Review

So let’s review the process in which I recommend researching players to find the real deal. Here’s what you want to look for:

1. Hard Contact %
2. BABIP
3. LD/GB/FB %
4. HR/FB % and GB/FB %

Today, I’ll be going over what is commonly known as “Chase Rate,” as well as in the zone swing percentage, Contact % and Swinging Strike % since these are all interrelated stats.

The Stats

First, let’s go through the definitions, all of which I’m pulling from Fangraphs. First is “Chase Rate,” which you’ll see as O-Swing% on Fangraphs. This is the percentage a player swings at pitches outside of the strike zone, or how much they chase pitches – hence chase rate. Comparatively O-Contact% is the percentage a player makes contact on pitches they swing at outside of the zone.

You’ll also see Z-Swing% and Z-Contact% in the same area on the page as O-Swing and O-Contact. The Z part stands for pitches inside the strike zone and what percentage a player swings at them and makes contact with them.

Lastly, in that same area you can find Contact% and SwStr%, among other things. To me, these are the most telling and the most useful for fantasy managers. Contact% is the overall percentage of pitches that a batter makes contact with, and SwStr% is the percentage of a batter’s swinging strikes.

Why Are These Stats Important?

These 6 stats are important to understanding a batter’s discipline, and although there are other stats like First Pitch Strikes, Swing%, and Zone% there, I tend to ignore those because they aren’t as useful to Fantasy Baseball managers. What I mean by that is, an actual manager of an MLB team can use those 3 stats to figure out lineup positioning based on if someone is taking a lot of first pitch strikes, or if someone is swinging too much and not making contact, he may want to bench a player. But for fantasy managers, that’s not very useful. I focus on Chase Rate, O-Contact, Z-Swing/Contact, Contact%, and SwStr% because those six stats paint a really detailed picture of a batter’s discipline. Let me give you an example. Let’s go to Fangraphs, find the Leaders drop down at the top left and select 2019 as shown below.

Then above right, you’ll see where to click to find the “discipline” stats, followed by clicking Contact% to see the overall best contact hitters. Let’s look in particular at Michael Brantley, who historically is a very disciplined batter. In 2019, he made contact with 90% of the pitches he swung at. Of course, I was curious if this was a result of playing for the Astros, a team that was using a sign stealing system to provide illegal help to their batters, but Brantley’s contact numbers from 2019 line up with his career numbers. Something else you’ll notice about Brantley from 2019 is that his Swing% is 43%, which means he’s only swinging at 43% of pitches that he sees – he is very picky. On top of that, his Chase Rate is only 29%, meaning on pitches outside of the zone, he only swings at 29% of them, while making contact on 82% of those pitches outside of the zone that he swings at. Inside of the strike zone, he’s swinging at 61% of the pitches he sees and is making contact with 95% of those, and is only whiffing on 4% of pitches. That’s INSANE. Overall, what you see with Brantley in looking at these stats is a selective hitter that doesn’t get fooled by pitches outside of the zone, and even when he may get fooled, he’s still making contact with them. Some other notable names in the top 10 of overall contact – Alex Bregman, Anthony Rendon, Jose Ramirez, Mookie Betts, and Jean Segura. Some under-the-radar names on that list that you may want to dig into a little more are Hanser Alberto, David Fletcher, Kevin Newman, and Josh Reddick.

On the flipside, it’s important to know how to use these stats to tell which players to avoid. This time, I’m going to focus on players who have a high chase rate. So on Fangraphs, if you click the O-Swing% tab, you’ll see a list of players who swing the most at pitches outside of the zone. These are players who are not very disciplined hitters because they chase a lot of pitches that are outside of the strike zone, or are getting fooled. A notable name on this list is Tim Anderson. His chase rate is 45%, and he only made contact on 61% of those pitches. He does make decent contact on pitches inside of the zone at just about 90%, but he also swings at a lot of pitches inside of the zone. That’s not always a good thing, as you can see by Anderson’s 77% contact rate and 13.5% Swinging Strike rate. Last year though, Anderson batted .335…how is that possible!? He had an unusually high BABIP, meaning he was likely getting lucky on a lot of hits. I would expect significant regression in 2020. I’d also expect the same for Danny Santana.

How Do I Find These Stats

One way is detailed in the previous section, if you want to find the leaders at any of those stats. The other way is to go player by player and type the player’s name in the search bar on Fangraphs. What we can do is combine how to search for these stats for a particular player with some analysis. So have a window on your device open to Fangraphs, and have another open to your fantasy team from this year (if you’ve drafted), or last year’s fantasy team or some players that you’re targeting in this year’s draft (if you haven’t drafted yet). For the sake of the exercise, I’m going to pick a player who I’m curious about in my league’s upcoming draft, and that is David Fletcher. He’s one of those under-the-radar top 10 contact hitters, and I want to find his stats, and then see if I like him enough to draft him this year.

First, on Fangraphs, I’m going to type his name in the search bar at the top left, and click on his name when it drops down. You can do this with any player you want. Once it takes me to the player page, I can either scroll alllllll the way down to the Plate Discipline section or I can click on the Plate Discipline tab in the dashboard that is just under the player’s profile and just above the standard data section.

Once I find his contact info, I’m looking to see what type of player he is. I see that he didn’t chase a lot of pitches outside of the strike zone – only 25% last year, and he made contact on 82% of them. He also did not swing at a lot of pitches in the strike zone – only 48%, making contact on 96% of them. He made contact on 91% of pitches overall for the last 2 years, showing incredible consistency, and only struck out 3.2% of the time (which is actually a number that’s been getting lower nearly every year as he’s gone through the minors and entered the major leagues). This tells me not only is he a great contact hitter, and is insanely disciplined, but that he may even be trending to be better.

