* piece of data. For today’s iteration, I’m not even considering anything related to speed or contact percentages. So yes, there are opportunities to argue against anything you see here with a “But he swings and misses so much!” or “His sprint speed will keep his steals to almost nothing!” That’s one of the fun things with our game; there are usually counter-arguments for most things that don’t include the studliest of the studs. I’m just trying to give us ways to look at/compare some guys using some data that I think is valuable correlatively and hopefully, you find some usefulness sorting out who and what you like with it.
On with it!
Typically I’m as anti-catcher as it gets; I regularly punt it until my last pick. What I’m about to do here makes me a little self-loathing, but the data here is the data, and I’m all over Angels backstop Logan O’Hoppe this draft SZN. The 24-year old was limited to 182 ABs last year due to injury, but he showed good power potential by cracking 14 HRs in those 182 ABs. O’Hoppe’s Pull%/Hard%/FB% all back up his show of power, as he pulled over 56% of the time, with a 48% FB%, and a hard-hit rate of 38%. Using Fantasy Pros 2024 ADP (an average of Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, NFBC, and RTS ADPs), O’Hoppe is currently the 14th C off the board but there’s no way I’m taking guys like Jonah Heim, Keibert Ruiz, and Gabriel Moreno ahead of him. I’m not even sure I like “sexier” picks like Yainer Diaz or Francisco Alvarez ahead of O’Hoppe, either, happy to let others snatch them up and then uhh, hopping on O’Hoppe once they’re gone. I’d happily have him as a C1 in 12-team leagues.
I’m back for more self-loathing with another former catcher from the AL Central, MJ Melendez. For somebody with a sub-.400 SLG%, Melendez has some gaudy rates for our article. Though he only hit 16 HRs in 2023, his 46% Pull%/42 Hard%/44 FB% tells me there are another 6-8 HRs in his bat (though Steamer and Grey don’t think he breaks 20). There’s no way I’m taking guys like Lars Nootbaar, Starling Marte, Alex Verdugo, and Jung Hoo Lee (just to name a few) before the 25-year old Melendez. For me he’s an OF4 in 12-team leagues.
Staying in the AL Central, the Twins’ Max Kepler seems to stay forever underrated. Fangraphs Roster Resource has him hitting in the heart of the Minnesota order, and he already has solid power, knocking 24 HRs last year in only 438 ABs. Kepler’s 43 Pull%/38 Hard%/44 FB% verifies that given a good spot in the lineup and 550 ABs, 30-32 HRs is absolutely on the table. Kepler is even more of a bargain than Melendez on Fantasy Pros, as I’d be taking Kepler over the guys mentioned in the Melendez blurb above along with jumping him over Gavin Lux, Kris Bryant, Luis Rengifo, and Jeff McNeil. Grey has him for 25 HRs this year, and I’m taking the over in 2024. Another OF4 in 12-team leagues.
I’m going to break my own rule for this last one, as I tried to go over 40/38/40 for my cutoffs here. This guy was just too tempting for me to pass up. Toronto’s Davis Schneider has huge pull%/FB%, both over 50%, while his Hard% is at 35%–still very solid. Steamer and Grey have him projected for 16 bombs apiece, but I think that’s more to do with their doubting his PT. The computers have more faith that Cavan Biggio is a thing than I do, and I think the bat wins out and Schneider accrues 450ish ABs. With 450 ABs, I think 25 bombs is on the table to go with a really high OBP, and you can get him for almost nothing in 12-teamers. I’d leap to find room for him as my MI in those leagues.
