If you visit the comments section on a regular basis, you’re probably familiar with some of the most common questions that are posted there. “Who should I draft – player X or player Y?” “Why do you have player X ranked ahead of player Y?” “Why do you love/hate player X so much? He was great/awful last season!” The answers to these questions will vary depending on who you ask. Grey will tell you to avoid players in their 30s and draft Delino DeShields at all costs. “Take DeShields.” “But I need a pitcher…” “DeShields!” Rudy will direct you to his dollar values and remind you why positional scarcity is a myth. Sky would probably advise you to load up on power. Jay might extoll the virtues of Cory Spangenberg. While all of these opinions have merit, the question is: whose opinion should you value the most? The answer is… yours!
In this article, I’ll be sharing some of the basic, but important, things that I look for when evaluating hitters for fantasy baseball. I’ll provide brief explanations of the specific things that I focus on as well as why I believe these things are significant in the evaluation process. Hopefully, you’ll be able to use one or two of these tips to improve your own player evaluations.
Without further ado, here are some of the things that I look for when evaluating hitters for fantasy baseball:
• Power: Chicks aren’t the only ones who dig the longball. Grey has a picture of Giancarlo in his wallet as we speak. And who can blame him! Everyone loves homers, including yours truly. My go-to statistic for identifying sluggers is isolated power (ISO). This is the measure of a hitter’s raw power and tells you how often a player hits for extra bases. The traditional metric for identifying power hitters used to be slugging percentage, but I’ll give you a quick example why ISO is the better indicator of a player’s power. Michael Brantley and Albert Pujols produced identical slugging percentages in 2015 (.480). Brantley’s was fueled by an elite contact rate and a high amount of doubles, but only hit 15 home runs. Pujols is a flyball hitter who posts poor BABIPs which lead to mediocre batting averages, so his matching slugging percentage is a result of the longball (40 HR). Despite identical slugging percentages, Pujols had a .236 ISO while Brantley had a .170 ISO, reflecting the balanced nature of Brantley’s approach and the slugging nature of Pujols’. The elite sluggers typically have ISOs of .230+, though anything north of .200 usually indicates a 25+ home run hitter.
• Speed: This one’s pretty easy. You can look at something like stolen base attempt times, but it’s easy to just look at the raw stolen base totals and success rates for a player. If it’s a young player, look at his minor league totals for some indication of SB potential. Don’t get too carried away with that player who stole 40 bases in single A ball though. That would usually equate to around a 25 steal player in MLB (catchers in the low minors are generally terrible). One thing that is important to remember is that speed is a young man’s game. In 2015, 15 MLB players stole at least 25 bases. None of them were over 30 years old, and only three were over 27. Chase the youth when chasing steals.
• Walk and Strikeout rates (BB% and K%): These measure how often a hitter walks or strikes out on a per plate appearance basis. High walk rates and low strikeout rates are generally produced by players who are good at distinguishing between balls and strikes, leading to high on-base percentages and the likelihood of making quality contact when those players do decide to swing. Low walk rates and high strikeout rates generally mean the opposite, particularly when it comes to the high K players. They tend to post low batting averages. In 2015, the league average BB% was 7.7% while the average K% was 20.4%. Walk percentages over 10% and strikeout percentages under 15% are generally considered to be excellent, while BB% under 5% and K% over 25% are poor.
• Batted Ball Profile: I look at this to make sure that the sluggers are hitting the ball in the air and that the speedsters aren’t trying to do so (looking at you Billy Hamilton). Line drives (LD) are good for everyone, while infield flyballs (IFFB) are bad for everyone. I like to keep an eye on the hard contact rate (Hard%) as well. The consistently good hitters usually keep that number above 30%. An LD% in the low-mid 20s with an IFFB% in the low single digits is a good combo to look for.
• Age: I already touched on this subject as it relates to speed (peaks early), but players in general physically peak around 25-26 years of age. Speed erodes quickly as players approach 30, but power ages slightly better. That usually doesn’t significantly drop off until 32-33 or so. For peak performance, I like to target players in the 24-28 age range, especially if there’s a speed element to their game.
• Durability: Has the player been able to stay healthy consistently? If there have been any serious injuries, are they recurring or unrelated/flukish?
• Situational factors: These include park factors (is the home park favorable or unfavorable to hitters?), job security (everyday or part-time player), lineup positioning/strength of lineup, and even coaching tendencies (does the team have the green light on the basepaths?).
Those are a few of the things that I look for in a hitter. What do you prioritize in your evaluation process?