So now that I know he’s got excellent discipline, I want to look at some other stats to see if he is worthy of a draft pick for me. What I see first is that his Hard Contact rate is very low, only 32%. I don’t really like any of his other batted ball numbers either. His LD/GB/FB percents are 26%/44%/29% respectively, meaning he’s hitting a lot of ground balls, and not nearly enough fly balls. His GB/FB ratio is 1.48, meaning for every 1 fly ball he hits, he’s hitting about 1 1/2 ground balls. And ground balls are less productive than fly balls. His HR/FB rate is also a measly 3.8%. His .317 BABIP from 2019 was in line with his career .314 BABIP, so that tells me his stats were for real. The thing is, he doesn’t hit home runs, so that limits his RBI numbers. He also doesn’t steal a lot of bases. If he bats early in the Angels’ lineup this year, he could score 100 runs hitting in front of Trout and Rendon, but really he’s a 2 category player at the absolute most. He could be valuable in deeper leagues, especially if you have a team where you sold out for power without getting a lot of guys who have good batting averages. He would also be valuable in AL-Only leagues. I’d say anything less than a 10 team mixed league and I’d avoid him unless I was desperate for batting average. I’d look for a power hitter instead and focus on getting a guy who fills up more categories.

Who Should I Target?

One player you do want to target for 2020 is Tommy Edman. He had a surprise breakout year in 2019 with St. Louis, and if you want to see if he was the real deal, all you have to do is look at the numbers.

Since we’re focusing on plate discipline today, I’m going to go there first. He only has one season of Major League data, so it’s a bit difficult to judge him completely. But his chase rate seems okay at 32%. He made contact on 72% of those pitches outside of the strike zone. His Z-Swing% is 67% and he made contact on 89% of those pitches, which is pretty good. Overall, he made contact on 82% of pitches, and his swinging strike rate was only 8.9%, which is decent as well. What I see are the makings of a relatively disciplined hitter.

If you want to get more of the picture, we have to look at some of those other sabermetric data points. He had a 41% hard contact rate, which is good, especially since his medium contact was 43%. That’s something that could improve with time, and he’s already starting from a good baseline. He has really good LD/GB/FB numbers at 24%/40%/34% respectively, and while I’d like him to have better LD and FB numbers, this is a good starting point. A 12% HR/FB rate, and a 1.18 GB/FB ratio are not bad either. They’re not elite, but he’s only had one season. His BABIP lined up with what it was like in the minors, making me think he is going to be a pretty consistent .300 hitter with a little bit of pop and some surprise speed there too. One thing I’d like to see improve, which I’ll go over next week is his Walk % or BB%. Overall, I think he’s got great baseline numbers and could be really valuable to target in your drafts in any format.

Well, that’s all for today. Next week, I’ll go over the last batting stats that I look at as part of the puzzle in determining whether or not I trust a player’s numbers. Thanks for reading.

So this week, I’m going to spend some time going through my do and do not draft players at each position. I want to give you a look at some players who I’m very interested in and some who I’m avoiding at all costs. I’m going to try to stay away from the obvious top tier players as my do draft players to give you some off the radar guys to target, or players that I’d be ok with reaching for. And as a disclaimer, the do not draft players are not necessarily just bad players. They might be players who, in my opinion, are going to be players who I expect to be picked earlier than I’m willing to pick them. Again, I’ll try to avoid the obvious – injured players or typically lousy players – to choose players to not draft who are just going too high.

Catcher

Do draft Mitch Garver. He had a breakout season in 2019. He hit 31 homers and batted .273, which are elite numbers for a catcher. But was he the real deal? First, look at his hard contact rate – 47% – and you see that it is excellent. He had really good LD/GB/FB numbers, and the HR/FB rate was 29%, which is legit. That means 29% of his fly balls went for home runs. His strikeout numbers were a little disappointing, but his BABIP was actually 30 points lower than his career BABIP, which actually shows there is room for improvement. This is a guy to reach for this year.

Do not draft Buster Posey. There’s a lot of name value here, and that is keeping him on people’s draft lists. But when you look at the data, you see a 36% hard contact rate. Nearly 50% of his hits are ground balls, and his HR/FB rate is 7%. These really don’t bode well for productive at bats. His strikeout rate was 16%, which was up about 5% from 2018, and his walk rate of 7% was down 2.5% from 2018. These are not good signs. He isn’t connecting with pitches outside of the zone – that rate has gone down from 80% to 67%, while his Swinging Strike rate of 8% is up 3% from last year. What I see from him is that he is losing a step, and I am not letting the name value lead me into drafting him.

First Base

Do draft C.J. Cron. This is going to be a really sneaky good pick in your draft, where your fellow players won’t be disappointed at the moment that you snagged him, but halfway through the season, they’ll be kicking themselves. His numbers aren’t eye-popping, but they’re consistent, and I think he actually underperformed last year while still doing well. He had a 41% hard contact rate, decent LD/GB/FB numbers with a nearly 20% HR/FB rate. His contact numbers actually started getting better last year. And one telling thing is that his BABIP was 20 points lower than his career average but he had the same AVG as 2018 while actually having a much better season in every other metric. I think he suffered from being in a super deep lineup in Minnesota, but this season, he’ll be getting significant playing time in Detroit. And while he is on a much worse team this year, I think (especially in a shortened season) he will be very productive.

