Desert Island Hitter Metrics: Barrels, Walks, and Strikeouts

Barrels, walks, and strikeouts are three important indicators of hitting talent. Previous research by the Baseball Data Machine Learning team has found that a simple metric that sums barrels and walks and subtracts strikeouts, and then divides by plate appearances, offers a good starting point for evaluating a hitter’s talent. This article builds on that […]

Identifying Top MLB Pitching Prospects - Exploring Minor League Plate Discipline Data

Last week, we published an article on minor league plate discipline metrics for MLB prospect hitters, covering contact %, swinging strike %, swing %, foul strike %, called strike %, and ball %. This article today looks at the same set of metrics but for pitchers. The full minor league plate discipline leaderboards will continue […]

Measuring Contact and Plate Discipline for Hitters: Walk-to-Strikeout Ratio or Walk Percentage Minus Strikeout Percentage?

For pitchers, K% minus BB% is generally recognized to be a superior metric to K/BB, and one of the better metrics out there for capturing pitcher talent. For batters, though, BB/K is still the dominant metric, widely referenced in baseball research. BB% minus K%, while not new, is only referenced in a few sabermetric niche […]

Exploring Minor League Plate Discipline for Top Prospects - Jarred Kelenic, Jo Adell, Corbin Carroll, and more

This article looks at plate discipline metrics for minor league hitters including contact % and swing % to help fantasy leaguers evaluate contact and patience skills among hitting prospects. Swing % and contact % are among the quickest, if not the quickest, metrics to stabilize for hitters. ‘Stabilization’ is a term used to indicate a […]

Projecting MLB's Demoted Top Prospect Hitters - Is A Rebound Likely?

You know the pattern: an acclaimed prospect (or young player) gets the call, folks spend hundreds of dollars of FAAB on them, then they get demoted a few rough weeks later. Sometimes, they fail to rediscover their shine in the minors. Other times they get another chance in the majors and take a major step […]

Baseball's Oldest Batters - Busts or Buy Low Candidates? Joey Votto, Nelson Cruz, Justin Turner, Yuli Gurriel

The first month-plus of the season has not been particularly kind to a few of baseball’s oldest hitters. That includes players who put together monster years in 2021 despite their already-advanced age. This article takes a look at a group of four old bats, to recalibrate expectations on their rest-of-season output. When evaluating the biggest […]

Early-Season Minor League Hitter Breakouts - Fantasy Baseball Prospect Risers

With almost one month of minor league games complete, many prospects have taken steps forward. This article highlights a small group of prospects likely to be big risers on midseason top 100 lists. The following group shares important traits making their breakouts likely to stick and rocket them up midseason top 100 lists throughout the […]

Alex Wood (SP, SFG) - Fantasy Baseball Draft Values

BALLER MOVE: Draft target ~195 pick CURRENT ADP: ~219 overall ANALYSIS: After failing to exceed 50 innings pitched in 2019 and 2020 combined thanks to a litany of back problems, the 2021 version of San Francisco Giants left-hander Alex Wood reminded us all of the pitcher who posted a sub-3.90 ERA in 6 straight seasons from 2013 […]

Incorporating a Shift Ban into Hitter Projections

With the announcement of a likely shift ban in 2023, fantasy baseball analysts ought to prepare. Many good articles have been written about the shift ban recently, with most echoing the sentiment that the leaguewide impact will be modest. Further, it is conventional wisdom that pull-heavy lefthanders would benefit the most. However, the size of […]

Incorporating Stuff+ Into Traditional Pitching Projections

Recent times have birthed innovative metrics that measure pitcher quality, independent of traditional results like K% or BB%. The most prominent of these are probably Pitching+, Stuff+, Location+, and Command+, all published by Max Bay and Eno Sarris at The Athletic (I want to thank Eno for providing encouragement on this article, though all mistakes […]