Points Leagues: Barrels Of Fun – Part Deux!

WAAAAYYYY back in April, I did a piece on torpedo bats and barrels.  If you remember, torpedo bats were all the rage during the first couple weeks of the season so we looked at early barrel rates (BRL%) to see if we could find something useful for our Points league teams.

Today, we’re going to revisit those findings and get an update on BRL% now that we’re into the second half of the season.

For those of you enjoying the summer too much, or maybe you’ve got NFL training camps on your mind, here’s a short reminder from the April article on what is considered a BRL.

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 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, STILL 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 a former article (2023), 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.

I suggest you go back and read that full article (you can find it HERE) 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 the BRL% are normalizing from our earlier look.

To do that, we need to define that last 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 generally considered top tier.

Here were the Top 12 in BRL% (thru April 5):

Think any of those names are still amongst the Top 12?  Actually, Yes!  There are a couple – a pair of Yankees no less.

You’ll recall how we saw the early season BRL% being significantly inflated.  Remember, >12% is considered elite.  Well, they still are…but not nearly as excessive.  Nevertheless, five players > 20%.  At the Break, there were 347 players with 120 or more PAs, and 85 of them (almost 25%) have a BRL% > 12%.

I wonder if the league-wide Contact% and EYE numbers are higher this year?  An analysis for another day, perhaps…

Anyhoo…back in April, I called out Jake Bauers and Mickey Moniak and their >40% BRL%.  “No offense to Jake Bauers and Mickey Moniak, but does anyone here think they are now SUPER ELITE contact hitters?”

Both still have BRL% greater than 12% (13.8% and 12.3%, respectively).  Although Bauers went on the IL this weekend with a shoulder injury, Moniak had himself another dinger (#14).  If you’re scoring at home, that means he has matched his career-high HR totals achieved in each of the past two seasons.  My money is on him setting a new career high.

So, I officially apologize to both of these fine gentlemen.

Moving on.  Of course, I need to also list the players who are below the 12% bar.

Many of the top names are close to 12% BRL% but look at those names toward the bottom. WELP!  How many of us drafted the likes of Mookie Betts, William Contreras, Jose Altuve, etc. expecting them to be set-and-forget players?

Trade deadlines are coming up.  If you can get 90 cents on the dollar from an owner who thinks they’ll turn it on in August, you may want to consider making that deal.

Under The Microscope

In the first article, I did a shallow dive on Anthony Volpe since he was one of the players who appeared to be benefiting most from torpedo bat.

In just 8 games at that point, Volpe had 6 BRLs (25% BRL%).  I prophesied that he’d settle in near his 2023 rate at 9.0%.

Fast forward to 95 games at the Break, he had 24 BRLs and a BRL% of 9.4%.  Following the pair of HRs on Saturday, he increased both to 25 and 9.7%, respectively.  He’s also sitting at 12 HRs for the season, chasing his career high of 21 in 2023.  Taking this into account, along with a tick up in his maxEV (up to 110.5 mph), near same HardHit% and slight dip in LA (11.3), it looks to me like he’s going to get there.

Either he’s maturing as a Major Leager or perhaps there’s something to those torpedo bats!  Maybe both!

That’s a wrap! 

After a couple weeks away, it’s great to be back in the baseball saddle.

Speaking of being back in the saddle, we’re also gearing up on the Razzball football side.  In fact, our first live podcast drops Tuesday night (9 pm EST) on the Razzball YouTube channel.  The boys and I will be talking all things RazzBowl7 as well as a couple new leagues we formed to take on our great Razzball football friends.  Stop by and say “HI”!

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

Until next time, my friends.