Do not draft Yuli Gurriel. Looking at the data, what I see is that he grossly outperformed his metrics last year. Sure, he may have evolved as a hitter, but he may also have benefited from cheating (let’s face it).  If you look into his batting splits, you’ll notice that he historically struggles to hit lefties.  Some other interesting splits are that he has 15 total away home runs the last 2 seasons as opposed to 29 at home (I wonder why).  Most outlets project him for about 20 HRs this year, in a normal season, as opposed to the 30 he hit last year.  Looking at his advanced metrics, what you see is a hard contact rate of 38%, lower than his medium contact rate. Although his contact numbers have gone up each of the last 3 yrs, and his swing and miss rate has gone down, he could be benefiting from evolving as a player…or from cheating.  The thing is, I don’t want to find out which it is with him on my team.  In a deeper league, he might be someone’s starting first baseman, but I wouldn’t want to have him and end up with him struggling.  I’d also be less inclined to think his production was a result of cheating if his sabermetric data showed legit production, but it doesn’t.

Second Base

Do draft Starlin Castro. He had arguably his best season last year, and did it with the Marlins. I’m interested to see how he performs in a better lineup with the Nats in 2020. His 2019 numbers are excellent and paint a picture of an evolving hitter that is reaching his power potential at age 30. He had a 41% Hard Contact rate, and while his GB rate was closer to 50% than I would normally like, he pushed across a good amount of home runs and had a decent 12% HR/FB rate. His plate discipline and contact numbers from 2019 show a much improved eye at the plate from previous years, and combined with the hard contact, it shows his power is legit. In 2020, he’ll have Kevin Long as a batting coach, who has worked wonders with Nats batters. I expect Castro to be a sneaky good pick in drafts for 2020.

Do not draft Cavan Biggio. There is a lot of hype around this kid, but his numbers from last year scare me.  He was a high BABIP, low AVG player from last year – his batting average was only .234. Sometimes this can be a result of bad luck, but in his case, his low average was a result of a 28% strikeout rate. That means means nearly 1/3 of his time at the plate, he’s striking out. One good sign is his 16% BB rate, which could make him a decent late pick in an OBP lead. Some other data that makes me want to stay away are a Hard Contact rate of 39% and a Medium Contact rate of 48%, the fact that he is a lefty that hits into the shift 50% of the time, a 47% chase rate (meaning he’s swinging at 47% of pitches outside of the zone – so plate discipline is not there), the fact that he is not hitting Curveballs/Sliders/Changeups. He is someone I’d avoid this year, but probably pick up next year.  Biggio is kind of a mixed bag, and I think it will be another year or so before he puts it together. Stay away this year unless you get him REALLY late and he’s filling out a bench spot.

Third Base

Do draft Evan Longoria. Trust me! His numbers are there. Yes he is on the wrong side of 30. No he probably won’t play 150 games. But he is reliable for the most part and still does have value. I wouldn’t take him as my starting 3B, but I think he could be valuable in your corner infield slot or on your bench. What I see is a great Hard Contact rate (43%), with really good LD/GB/FB numbers (21%/41%/37%), and a 15% HR/FB rate. His .297 BABIP is in line with his career numbers, and reflects that you’re looking at probably a .250-.260 batting average, which isn’t great but also isn’t terrible. You can also see that he still has a good eye at the plate. He walked more last year than he has in the previous 5 seasons. He’s definitely worth a shot in the mid rounds.

Do not draft Yandy Diaz. This is a player that got a lot of hype last year from the fantasy community.  He spent some time last year on the Injured List.  He was playing for Cleveland, but now he is on a Tampa team that has a ton of depth and competition at 1B/3B.  Diaz hits the ball hard (42% Hard contact rate), but he was not turning those hard hits into good hits.  This is reflected in his LD/GB/FB numbers (17%/50%/32%).  His contact numbers all got worse last year from the year before due to swinging at higher percentage of pitches outside the zone. He also made contact on 10% fewer of those swings. This goes the same for pitches inside of zone. Diaz also took 12% more first pitch strikes, and his swinging strike percent went up 3% to 9%.  Potentially switching from CLE to TB last season changed his approach to something he didn’t do well.  I don’t like that. I also don’t like the idea that he is in a position battle in Tampa and that it is crowded with good players. I don’t like his swing and miss numbers. And I don’t like the lack of power. He’s going to go higher than you like. Avoid him.

Short Stop

Do draft Paul DeJong. The power is legit and I’m a fan, even though the average last year wasn’t pretty (although you could argue it was due to bad luck). His hard contact rate shows he was making great contact (41%), and he had really excellent LD/GB/FB numbers too (18%/37%/44%), while turning in a 15% HR/FB rate. His contact on pitches inside and outside of the zone improved last year from the year before. I think one of the most telling of his stats is a .259 BABIP, which is 40 points lower than his career BABIP. This is where I’m going to argue that he was a victim of bad luck. All of his peripheral numbers point to good contact, improving discipline, and production. I expect him to continue to improve in 2020, while experiencing some positive regression. Look for his average to get closer to .250 in the coming season.

Do not draft Elvis Andrus. If you need stolen bases, meaning you have nobody else with stolen bases, then consider drafting him, but I’m avoiding him.  He has had 1 really good season, and that’s it.  I do not like that he only walks 5% of the time – that’s terrible.  He is a career .275 hitter, which isn’t bad, but when you mix that with lack of power stats, he’s really a 1 category player – 2 at most.  He’s changed something in his swing – his Hard Contact rate has increased the last few years.  One really bad problem is that he’s gotten worse every year on hitting nearly every type of pitch.  This could be a telling sign that he can’t keep up.  Mostly, I just don’t see him producing very much on a team that isn’t very good. There are better options out there at any point in the draft.

