The xFiles: Dis-Counting Crows

Check out these two Statcast player profiles below from Baseball Savant. One belongs to perhaps the most hyped young player in baseball at the moment—known for his flamboyant hair, all-world CF defense, and now unstoppable bat. The other belongs to a much less hyped young player who, upon promotion, received a fair amount of attention last season but has largely fallen out of favor with the “Twitterati” hype cycle, outside of perhaps his own team’s fanbase.

Which profile would you prefer? Which do you think belongs to said “most hyped young player in baseball”?

If you couldn’t already guess from the title, one of the players profiled above is Pete Crow-Armstrong. The other is none other than Ceddanne Rafaela. And while you might not think so, the better profile (the one to the left with more red under the “Batting” section) actually belongs to Rafaela.

Truth be told, I’ve been gritting my teeth and biting my tongue the past few weeks as Crow-Armstrong has largely taken the league and the entire fantasy baseball universe by storm. That is because I included him in my preseason “Buyer Beware” column where I urged you, the reader, to ignore the hype and let others take a chance on his hyper-aggressive, swing at literally everything approach.

Well, Crow-Armstrong has proven me wrong to this point, to an embarrassing degree.

Don’t get me wrong; I still expect him to regress, perhaps significantly. But that’s not really the point of this article. Instead, the point is to spotlight a remarkably similar young player whose production has underperformed his metrics in largely the same way that Crow-Armstrong has likely over-performed his. Someone whose hitting profile either matches or outshines Crow-Armstrong’s in every meaningful way.

Look at how the two stack up below in some of my preferred hitting metrics:

As you can see, Rafaela’s xwOBA is actually higher than Crow-Armstrong’s. However, while the latter has probably been the beneficiary of good luck, the former has been one of the unluckiest hitters in all of baseball this season. That’s because the gap between Rafaela’s wOBA and xwOBA (actual production versus expected production) is huge in a way that signals he has underperformed, while Crow-Armstrong has over-performed, at least a little bit.

Digging a little deeper, both players hit the ball hard (Exit Velocity), barrel at the same rate (Barrel%), and swing at almost everything in and outside of the zone (Swing% and O-Swing%), resulting in a nearly identical whiff rates (SwStr%).

It’s almost uncanny, frankly, how similar these two players are. However, you wouldn’t know it based on their stat lines or the internet hype train that surrounds Crow-Armstrong and largely evades Rafaela.

What this amounts to, really, is a great buyer’s opportunity for those who currently do not roster Crow-Armstrong, but long for his skill set.

And while Rafaela may lack Crow-Armstrong’s flair, he’s by no means devoid of it. I mean, who doesn’t love a reckless, free-swinging speedster in a game dominated by hulking Lucas Duda types who would rather take a base than swing the bat?

Well, besides me, anyway.