Week 3: Which Hot Hitters Can We Believe In?

No one has sent any fun photos in awhile, so you all have to live with a photo of Michael’s cats this week, Luna, Diesel, and Grey Wolf. Send your photos in!

Year to Date Power Ranks
TOTAL			HITTING			PITCHING				Manager	Team
1	Dean	3.79	1	Dean	3.13	1	Arthur	2.67		Dave	I Hate Fantasy
2	Dave	4.00	2	Matt	3.50	2	Dave	4.33		Arthur	PURE DOMINATION
3	Matt	4.00	3	Dave	3.75	3	Dean	4.67		Dean	[changing too often]
4	Arthur	4.64	4	Cory	4.63	4	Matt	4.67		Brian/Josh	Smoak that Ish
5	Max	5.79	5	Max	5.13	5	Michael	5.00		Cory	Hebrew Nationals
6	Michael	5.93	6	Arthur	6.13	6	Keith	5.17		Paul	Gators Ready to Play
7	Cory	6.00	7	Keith	6.63	7	Brian/Josh	6.00		Matt	Nashville Marketer
8	Keith	6.00	8	Michael	6.63	8	Max	6.67		Keith	Bourbon Street Blues OG
9	Paul	6.86	9	Paul	6.88	9	Paul	6.83		Max	bsb
10	Brian/Josh	7.00	10	Brian/Josh	7.75	10	Cory	7.83		Michael	Erin's Wrist Rolls

A top tier has separated themselves from the the pack, 3 weeks in. Dean, Dave, Matt, and Arthur have been the best 4 teams so far, but Max is charging hard.

We’re three weeks into the year, teams are becoming who they are. Small sample sizes are becoming slightly more reliable and luck has started to even its way out…but not all the way. With projection systems, batted ball metrics (like % of hard hit rates) and statcast data (which includes barrel rates, exit velocities, etc. leading to expected statistics) we can sift through the early hot starts to figure out what is looking sustainable. I pulled 10 hitters that appear to have broken out and went and pulled some of their data. This blog is about what I found.

I’ve pulled the data from these players, but I found these 4 parameters to be the most telling. A player’s strikeout rate (K%) will be indicative of how well they’re seeing the ball at the plate, as well as how well they’re hitting the ball in the strike zone. If they’ve improved their strikeout rate, it could be a sign of a sustainable breakout. A player’s Home Run to Fly Ball (HR/FB) rate is another measure of a breakout. Typically, there is a league average the a HR/FB rate tends to drift towards. If a player has an out-of-band HR/FB rate, expect it to come back to earth; this goes for high or low rates. League average is normally around 20%. As a corrollary to this rate, hard hit rate (Hard%) can indicate a new skill. Is their HR/FB rate really high with an equally high Hard%? Maybe there is something sustainable there. Is one or the other out-of-band? Performance is more likely to return to career normals. Finally, xwOBA-wOBA is a new stat with data that is built from statcast data. I wrote a blog about this last year, but the gist is that if statcast expects someone’s wOBA to be a certain number, xwOBA, but they’ve hit for a far different wOBA, there is likely some luck involved. This is an oversimplification and xwOBA tends to punish speedsters and prop up power hitters, but you can get the idea. Here is what the data looks like (note if the stat for the player was basically in line with projections or career, I didn’t include it here, we aren’t going to learn anything from that):

Player off to Hot Start		K%	K% projected		HR/FB	Career HR/FB		Hard%	Career Hard%		wOBA-xwOBA	Conclusion
Cody Bellinger		12.0%	22.6%		-	-		54.1%	42.0%		0.009	buy
Tim Anderson		-	-		-	-		22.2%	29.7%		0.095	heavy sell
Michael Conforto		19.8%	25.0%		18.8%	19.3%		37.7%	38.8%		0.008	buy
Austin Meadows		-	-		25.0%	15.8%		48.2%	40.3%		0.046	N/A* (now he's hurt)
Trey Mancini		-	-		23.1%	21.4%		38.0%	34.5%		0.049	light buy
Joc Pederson		-	-		25.0%	20.2%		-	-		0.042	sell
Daniel Vogelbach		-	-		40.0%	25.0%		-	-		0.079	heavy sell
Pete Alonso		-	-		36.4%	~20% in minors		-	-		0.028	light buy
Justin Smoak		18.3%	26.0%		17.9%	15.2%		48.1%	35.3%		0.009	light buy
Christian Walker					37.5%	32.4%		73.3%	51.6%		0.039	buy

You can see the players that have probably gotten lucky so far like Tim Anderson and Daniel Vogelbach. Cody Bellinger and Michael Conforto are probably the safest bets here with their prospect pedigree. The rest fall somewhere in between thought the above chart speaks pretty highly of Justin Smoak. Christian Walker I’ve labeled as a buy here despite his xOBA-xwOBA because look at that hard hit rate, 73%?!?! This is but the data and my humble opinion, now you can go out and make your moves.

I’m short on time because that research took longer than I normally budget for the blog so here are the headlines for the week:

Max edged out Michael, but the score was closer than it should have been. Max hit .299, slugged .602 and had 20 Home Runs. More on this matchup later.

Matt beat Keith with overpowering offense. Keith only made it only the board with a 2.01 ERA, a good WHIP, and 8 Saves plus Holds.

Dean crushed Paul but this one was closer than the final score indicates. Dean had a 1.77 ERA over 61 innings pitched. Very impressive.

Cory edged out Arthur as Arthur’s offense couldn’t keep up. Cory had 20 Home Runs to power his team.

Dave crushed an under-manned Brian and Josh. Dave had a fine week but this one was more about BJ struggling to find their team.

Monster of the Week: Max had huge leads in most of the offesive categories over Michael. Late on Saturday night, after an extremely bad day fron Michael, he had also passed Michael in strikeouts. Not needing to start his hitters to win 6 offensive categories, and not reasonably able to catch Michael in the other 2, Max benched his hitters on Sunday so that he could not strikeout more than Michael and lose the hitting K point. It was a pro move that begs a few questions, not the least of which is, who is this manager and what did he do with Max? Max has a team surging up the power ranks and now apparently he knows how to manage the fantasy matchup. It only took 12 years but apparently we have a contender. Watch out.