Outfield

Do draft Adam Eaton. He finally had a healthy season in Washington, and the results were excellent. He had promising starts in both of his first two seasons in DC, but last year he stayed healthy and put together a great season. He had a career high in home runs, and stole 15 bases. Although his walk rate went down slightly, so did his strikeout rate. His contact on pitches inside and outside of the zone also improved – it shows he’s being selective and that the Kevin Long (Nats hitting coach) effect is real. His Hard Contact rate of 34% was a career high. He definitely changed something with his launch angle as well, hitting fly balls 40% of the time and turning 8.2% of them into home runs. I was jealous the whole season of the guy who drafted Eaton, and he’s someone I’ll definitely look for this year.

Do not draft Andrew Benintendi. It pains me to list him here.  I’ve drafted him the last 2 years hoping his potential would play out, but it seems like he is what his stats suggest – an average player.  Fantasy baseball experts preach that he’s a 20/20 hitter (20 home runs and 20 steals), but he has reached 20/20 only once, in 2017.  In 2019, his BB% went down from 10-9%, and his K% went up from 16-22%.  His BABIP was actually better in 2019 than in 2018, so the lack of production is not related to bad luck, but rather it is related to bad contact.  His Hard Contact rate was 38%, and while he had decent LD/GB/FB numbers (21%/38%/40%), his HR/FB rate was only 7.9%. This shows he was hitting the ball hard last year, but he hit too many balls up in the air and didn’t hit enough line drives. And when he did put the ball in the air, he wasn’t hitting them hard enough to turn them into home runs.  Overall he has decent contact percentages, but as a player, he is nothing special, at least not as special as people thought he was going to be.

Starting Pitcher

Do draft Sonny Gray. I’m giving away one of my secret weapons and sleeper targets for this year. Gray had a career year last year, and I think he’s only improving. He struck out 10.5 batters per 9 innings, a career high. He also had a 2.87 ERA, which is superb. His FIP and xFIP suggest he should have been closer to a 3.50 ERA pitcher, and a .255 BABIP may reflect that. But, his walks were down, his HR/FB rate was above the league average, and he stranded nearly 80% of runners, all things that bode well for him. Some other positives – 50% of hits he gave up were on the ground, and he struck out 28% of the batters he faced. This is a 200 strikeout pitcher that you can get in the middle rounds of your draft. He could end up with a 3.00 ERA, or it could be closer to 4.00. Either way, I’m looking for Sonny Gray, and I’m willing to reach a little bit.

Do not draft Blake Snell. With Snell, the potential is there, but so is potential for injury and potential for being erratic.  He walks a LOT of batters. He had a 3.36 BB/9 in 2019.  He was a victim of some bad luck, which you can see in his .343 BABIP and 15% HR/FB rate (the league avg is 11/12%).  Things like a high BABIP and a high HR/FB rate will spike a pitcher’s ERA, and that’s what we saw with Snell last year.  His FIP and xFIP said he should have been closer to a mid-3 ERA pitcher, and this is the same for his SIERA (another interesting stat I’ll get into in the future).  Another bad sign is that he didn’t strand runners on base last year because he gave up too many homers and didn’t get batters to hit enough grounders.  Sure, he could turn out to be 2018 Blake Snell, with 1.89 ERA, but that year his BABIP was super low (which meant he was getting lucky), and his HR/FB rate was lower than the league avg, which suggests he should have done worse that year as his FIP and xFIP suggest.  He should have had a 2 or 3 era that year.  He’s going too high for me in drafts.  If he was the 3^rd pitcher I drafted, I’d be happy, but he’s going to go too early for me to be interested. I’ll wait for someone else.

Next Week, I’ll round out my hitting stats with Chase Rate and batting discipline data. Thanks for reading.

For me, draft prep is a multi step process that starts early in the offseason, as soon as projections start popping up across different outlets. Some of my go-to websites for offseason prep include ESPN’s Fantasy Baseball Projections, as well as anything by Eric Karabell or Tristan Cockcroft. I also am constantly on Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference, scouring for any piece of data that will give me an edge on draft day. Here is my process, my strategy, and my first mock drafts, along with an evaluation.

Step 1

The very first thing that I do is I go back and look at last year’s stats. I don’t only look at the surface stats, I’m looking at hard contact rate, HR/FB/GB ratios, contact percent, and BABIP, all of which I’ve written about in past posts. I’m going to Fangraphs to find all this information. You can do this a few ways. I like to choose from the batting and pitching leaders at the top of the page, and then sort through that way. To see advanced stats on an individual player, all you have to do is click on their name. Here’s how to find that:

I also like to use Baseball-reference to check out batting splits – home and away, how’d a batter do at different spots in the order, etc. I’m looking for a few things as I research, and basically I’m trying to answer these questions. Who is hitting the ball hard? Are they hitting it hard and producing good hits? Are they getting lucky, unlucky, or are they matching what they’ve done before? Are they more likely to be better or worse this year (based on the lineup, new team, injury, etc.)? Did they take a step in the right direction or wrong direction with contact? Basically, I want to decide if I trust what a player did last year and then decide how I think they’ll do this year. But again, this is the first step in a long process. A sneaky player to watch this year is Starlin Castro. He had excellent metrics last year, and improved in a lot of areas – specifically hard contact rate, and contact percent. I think he is a sleeper this year at 2B because he’ll be undervalued. He played for the Marlins last year, so he was off the radar, and is on the Nationals this year, a team that hasn’t been getting much attention. He has a hitting coach that has helped Juan Soto become one of the best players in the game, and has a lineup in which he’ll produce one way or another.

