Points Leagues – Barrels Of Fun!

With all this talk about torpedo bats and barrels, I thought we should take the opportunity to look at the early data to see if we can find something useful for our Points league teams.

Now, I hear what you’re saying.  “We’re only crossing into double-digit games, how can any of that data be meaningful yet?”  Well, astute fantasy baseball enthusiast, you are right.  It does take a couple months of ABs for analytics like these to normalize so we won’t be able to make direct correlations.  However, I believe there is always valuable information in there just waiting to be mined out.  So, that’s what we’re going to do.

But first, what is a Barrel?  You know…round ball, round bat, square it up!  Right?

As luck would have it, I did a whole article on this topic way back in 2023.  I’ll provide the highlights but if you want to read it, you can find it HERE.

In baseball, the term “Barrel” refers to the optimal point of contact between the bat and the ball.  When a batter successfully connects with the ball using the barrel, a symphony of physics and technique harmonizes to produce optimal results.  The energy transferred from the batter’s swing is efficiently transmitted to the ball, resulting in higher exit velocity and a more controlled trajectory.  This, in turn, increases the likelihood of hitting the ball with power and precision.  Mix in the right launch angle and you’re now living in the barrel zone, where the ultimate goal of traveling greater distances is achieved.

A barrel (BRL) is a moving target.  To be classified as such, the batted ball requires an exit velocity (EV) of at least 98 mph.  At that speed, balls struck with a launch angle (LA) between 26-30 degrees results in a barrel. For every mph over 98, the range of LA resulting in a barrel expands.  For example, the LA range grows to 24-33 degrees with an EV of just 2 mph more (100 mph).

That’s a lot of words to describe what this picture does all by itself:

Remember this?  This is hands down, one of my absolute favorite images I’ve ever utilized in my articles here at Razzball.  This one is the whole package, we have LA, EV, and BRLs all rolled into one.  If you’re a batter and put these ingredients together often, then yes, you’re having more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

In the former article, I compared barrels with other advanced analytics and came to the following conclusions:

• A greater number of barrels generally correlates well to increased HRs but also requires at least one of LA or EV to also be in the zone.
• Hitting the ball with power and precision does not directly translate to extra base hits.
• BRLs and HardHit% correlate well.
• BABIP continues to be one of my least favorite fantasy baseball analytics.

Again, I suggest you go back and read the full article to put these in context.  That was a fun study back then but for today, we’re not going to go THAT deep.  We want to see if these new torpedo bats are worth all the time we’re spending to talk about them.

To do that, we need to define one more term, the Barrel Rate (BRL%).  This is the number of barrels per batted ball events.  The “batted ball event” is simply a measurable outcome, such as hit, line drive, pop up, etc.  So, if you hit the ball, that’s an event.  When you hit the ball with an EV of 100 and LA of 25 degrees, well that’s a BRL.  Put them together and you get BRL%.  We’ve seen the league average BRL% dance around 7.8%-8.1% over the past couple seasons.  As a side note, a BRL% of >12% is considered top tier.

So, let’s jump into some data tables.  Here are the current Top 12 in BRL% (thru April 5):

The first thing noted is the BRL% are significantly inflated.  Remember, >12% is considered elite.  No offense to Jake Bauers and Mickey Moniak but does anyone here think they are now SUPER ELITE contact hitters?  Of course not.  So, this information on its own is not going to be very useful.

One useful exercise we could do that may provide some value is to compare the early season BRL% with those of the past couple seasons.  That way, we can determine which players should be expected to see a boost in the coming weeks/months.  So, let’s do that.

Here are some of the more prominent players who haven’t registered a BRL% yet, along with their respective BRL% for the past two seasons, where appropriate:

If you own any of these players, have patience.  If you don’t, you know what to do…

Because I’m such a nice guy, here are a list of other players we should expect a BRL% correction forthcoming:

Looking at BRL% alone isn’t going to win you a Points league title but it was an interesting analysis to do none-the-less.

Under The Microscope

Before we put a bow on this BRL% analysis, I just want to spend a minute on one of the players it appears is benefiting from torpedo bat – Anthony Volpe.

In just 8 games, Volpe has 6 BRLs (25% BRL%).  That BRL% will certainly come down, but will it come down to his 2024 rate (3.9%) or settle near his 2023 rate (9.0%)?  That is the question we want to try predicting an answer to.

Go back to the findings of my 2023 article, two in particular are useful here:

• A greater number of barrels generally correlates well to increased HRs but also requires at least one of LA or EV to also be in the zone.
• BRLs and HardHit% correlate well.

Let’s investigate:

We don’t see much difference in his max EV (a slight dip actually), but the current HardHit% and the LA values align well with his 2023 numbers.  If he can sustain as the numbers normalize, the 12% BRL% threshold that is considered elite is possible.  Perhaps there’s something to those torpedo bats then!

I’ll be keeping an eye on this one as we move through the season.

Where We’re Going

Now that we’ve beaten the barrel to death, it’s time to look forward.

“How do you plan to do that, TLB?”  Great question, loyal reader!

It just so happens that Razzball has a tool for just this topic.  That’s right, Rudy has put together a projection sheet looking at the week ahead and providing relative Points league scoring for general CBS, ESPN, Fantrax and Yahoo leagues.  This table is updated on Friday-Monday mornings to reflect the upcoming Monday-Sunday baseball week.

For those with a visual preference, here’s what it looks like, sorted for Fantrax leagues:

Pretty cool, huh?

“What about NFBC leagues, you ask?”  Well for me, just like above, it’s as simple as downloading the data into a spreadsheet and entering the RazzSlam scoring calculation.  Easy Peasy.  Here’s what that looks like:

No matter your baseball flavor, Razzball has you covered.  Go to the Razzball Roto Deluxe Homepage and get started.

So now that I’ve essentially written myself out of a job, I’d better wrap this up so Grey keeps me around a few more weeks.

As always, you can find me on Twitter/X (@Derek_Favret) and on BlueSky (@dfavret.bsky.social).

Until next time, my friends.