Finally, I’ll start a spreadsheet, organized by position and tiers, and I’ll start plugging in players in an order that I would draft them. For example, tier 1 for my catchers includes Realmuto, Sanchez, Grandal, and Garver in that order because those are the best players at that position, in my opinion, based on the stats that I have chosen to focus on as most important. Tier 2 for catchers includes Contreras, Perez, Ramos, and a few others. These are guys who I like, but aren’t the absolute best. Not every position will have the same amount of players as another position in the same tier. For example, my tier 1 for second basemen only includes Jose Altuve because I believe he is in a class of his own as a hitter for the position. It’s up to you to organize them how you want, remembering that as you continue your research, it’s likely you’ll switch a lot of these guys around.

Step 2 – Batters

Read. A lot. And wait. Projections will come out. I use a mix of them. I check out ZiPS and The Bat on Fangraphs, and I use the ESPN projections to help me finalize who I like the most, who I will not draft, and in what order I want to sort my players. This might take a few days. Take your time with it. You’ll want to do this as soon as possible to give yourself enough time to look through each player, make notes, and mock draft.

Once I’ve combed through the projections and have analyzed the underlying metrics, I begin to make decisions on players that I’m going to target, players that I will not draft, and players who I think are under the radar – my “sleepers.” In a lot of drafts, the players who you choose will depend on a lot of things – is it a keeper draft, what pick do you have, who is on the board, how many teams are in your league, etc. My league, for example, is an 8 team keeper league. We have 1 catcher, 5 outfielders, 7 pitchers, 5 bench, and 2 IL spots. And each team gets to keep 4 of their players from the previous year. It’s not a typical structure. It’s important you know what type of league, the roster construction, the rules, etc. We are also a snake draft vs. an auction. That makes a difference in draft strategy too.

This year, I’m keeping Bellinger, Yelich, Bogaerts, and Trea Turner. That will impact who I draft early. My first pick is likely to either be a 1B, 3B, or 2B player. Some players I’m absolutely targeting, based on data I’ve analyzed, are Anthony Rizzo, Gleyber Torres, and Kris Bryant. These are players high on my draft board, but are also guys who are high on a lot of draft boards.

One thing I also like to do, as a second step in sorting my players, to help me make decisions on draft day, is to assign each player a color on my spreadsheet. You can choose whichever colors you want. I have a key on the spreadsheet as well in case I forget which color means what. Green for me means I like them and would draft them. Red means I will not draft them. Yellow is a sleeper, blue is a player being kept on another team, and orange is a player kept by me. On draft day, I use this to help me make quick decisions. As players are chosen, I delete them from the list.

Another thing you should do is make notes. For my batters, I’m looking for players who will produce stats across the board. Sometimes, like this year, I’m going to focus on players who hit for power, because generally they are at least a 3 category player (Runs, HRs, and RBI). But I’ll use an asterisk to mark a player who I think will be at least a 20/20 player (20 home runs, 20 steals), or who I think will get close. One player like that is Fernando Tatis Jr. This year, I’m not too worried about players who hit for average. If I can get players to fill up 3 columns in the batting category each week, that works for me. Then I need pitchers who will fill up at least 3 columns, and I’m putting myself in a good position each week to win.

Someone on my do not draft list is Jean Segura. Yes, he hits for average, but that’s about it. His hard contact numbers are not very good, and he grounds out A LOT – 50% of the balls he makes contact on are grounders. DO YOUR RESEARCH!

Step 2 – Pitchers

I’ve been talking a lot about sorting batters. I also sort my pitchers too, but I do it a little differently. Later this season, I’ll focus on how I analyze pitching data and what stats I focus on to help me make pitching decisions. My pitching tiers are divided by projected ERA. I have players who are projected for <2.70, 2.71-3.30, 3.31-3.60, 3.60-3.90, and 3.91-4.20. Generally, I’m not drafting a pitcher with a higher projected ERA than 4.20.

I go through the exact same process as hitters when doing research. What did they do last year? Can it be repeated? What factors, if any, will change their output for this year? Etc. I’ll look at the data and projections, and make my decisions. I’ll use my color coding to sort them and make decisions. I use the same process with starters and relievers (they are in separate sections on my spreadsheet).

As with batters, I’m looking for pitchers who will produce in multiple categories. My league uses Quality Starts instead of Wins. I’m also making notes of which pitchers are likely to strike out 200+ batters, and I’ll use an asterisk to mark them. Sometimes I’ll choose a pitcher who I think will strike out a lot of players at the expense of ERA, if I think they’ll also get me some QS. A great example of this from last year, who I also like this year, is Lance Lynn. Knowing this, though, I’ll also have to balance it out with low ERA pitchers. And depending on how the draft shakes out, I either want 2 or 3 Starters with 200+ projected K’s, or if I don’t get what I want, I may shift my focus to stocking up on relievers. The reason behind targeting relievers is that if you can get a couple of the top RPs, you can expect to win 3 categories each week – Saves, ERA, and WHIP. It’s a risk, but if you can combine that strategy with drafting power hitters, you’re likely locking down 6 categories out of 10 each week, and putting yourself in a good position to be a fantasy baseball champion.

Step 3 – Mock Draft

Whatever website you use, they should have a place where you can mock draft. My league is on ESPN, so I use their mock draft lobby. It’s a great place to practice your strategy, see what works and what doesn’t, and plan out what you’re going to do on draft day. It’s a little difficult with a keeper league, but do what you can. Make sure to practice with your spreadsheet, or whatever you’re using for research. Here’s how my first mock draft looked (my first four slots would have been my keepers, so I had to select a few different but similar players to my keepers):

1. OF Yelich
2. SS Trea Turner
3. OF Harper (instead of Bellinger)
4. SS Torres (instead of Bogaerts)
5. 1B Rizzo
6. SP Bieber
7. 2B Hiura
8. OF Rosario
9. SP Castillo
10. SP Giolito
11. RP Hand
12. OF Soler
13. RP Smith
14. RP Rogers
15. 3B Sano
16. SP Rodriguez
17. RP Bradley
18. OF Tucker
19. RP Anderson
20. C Contreras
21. SP Ray
22. 1B Walker
23. 3B Seager
24. 3B Dozier
25. OF Renfroe

First, I love my pitching. It would definitely be the core of my team. Each pitcher I have is projected for 200+ strikeouts. I like that a lot. They’re all guys that are green on my spreadsheet. I didn’t take anyone on my No-Draft List (which will be my next post).

I drafted a lot of relievers, which is a potential strategy I’ll employ this year to try to lock down 3 pitching categories each week.

My batting is the part of my team where I feel weakest here. I’d like more pop in the outfield, and may end up drafting an outfielder a little earlier next time. I also don’t feel very confident with Sano as my 3B starter. He’s been up and down from the minors for the last few years, so that’s a spot I’ll try to fix in my next draft. My strategy of drafting power bats or 20/20 players was mostly employed, but what I think I learned is that I need to get the bats first. There will be good pitching out there later.

So, this is my draft prep process. It’s extensive, it’s thorough, but it works.

This season, I’ll be covering the following topics in my blog:

Do-Not Draft List

More Mock Draft Analysis

Draft Analysis

How to Make a Good Trade

Pitching Stats to Look For (and I’ll make several posts covering various stats)

Thanks for reading.

To recap my process when scouting a player’s fantasy baseball performance in order to help me decide what to do with particular players, here’s what we’ve looked at so far:

1. Hard Contact Rate
2. BABiP
3. Line Drive/Ground Ball/Fly Ball Rate

And today, I’m going to go over the next piece of the puzzle – Ground Ball to Fly Ball rate (GB/FB) and Home Run to Fly Ball rate (HR/FB).

The Stats

The definitions here are simple, and should be easy to understand. GB/FB rate is how many ground balls a player hits for every fly ball. If a player has a higher Ground Ball rate than Fly Ball rate, this number is going to be inflated. What you’re looking for here is hopefully a 1.00 GB/FB rate or lower. For reference, Mike Trout‘s GB/FB rate is .56 this season, and .92 for his career. This season, his FB rate is nearly doubling his GB rate. As stated from last week, that’s good because fly balls are usually more productive than ground balls (fly balls can turn into home runs, and even if they result in an out, they can result in sacrifice runs). For comparison – someone not nearly as good as Trout that still has great batted ball numbers is Paul DeJong. He has a .87 GB/FB rate. Higher than Trout, which means he’s hitting more ground balls for every fly ball he hits than Trout is. But it’s still solid. And it reflects in his LD/GB/FB percentages, and his Hard Contact Rate.

The other ratio to look at here is HR/FB rate. This is also pretty easy to understand. It’s the percentage of a batter’s fly balls that go for home runs. This is a stat that you need to look at separately per hitter. For example, Mike Trout’s HR/FB rate is 26.8%, vs. DeJong’s 14.2%, and Mallex Smith’s 6.9%. These are all different types of hitters that have varying HR/FB rates. What I’m looking for is if the percentage is astronomically high – 30% or more. What that means, if there is an inflated HR/FB rate, is that there is likely regression coming as those fly ball home runs start turning into just fly balls. Then I know those HRs aren’t necessarily going to stick around. In May I was offered Jay Bruce when he was tearing it up and hitting a ton of home runs, but I passed because his HR/FB rate was in the 40s. I knew he was likely to regress, and now he’s sitting at 20% HR/FB rate. Much more normal and closer to his 16% career number.

Why Is This Stat Important

I alluded to it above, but it’s important to understand how to read these two stats because they give you a better idea of what a hitter is doing, and at least the GB/FB number is a pretty solid way to tell if a batter is hitting the right types of balls to be productive. If you have the 1.00 number or lower, you likely have found a hitter doing the right things. Of course, look at the LD/GB/FB percentages and the hard contact rate as well. And it’s important to understand the HR/FB percent because it will tell you if a player is maybe on a hot streak, or benefiting from a certain park or team or pitcher, resulting in an inflated home run total per fly balls hit. Look at that stat in relation to a player’s career numbers, and it will be very telling. You will be able to say that a player is going to come back to earth, or is in a slump, or is doing exactly what they should be.

How Do I Find This Stat

Head over to Fangraphs, and at the same time, open a tab with your fantasy team on it. Pick out one of your players – maybe one who you think is doing a lot better than usual. If you think your guys are right where they should be, pick anyone. Or you can pick a player who you think is underperforming. For the purpose of this exercise, I’m going to choose a player on my team who I think may have inflated numbers: Eduardo Escobar. He wasn’t a power hitter until the last two years or so, making me think he could be playing out of his mind and that regression could be on the way. Head back to Fangraphs and type your player’s name in the search area at the top left, and scroll down to the batted ball numbers (or just click the batted ball tab above the first section of stats).

What I see here is a .73 GB/FB rate, meaning he’s hitting more fly balls (remember, fly balls are more productive than ground balls), and a 15.5% HR/FB rate. Considering his biggest power numbers came the last two years, and it compares well to those years, AND it’s not a crazy high number (not in the 30s), I think he’s doing a good job of making good, productive contact. But more importantly, he’s likely not going to regress, or if he does, it will be a very small amount. I found a great bat!

Who Do I Target

Here’s a name for you to target that is a hot hitter right now, and is only 50% owned in ESPN leagues, meaning he’s flying under the radar: Rougned Odor. He has a .76 GB/FB rate, a 19% HR/FB rate, good hard contact numbers, and his BABiP screams improvement is coming. I wouldn’t drop Michael Chavis for Odor (at least not right now), but I would drop someone like Michael Brosseau or Daniel Murphy. The only thing that gives me pause about Odor are his BB% (walk percent/walk rate) and K% (strikeout percent/strikeout rate). So I’ll go over those next week.

Thanks for reading.

Because I missed last week, I’m going to go through 3 stats that I look at in accordance with each other when I’m trying to figure out if a player is legit or not, and if I should pick them up in my Fantasy Baseball League or not. Let’s quickly review the first two things I look at when targeting batters…

Stat 1: Hard Contact Rate (or %)

Stat 2: BABiP

I basically use these as a checklist – if their Hard Contact Rate isn’t above or near their medium contact rate, I almost always pass on them, with a few exceptions. I also use BABiP to determine if I think a player is getting lucky or not, or playing above their natural ability or not. So what we are going to do today is to look at Line Drive (LD), Ground Ball (GB), and Fly Ball (FB) Rate/% and figure out how to use those stats, in conjunction with the previous ones, to determine targets for Fantasy Baseball.

The Stat

Okay, so let’s first establish this: Not every batter is equal. What I mean by that is power hitters will be more prone to hit fly balls, while the wiry speedsters will likely hit more ground balls. You can’t look at all batters the same way. However, my criteria usually excludes those speedy little guys, of course with exceptions. When we are talking about GB/FB/LD%, it essentially is what it says on the surface. They are the different types of balls that a player will hit. It’s important, though, to understand the meaning of those statistics. They are definitely related, but let’s get into how they are related and what sort of players fit different profiles.

Why Is This Stat Important

One general “rule” is that batters who hit more line drives than ground balls are going to do better, because that makes it less likely the player is consistently grounding out to infielders. The tough comparison comes between fly balls and ground balls, because ground balls tend to go for hits more often than fly balls, but fly ball outs usually produce sacrifice runs. So you have to do a little more research player by player when comparing GB/FB. Luckily there is a stat called GB/FB Rate (Ground Ball to Fly Ball Rate – usually a ratio), which I’ll get into next week, that helps paint the picture. If you really want an idea of what the LD/GB/FB data means, you need to look at the type of contact being generated and the BABiP to determine the significance of those stats. I’m getting this data from Fangraphs. Let’s take a look at the potential NL MVP right now – Cody Bellinger. He is hitting 33% of his hits for line drives, meaning a third of the balls that he hits are not being grounded out to the infield and are not pop up flies into the outfield. These are the difficult balls to catch for the defense, and give you and understanding of how Bellinger is keeping his average up and being so productive with the bat. In addition to that, his ground ball rate is 28.6%, which is incredible. The farther away you can get from a 50% GB rate, the better. So the fact that he is hitting only 28.6% of his balls on the ground means it’s less likely he is grounding into outs. And his fly ball rate is 38.3%, which is MUCH higher than a player like Jose Iglesias (22% FB rate), in large part because Bellinger is a power hitter and Iglesias isn’t. But, a 38.3% FB rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing for Bellinger because his fly balls are turning into home runs or productive outs as evidenced by the number of home runs and RBI he has this season. You can also determine the productivity of those Fly Balls by looking at the HR/FB% as well (maybe I’ll go over that next week too…). I want to spend a little more time on 2 different hitters that are productive, but have very different LD/GB/FB rates than Bellinger. Let’s look at Jay Bruce, who is having a productive season, but in a totally different way than Bellinger, and arguably in an unsustainable way. Bruce has a 17% LD, 25% GB, and an astronomical 56.9% FB rate. The reason I DON’T like Jay Bruce is because it’s more likely that a lot of his fly balls will be outs – basically they are either going to be an out or a home run. If his Hard Contact Rate was close to 50%, I’d lean more to thinking he is legit, and that his fly balls would leave the park. But his Hard and Medium Contact Rates are identical, which make me think he isn’t going to have a great average and maybe won’t produce as much. Another different type of player who doesn’t have eye-popping LD/GB/FB numbers is Francisco Lindor. 22.7/44.4/32.8 LD/GB/FB%. What I see is a decent LD%, but a higher GB% than I’d like. To me, this is a product of Lindor being a different type of hitter than Bruce or Bellinger. He isn’t a straight-up power hitter, but can hit some home runs, which would explain his good-but-not-great LD and FB numbers. BUT the important thing to notice is that he is quick enough to beat out some of those Ground Balls and is a good enough hitter that those Ground Balls are going where the fielders aren’t. He also has a great Hard Contact Rate, so a lot of those GB hits are probably too quick for the fielders to get to. His BABiP reflects these presumptions (it’s right at his career average BABiP). So if you remember anything from this section of this post – look at the LD/GB/FB stats player by player and look at those stats in conjunction with others.

How Do I Find This Stat

First, go to Fangraphs and have it open to the home page. Also, bring up a window with your fantasy baseball team. Next, what I want you to do is to choose any player on your team – it could be someone who you think is under-performing, over-performing, or is spot on what they should be doing. I’m going to choose a player who I just picked up, and who I think I could potentially drop if I find someone I like better…BUT, I want to make sure he is worth letting go. I’m going to look at Mallex Smith. So on Fangraphs, I’ll go to Mallex Smith’s page and scroll down until I find his batted ball stats. It will have a section labeled “Batted Ball.”

Here you see that his LD/GB/FB percentages are 19.9/47.4/32.7, all of which are career “bests” arguably except Line Drive Rate (I wish it was in the 20s). The Ground Ball Rate is a bit high, but he is fast and can beat out some of the ground balls. His Fly Ball Rate isn’t super high, but isn’t super low either – and he won’t have a high Fly Ball Rate anyway because he isn’t a power hitter. Some things that do concern me are a .04 difference in his career and current season BABiP, with this season being lower than average. And a lower than average On Base Percentage. He also doesn’t have a great Hard Contact Rate. His saving grace is steals. If I needed him for steals, his metrics are good enough for me to keep him around, but if I’m not desperate for steals, I’m looking for a new player.

Who Do I Target

So I’ve determined I’m okay with dropping Mallex Smith if I can find the right player – so let’s see if we can find the right player to pick up. One of the hottest hitters right now is Ian Desmond. His LD/GB/FB numers are 25.2/44.8/30.1%. His Line Drive Rate is awesome – it’s exactly what I’m looking for. At least a quarter of his batted balls are hit really well, and a 41.5% Hard Contact Rate reinforces that he is making good contact. The 44.8% Ground Ball Rate is higher than I’d like, but a .341 On Base Percentage tells me he is doing enough to get on base, and the .351 BABiP (career .324 BABiP) shows he is only producing slightly more than he should be, but also that the line drives and ground balls he is hitting are hit well enough that they are not turning into outs.

I know this is a lot to digest, but hopefully it makes sense for you. Next week, I’ll take a look at GB/FB rate and HR/FB rate to get a deeper understanding of the stats we reviewed today. Thanks for reading.

What I am going to start doing is digging into specific stats on Fangraphs in order to give others a deeper understanding of underlying sabermetric statistics that have helped many people, including myself, become successful at fantasy baseball.

In each post, I’m going to cover one stat in particular that will help you discover diamonds in the rough or give you insight into more well-known players to target.

I have been playing fantasy baseball for 10 years, and I am a lifetime fan of baseball. The last two seasons of fantasy baseball I have really honed in on Fangraphs’ stats, and have devoted time to learning what different things mean, and deciphering which stats are most helpful to fantasy baseball strategy, and those two years have been my most successful two years of fantasy baseball ever.

So, without further ado, let’s get into it…

The Stat

I’m going to spend the next few weeks covering batting stats, so let’s start with one of the first things I go to when I look for good hitters, and that is Hard Contact %, otherwise known as Hard Contact Rate or Hard Hit Rate. Basically, this stat shows how well a ball is being hit by the player. It is divided into 3 categories – soft, medium, and hard contact. What we want to focus on his hard contact, because that shows the percentage of the best hits by the player. The contact is measured through an algorithm used by a third party, and it takes into account hang time, location, and the general trajectory of the ball. You also need to make sure you aren’t looking JUST at Hard Contact %, because it doesn’t give you the full picture, although it is an important piece of it. Keep following next week, and I’ll add another stat to investigate.

Why is This Stat Important?

I look at hard contact rate because it tells me who is hitting the ball well most of the time. It’s great for finding players who may be hitting really well, but are getting unlucky. If a player has a 50% hard hit rate, but a .170 BABIP, it’s reasonable to assume that they are hitting into some bad luck. A player like this may turn it around pretty soon, and could be a great buy low target. Again, you have to look at hard hit rate as a part of a larger picture.

How Do I Find This Stat?

There are multiple avenues in researching this stat. Start by going to fangraphs and doing one of two things:

1. Search for a player
2. Select “Leaders” and choose “Batting” and the year you’d like to research.

Let’s start with option number 1. If I chose Mike Trout as my player to search, I could find his Hard Contact % by either scrolling down just under the player bio and selecting batted ball, or by scrolling farther down the page to the batted ball section of the page.

This year, Mike Trout’s hard contact %, which you can find on the far right column in the picture above (right), shows nearly 44% of all his hits are hard contact. That’s elite level, though actually not the best! Though you must take into context other stats which I’ll cover over the next couple weeks, this is a great place to start. And knowing what the best player in baseball is doing in this area is a good starting point and barometer to measure other players.

If I chose to find the leaders in this stat, start by following the directions above for #2, and then choose the position to research (if you want), and just above the list of players, choose “Batted Ball.” Once you’ve done that, you can click any of the stats to sort for the leaders.

Who Do I Target?

So now that we know the stat, we have an understanding of what it measures, why it’s important, and how to read it, let’s find a player who is surprisingly good here and may be flying a little under the radar.

I’m going to start by searching the leaders in hard contact rate, by following the steps I’ve listed above. You’ll notice a couple of obvious names near the top – Joey Gallo, Christian Yelich, Cody Bellinger – in addition to others.

The player I’m going to focus on is Justin Smoak. He has elite level hard contact this season – even better than in 2017, arguably his best major league season. His hard contact rate is better than that year by 10%! The big difference is his BABIP is suffering, likely because the good contact he is making is going directly to players in the field. This is something that usually evens itself out and turns around organically for players as they adjust throughout the season. This is a player to watch.

So there you go. Since I’ve referenced it a few times in this post, I’ll spend time next week on BABIP and we will add that piece to the puzzle. Thanks for reading.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton