Fantasy Baseball Today - Using Exit Velocity to Identify Overvalued and Undervalued Power Hitters (2/1 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Link to Scott's article- https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/2022-fantasy-baseball-draft-prep-why-exit-velocity-matters-more-than-ever-for-hitters/ Before we get into the exit velocity talk, who is Scott's pick for this year's Robbie Ray (3:30)? ... What is that correlation between exit velocity and home runs (9:20)? Has it changed over the years? ... Which players are devalued (16:05)? ... Why is Scott out on DJ LeMahieu and Francisco Lindor at their cost (20:15)? ... What does this all mean for Alex Bregman and Anthony Rendon (27:38)? ... Which hitters were unlucky in 2021 based on exit velocity and barrel rate (34:54)? ... Which hitters overperformed their numbers this past season (47:30)? ... Email us at [e-mail]. 'Fantasy Baseball Today' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. I drive. Serafeas is magnificent. Got a fantasy question? Email fantasy baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. With fantasy. Now here's Frank, Scott, Chris, and Adam.

It's time to find out why exit velocity matters so much for home runs. Welcome in to Fantasy Baseball today on Tuesday, February 1st. I am Frank Stapville, joined by the returning. Scott White, how you feeling, Scottie? Feeling good, Frank. Feeling good. I like you breaking out the glasses there. The nerd alert.

Nerd alert. I realize in doing that, I'm really just mocking us, Scott. Yeah. What are you going to do? I guess we're the nerds here, right? I don't know. I haven't identified that strongly with the nerd identity. You know, because it feels like, I don't know,

this was how I always felt like growing up, you know? Like, around certain kids, I would seem like the nerd, right? Okay, around this group, I'm clearly the nerd. But then if you put me with the nerds, it would be like, oh, man, these are two, these folks are too nerdy for me, you know? Like, I had a hard time finding that sweet spot. I can relate. I can relate somewhat, Scott. Because, all right, so I played a lot of sports growing up.

So I guess, like, obviously I had, you know, I'm not going to say I was part of the jock crowd. But, I mean, it was there, obviously. So I played a lot of sports. But I also played a lot of video games growing up. So, like, I kind of tried to mesh with as many different groups as possible. So I get what you're saying. Like, I bounced around a little bit. I had a few different phases.

So, you know, sports crowd. I had the video game crowd. So I'm with you. Bounce around. I guess I was just kind of the, dumb nerd. Maybe that's, maybe that's the takeaway. Well, here you are, Scotty. You made it.

You made it. Eat analyst, CVS. I'm not doing like nuclear physics or anything, Frank. I mean, you kind of are. We'll talk about it a little bit later on. We're talking about correlations. Discuss the correlation between home runs and exit velocity. Obviously, we talk about exit velocity a lot and we use the stack cast data a lot in our analysis. But something I've always wondered is how much does it actually apply to? the things that we're talking about.

So Scott wrote an awesome article about it. You can find it on the site. I'll attach it to the podcast and YouTube description so you can follow along as we're doing the podcast. But I thought it was really good research that you found, Scott. And I took it another step further and I tried to find which players might be over

or undervalue as a result of that. So that's basically going to be the crux of today's podcast. I couldn't have done it without V lookup. Well, that's all Chris. So Chris kind of, you know, he gave it to me. He gave me his knowledge. He shared the knowledge with me. And then as a result, I passed it on to you.

But it all comes from Chris. In the junior fashion, I was all over those spreadsheets. Oh, it's great. I've been doing a lot of stuff, Scotty. A lot of stuff with the V-lookup. So I think I shared the sheet with you, but if you ever want to just jump in, I have a bunch of different stuff going on there, like 20 different sheets with just a bunch of random data. So one day, I'm sure we'll talk about it. And before we get into all that stuff, Scott, yesterday you missed a pretty fun podcast.

Sorry, you know, I wish you were on it. But obviously, a little bit under the weather. but we did, who is this year's blank? It's been kind of making its rounds on Twitter, people having fun, making fun of it, so on and so forth. I think it's a fun exercise, right? Trying to, you know,

just basically use those examples to find breakout players, undervalued players. And one of them that I asked Chris about was, who is this year's Robbie Ray? A pitcher going outside the top 280P that has league-winning upside, Sai-Young upside, even.

So, Scott, I mean, you weren't on you today. I figured I'd give you an opportunity to answer. Do you have a strong guess for who this year's Robbie Ray might be? Yeah, I think there are a number of candidates. The thing where this pick might, the area where this pick might come up short is just in terms of, is he going to be, is he equipped to deliver the sort of workload Robbie Ray did last year to realistically have a shot at the Sy Young Award?

But in terms of how effective I think he could be, Patrick Sandoval, is my pick. Scott, high five, we did it. Is that your pick? That was my pick as well. All right.

There you go. So I guess I'm just going to rehash the same arguments here. Do it. He has maybe, his change-up has maybe surpassed Luis Castillo's as the best change-up in baseball.

He threw it about 30% of the time last year. It got whiffs about 30% of the time. The slider is a pretty good swing in this pitch in its own right. And particularly once he moved out of the bullpen and into the rotation full time, he really started to make some headway. 15.2% swinging strike rate for the season.

That's about what Max Scherzer had. And I think the only reason he's going outside the top 200 now is because he suffered that stress reaction in his spine and didn't pitch any in September. I think he missed part of August as well. So he got shut down there toward the end of the season, kind of out of sight, out of mind. But he was really gaining steam as a big-time bat misser.

He had one start where he had 30 swinging strikes, which is something Max Scherzer didn't do, Corbett Burns, Jacob de Grom. None of them did that in any of their starts last year. So a lot of bad missing potential here from Patrick Sandoval. And similar to Robbie. Ray in that efficiency and control are two areas where he could stand to approve. But he hasn't bottomed out in those areas the way Robbie Ray did during his time with the

diamondbacks that caused him to sink so much in the ranking. So I do think Sandoval has that top end strikeout potential, obviously still needs to grow into a full time starters workload, but if he can stay healthy, I think he's well on his way. The change-up is absolutely filthy, as you mentioned. Scott, it's something I highlighted yesterday as well. I think it is a near 29% swinging strike rate on the change-up alone. Batting average against was phenomenal. He has a really good slider as well. It's the fastball. He really needs to work on the fastball command. And if he can improve on that pitch and everything just kind of comes together with those three pitches, then yeah, we could be talking about, I mentioned yesterday a top 20 starting

picture if everything breaks right from i i think that's within the range of outcomes for sandoval who currently has an adp of 218.3 one more thing before we get into this correlation between home runs and exit velocity i wanted to mention that as of now i realize i mentioned a couple of weeks ago i was going to be positive about you know the players and the owners meeting together and i still want to remain positive but we're basically up against it here where any further time Like we're probably talking about missing spring training games. And if we miss spring training games, we're probably talking about a potential delay into the season.

So the players and the owners are expected to meet again today when you're listening to this on Tuesday, February 1st. Hopefully they continue to progress. But as of now, not looking too good. It seems like there's a chance things will be delayed at least a little bit. So we're crossing our fingers, hoping for the best. I want to ask, what was Chris's pick for this year's Robbie Ray? Honestly, he didn't really give one.

He kind of just mentioned a bunch of names. I think the first two he mentioned were Chris Paddock and Nelson Lamett. Well, before I settled on Patrick Sandoval, I took a long look at Carlos Carrasco. So I just want to throw another name into the mix there. That would be more of a rebound candidate like Robbie Ray. But his stuff, you know, remember he missed the first four months or so last year with a hamstring injury? And I'm like, what is going on with his hamstring? and then he came back and the velocity was fine.

The spin was down on everything. So I just wondered if he had a chance to adapt to that new ball the way it seemed like most pitchers did after a month or so. I think he could come back with a vengeance. Scotty, we are sympatigo, man, because I mentioned Carlos Carrasco yesterday as well. We had another category who is this year's Joey Vado or Adam Wainwright, basically a veteran who's being undervalued right now.

And I brought up Carlos Carrasco, who has an ADP around 300, I think, right now. I mean, yeah, 283 is the ADP. I mean, I get it. He's had a lot of injuries, a lot of stuff going on, but, I mean, he's just completely being overlooked. So I'm with you. I like Sandoval.

I like Carlos Carrasco quite a bit. And we talked about Tristan McKenzie. I do like McKenzie quite a bit as well. Yeah, good. Good. I'd like to hear that. Cool. All right, let's jump into it, Scotty.

The correlation between home runs and exit velocity. Obviously, you are on record at this point, saying that you are targeting power and specifically home runs early in your category league drafts and rightfully so we've talked about every time a player hits a home run. He's helping you in four different categories. He gives you a hit.

He gives you an RBI. He gives you a run scored as well. But what led you specifically to look at this correlation, Scott? Because there's a lot of different things that you could have looked at in terms of stat-cast data. But specifically, you chose average exit velocity and how it correlates to home runs. Why is that?

Yeah, it was just kind of going through, my doing my off-season evaluations going through player by player. It was a pattern I noticed that the ones who disappointed us in terms of their home run production last year were guys who were just kind of met in terms of average exit velocity. And I'm not saying they had a down year in terms of exit velocity. They just continued to do what they always did with regard to exit velocity, more or less, and it yielded fewer home runs. And, you know, considering we had this significant environmental change last year,

specifically with the introduction of the new ball, and the fact that it wasn't supposed to, and the evidence seems to show it didn't carry as much, did we reach kind of a breaking point there with exit velocity, where in the past, the amount it took to get to get, a fly ball over the fence was less during the peak of the juice ball year for the entirety of the juice ball year that was the whole point right that the way the way you had to impact the ball to get it over the fence really wasn't the threshold for that wasn't very high and the new ball raised that threshold to the point that it it knocks some players out it knocks some players out as as being potential 30 or in some cases even potential 20 homer guys,

which makes sense that that would be an effect of it. But I feel like it wasn't discussed so much during the season. And I feel like specifically it mattered to me because when I have evaluated players in the past hitters specifically, I haven't paid that much attention to exit velocity because it didn't seem to matter that much in terms of how many home runs they hit. There'd be times when it was worth bringing up.

Like, certainly it was an indicator of raw ability, you know, being able to hit the ball 93 miles per hour on average is, it shows a level of skill that somebody who hits the ball 89 miles per hour on average doesn't possess. But rarely did it really impact my evaluation of a player. Usually it just came into play for some. something like, okay, this guy has a ridiculous strikeout raid, but he raises his margin for error by hitting the ball as hard as he does. Aaron Judge when he was first starting out, for instance.

Or, okay, this guy has a low home run to fly ball rate, but he raises his margin for error when he does hit a fly ball. I'm not sure I said that right. But basically, for some obvious shortcoming that hitter has, exit velocity, seemed like it could help him make up for it. But just in terms of raw projection, it didn't factor in much for me because it didn't seem like it needed to. And what's especially interesting about this is it basically coincides, right? The stat cast era and the juice ball era, stackcast data first started coming out in 2015.

The juice ball era began in 2016. So we haven't had a chance to decouple them like this. You know, decouple exit velocity from the juice ball era and see what the result is. And, you know, using those individual cues to launch into this bigger analysis, I found that, yeah, it seems like it definitely has an impact. Yeah, so you created a scatterplot and people following along, with the article, you could see the results and how basically exit velocity has correlated, or how it hasn't correlated, really, with home runs the past couple of years versus how in

2021, it really showed out more than ever. And as of now, Scott, we don't know what ball they're going to be using in 2022, but I think for analysis sake, we just have to assume that they're going to use the ball that they used mostly last year. I know there were some talk about how, you know, they were mixing in different balls from years past and different ballpark so on and so forth. But there's really no way for us to quantify that or really even project it moving forward. So I think... Well, my understanding of that was that instead of universally going with the new ball from the start of 2021 to the end of the season, they had some leftover balls that got mixed in in a way that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for,

just whenever they happen to get placed on the ball shelf that they pulled the game balls from, that's when they got used. That's my understanding of how that went. But, you know, obviously we find out things after the fact all the time. So, you know, I'm not accepting that as gospel truth. But if that is the truth, then presumably we're going to see even less of the juiced balls going forward. And this correlation between average exit velocity and home runs could become even stronger.

Yeah, so as you highlight in the article, Scott, the correlation is 0.47. And basically, the closer that number is to one, that just shows the relationship between exit velocity and home runs. And in years past, 2020, 0.30, 2019, 0.38, 2018, 0.36. it's very obvious that 2021, there was a bigger correlation between exit velocity and home runs than ever before. The only other year in stat cast history that came close to last year was 2015, was before what we traditionally consider to be the start of the juiced ball era.

So, you know, that I think only furthers the point. Well, my next question is, Scott, what does it all mean? Like, which players are we potentially devaluing as a result? result of the data that you found here in 2021. So what I was mostly looking to find out when I did this was whether or not we should be counting on certain players who disappointed us in the home run category last year, whether or not we should count on them to rebound because it seems like where they're being ranked where they're being drafted on average, that seems to be what people are doing.

And, you know, that's typical. A guy has a down year, but, you know, the track record says he's better than that. You just, okay, it was a down year, and there's a good chance I can get him at a discount now. But it may not be that simple for this group. What other applications there are for this, I think it's too early to say because since this was mostly to confirm a suspicion for me, mostly just to decide, okay, how much should I factor exit velocity into my analysis now? You know, I don't want to overrate it either. I don't want to say, oh, exit velocity is the most important thing now because it's not. I mean, the correlation is stronger. It's still less

than 0.5, you know? There are still other factors that I think would have a stronger correlation, like, you know, things we've emphasized in the past, like launch angle, fly ball rates, barrel rate, you know, I'm sure those all have a greater correlation with home run output than exit velocity itself. It's just, so, you know, I don't want to turn this into a single factor analysis sort of thing where everybody below a certain threshold and exit velocity isn't going to hit home runs anymore. Everybody above a certain threshold and exit velocity is, because I don't think that's true at all. I think it varies. lot player to player based on other factors, other ways, other ways to measure how they hit the

ball. So, you know, that's why I think it's mostly helpful as sort of a relative marker. If this player was more or less the same last year and he hit fewer home runs and the exit velocity is below a certain threshold, okay, that might be why. Yeah. No, I think it makes sense. and you've mentioned this for multiple hitters before, right? I mean, guys that really had breakout seasons

in terms of power in 2019, and maybe last year, you know, that power output was not nearly the same. So we'll talk about a few of those players. And again, if you want to find exit velocity yourself to help identify power hitters or just hitters in general that you want to target in your drafts,

baseball savant.com is where you can find all of the stackcast data, but it's also been incorporated now to Fangraphs.com. So if you want to, you know, look into this. some of this data yourself. Feel free to find it there. What types of exit velocity should you look for? Scott, you highlighted this in your article. The average exit velocity for those hitters with 30 plus home runs last year was in the 85th percentile, while the average exit velocity

for those with 20 to 29 home runs was the 75th percentile. So it doesn't mean that you have to be in the 75th percentile, but again, this is an average of things. So just keep all of this in mind in general. And you highlighted 16 players in the article that you worry about in terms of power output and the top five

in terms of ADP are players that I mean, maybe not specifically but everyone is going to be drafted. These are guys that are going inside the top basically 120 picks in ADP

and it includes Zander Bogartz, Francisco Lindor, Alex Bregman, Anthony Rendon, Diju LeMayhew. I think maybe outside of Bogartes these are all names that we've shared

some level of concern in the past about Scott just for this exact reason. You know, the fact that they took advantage of that juice ball in 2019. So, I mean, what's your concern level with basically this group of five? I mean, is there any one

that you're looking to avoid more than the other ones? Bogart's Lindor, Breggman, Rendon, Lamehue? I am pretty much out on LaMayhew. And I think people are way too sanguine about Francisco Lendor's

bound back potential. Not just you, Frank. I mean, look at where he's going on average. I think it's fourth or fifth round. And you compare that especially to guys like Corey Seeger, Carlos Correa. It doesn't add up for me. It doesn't add up for me why you'd target Lindor more than that,

unless you really trusted him to get back to being the 30 to 35 homer guy he had been at other times in his career. Now, what's interesting about both of those, Lindor and LaMayhew, is they were both around 75th percentile. an average exit velocity last year, which was the average for players in that 20 to 29 home run range last year. So it wasn't that bad their exit velocity. The others were all around 50. In fact, Bregman and Rendon were actually below 50th percentile.

But Lindor and LeMayhew were up around 75. The thing about LeMayhew, though, is he so rarely elevates the ball. his launch angle is so low that when he hits it in the air, he has to make it count. And I think for him specifically, knowing that aspect of his batted ball profile, I don't think 75th percentile is enough for him.

Could he be 12 to 15 home run guy still? Yeah, I think so. But what wasn't in 2019? He had 29 home runs, and I think he was on pace for even more than that in the short in 2020 season. and he was more like 35 he was on pace for. So like the studly version of LaMayhew, I think, is on.

We're never going to see him again. It could still be useful, but definitely limits to his upside. Oh, it was 26 home runs. He hit in 2019, by the way, not 29. Yeah. And then Lindorre, I've talked about this in a number of places. I think it's very likely he's a 25 homer guy still. He puts the ball in the air quite a bit and still 75th percentile exit velocity.

He hit 20 home runs last year for what it's worth. I think he can still get to 25. I do think he'll be in line for some kind of bounce back. But because he sells out so hard for home runs, the lower percentage of them are clearing the fence. And if they're just not, if the impact he's making on them just isn't the same in general, I think he could continue to have issues with the bad. average. What did he hit last year? Oh, it was not good. I believe it was 230 in that range. Yeah, he hit 230 exactly on the nose. Yeah, I mean, I'm not I'm not

sure I'll give him a chance for much more than like a 250 batting average. So you got a 250 hitting 25 homer shortstop who maybe steals 10 to 15 bases. I mean, again, that's not a nothing, but that's that's not something I want to invest a fifth round pick in. So I think caution is warranted on both of those players You know, Bogart's side, I don't so much have trouble I mean, I don't so much have an issue with where he's going Because he gets on base a lot, he drives in runs, he hits for average But we saw him have a 33 homer season at his peak

During that 2019 season And, you know, like for Lendor, I think 25 home runs is more realistic for him going forward He had 23 last year. And, you know, that's probably, like, the Xander Bogarts we saw last year is probably more typical of the Xander Bogarts we're going to see going forward. I kind of feel like I'm being attached to Francisco Indora. And I don't have a problem with it. I kind of want to be the person who buys back in on Francisco Indoor Scott. And I think a lot of the reason why I buy the bounce back for in 2022 is really just contextual.

the fact that, you know, take a little walk down narrative street with me here. And I think a lot of the times when players are either traded to a new location or sign a big contract, in this case, both of those things happened for Lindor playing the National League for the New York Mets in a big city, you know, obviously a lot of pressure. I'm buying into those kind of things. And I feel like we've seen players with a first year of big contracts before just really let us down. You know, Bryce Harper comes to mind and then he's bounced back years after that. I think you're right about the batting average.

I'm really not expecting much more than that. You know, can he hit 260, something like that? I think it's possible. He's kind of, he really is a lesser version of his former teammate in Jose Ramirez, right? I mean, Ramirez, look at him, he puts the ball in the air so much that it kind of puts a cap on what his batting average ceiling could be. What I like about Lindor is, I think the Mets lineup is going to bounce back. And I think they're going to be a lot better with Starling Marte, a full season of Pete Alonzo. Markana comes over, Eduardo Escobar.

And I think the counting stats could be really, really good for Lindor. And he flashed a little bit of that in September where the numbers, I mean, they really took off Scott. Nine homers, 92 mile per hour average exit velocity during that time, a 13% barrel rate. So it's a small sample, I realize, you know, you don't want to put too much stock into it, but it was dealing with injuries last year.

You know, maybe that was just the month that he finally got his footing underneath him. And that's like when he felt most comfortable. So I'm really just buying into that final month and the improvements that the Mets have made around him. And I think that we could see a return to like, a second or third round player for Francisco Lindor, albeit with a not so great batting average.

I mean, yeah, I think second or third round might be hard. I do think it's possible he could live up to his fifth round price tag. I think that's possible. It would take some things going right. It would take a lot of the things you mentioned, improve support and cast and greater comfort level. I think that's a realistic scenario. But my thing is why, what does it benefit you to take that glass, have full approach,

to kind of spin it in the most positive way when there are so many studly short stops going after him? And in some cases, several rounds after him. Like, it just, it doesn't seem worth paying up for. I guess it's just the short stops that are going after Lindor. Maybe we haven't seen them have the same ceiling as Lindor has. I mean, if he hits 260 with 25 plus homers, let's say 25 to 28, 15 steals and like 200 runs plus RBI, that's probably a second round player, right? Second, third round player.

What numbers worth us again? 260, 25 to 28 homers, 15 steals, 200 runs plus RBI. I mean, it's easier to tell in a points league context. But that does, like that to me seems like the best case scenario for Lindor in this current environment. I could be wrong about that, but that's, you know, from what I, from what my research has shown me, I feel like that's probably the upside for him. All right. Agreed to disagree. That's perfectly fine, Scott.

That's why we're here to talk about these players. What about Bregman and Rendon? I mean, obviously the third base position is not great partially because Bregman and Rendon are part of it. We don't really know what to make of these guys. They both dealt with injuries in the past couple of seasons. Haven't really been themselves since that 2019 season where Bregman hit 41 homers. Rendon hit 34 home runs. He had that monster year in terms of counting stats, runs in RBI.

His last year with the Washington Nationals gets the big contract with the Angels and hasn't really lived up to at this point. You mentioned both of these guys below the 50th percentile in terms of average exit velocity. Where are you at in terms of buying back in on either or buy? Both, Bregman and Rendon. So I think their going rate is fine. Bregman is the 76th player drafted on average. Rendon is a 107th player drafted on average.

And I would be fine taking either of them in those spots. But if somebody is purposely holding out for them at those spots, because they're anticipating a bounce back, I would stress caution in that scenario, because I'm not sure either really has the capability of contributing the sort of power numbers they did in the past. I mean, Bregman in 2019 was a 41 homer guy. That's clearly not happening again.

But even the year before, he was a 31 homer guy. I think, you know, I'd be surprised at this point with this ball if Bregman ever meets that 31 home run total again. I think it's possible. I think it's within the realm of possibility, but I don't think it's the most likely scenario. I think maybe you're looking at 25 homers or so for Bregman. Rendon, you know, maybe I'd put him around 20,

and he has some health-related or age-related health question marks going along with it, which is why he's a little bit lower than Bregman. But, you know, they can still be useful players. They have, both of them are capable of helping and batting average. They both have incredible plate discipline, and that's not going to change. But, you know, if you're counting on them bouncing back to a standard they set previously,

I think that's a mistake. I mean, Rendon himself, you project his numbers over a full season. 16 home runs is what it comes out to last year for him. So, I mean, when he was healthy, he clearly wasn't delivering the kind of numbers that we've come to expect from him. Yeah, there's a real chance, Scott, that Rendon was just playing through injury as soon as the season's started or maybe like shortly after the season started because you look at 2020 don't want to put too much stock into the short and season it was only 52 games but he was still really good then 286 batting average nine homers a 915 OPS that was his first season uh with the angels and those

nine home runs represented a 25 home run pace over 150 games so yeah but that was the old ball that is that is also correct and that's part of doing this entire thing is to right to find out which players could be hurt by that. And I agree that, I mean, Rendon was just pretty awful last year. I don't think he's that bad. I'm sure the health and the timing of the issues contributed to such a bad stat line. But just specifically in terms of home run output, you know, I think you should come, you should be expecting less from him.

There are now seven different projection systems over on Fangraph. So if you search up a specific player's profile, you'll see all these different projections on the bottom. Rendon is projected for between 17 and 24 home runs by each of those, and Alex Bregman projected for between 23 and 27 home runs. Similar counting stats for each, a little bit more for Bregman, similar batting average for both as well. So I think that's why you see the disparity in ADP right now.

But I do agree. I think that those are, I think these are good fallback options, Scott, and really kind of the last of that tier, especially in points leagues. Like, I still think they could be standouts in that format. Yeah, just because the plate discipline is so good. Right. Where are they both projected,

are by those projection systems, are they getting a full season's worth of a batts, or are they projecting some missed time? They are projecting some mistime for each of them. So they have Bregman for between 141 and 146 games, so that would probably equate to like one IL stint per year. And then Rendon is projected for all of them 133 games, which is interesting.

How did they all fall in the same number? So I liked the home run projections until you told me that. Like I like those home run projections over 150 games for both of them. But since it's over 135 to 145, I think they might be a little high. All right. So let's maybe turn down those rate stats a little bit for both. Rendon and Bregman this upcoming season. Before we hit the break, we will have another live mock draft stream on our YouTube channel today when you're listening to this, or if you're watching

it right now on Tuesday night, February 1st at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, this time, a 12-to-head categories draft, and I know some people have asked for that content recently. Just a general heads-up to. Anytime we talk about a player from a roto or a categories league perspective, that can be applied to head-to-categories, just in case you're wondering. But yes, that's the form of that we're going to be focusing on on Tuesday night. I know Chris is going to be there. Maybe Scott. We're going to get a few guests as well.

So we're going to have some fun. And you can come watch along again. That's at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash fantasy baseball today if you haven't already. And also download and follow our five-minute podcast. Fantasy baseball today in five, if you haven't already. We take the biggest conversation points from this podcast

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and when we return, I did a little bit of research myself, Scott. I want to see what you think about it. We'll find out here on fantasy baseball today. All right, so let's jump back into some of this research I did, Scott, and looking at that correlation between exit velocity and fly balls. What I did is I grabbed each of the, Exit velocity, barrel rate, and home runs a flyball ratio for the top qualified hitters in baseball last season.

And to me, I think it's very similar to what you did. It's maybe taking it one step further. I mean, a lot of people talk about barrel rate as like the true descriptor of power nowadays. So maybe even a little bit more accurate than exit velocity. But either way, I'm looking at all three of those categories for these players that I... Home run to fly ball ratio. I did calculate that too, and it was similar to... to just pure home runs.

It wasn't as tidy, I would say, but it was close. It followed the same basic pattern of 2015 and 2021 being the closest correlation of any of those six years, seven years. And for anyone listening or watching who is wondering what barrel rate is, I mean, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's the rate in which you barrel up a baseball. I mean, this is ideal batted balls that we're talking about here, an exit velocity of 98. plus miles per hour, a launch angle between 26 and 30 degrees. So, I mean, we're talking about a legitimate, you know, a little bit higher than a line drive,

like between a line drive and a fly ball is what we're looking at here. For every mile per hour, over 98, the range of launch angle expands by one degree. So you can look up the definition if you want a more clearer response, but that's probably the best job that I could do in terms of describing it on a podcast. These are the players, Scott, that I found, we're unlucky last season based on their ex,

their exit velocity and barrel rate, and as a result of those two things, being as high as they were, their home run to fly ball ratio did not match up to where others were relative to these values. So the first name that popped up here, Josh Donaldson,

who if you look at his statcast page got, red everywhere. I mean, the guy absolutely crushed the ball last year. It didn't really show up in his overall numbers. I believe he hit like 247, 26 home runs last year in 135 games. He's a little bit older now, but if we're talking about third base,

a weak position. I don't know that I want him as my starting third baseman, but corner infielder, a utility bat, maybe even in a points league, I think you can get away with that. The numbers say that

he should have deserved even more home runs than he hit in just the 135 games that he played, Scott. Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. I mean, the big concerns for Josh Donaldson

are obviously the health history and especially now him being 36. I mean, that's probably not going to get any better, but he can still make an impact when he is able to take the fields. And it's interesting, it wasn't just him. So this was from my 56 Amazing Stats column.

If you look at the leaderboard and average exit velocity last year, first, like, you look at the top 10. It's basically like a who's who of early round draft picks, right? First, second and third, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Vladimir Guerrero, no surprise there. Sixth, seventh, and eighth are Shohei Otani, Fernando Tatis, Ronald Takunya. No surprise there. But who's in between? Who's fourth and fifth?

You mentioned one of them, Josh Donaldson, he was fifth. Fourth was Evan Longoria. So two old third baseman that nobody wants much to do. with and you know they may still have something left at a position that's that's weak i don't think either is worth a premium and i would rather have donaldson malt than longoria but if you're playing a deep league if you're if you know you just get burned at third base all draft long and you need to take a flyer on somebody late i think i think either of those especially donaldson is a fine choice yep i'm i'm totally cool with that shout out to chris he mentioned longoria as uh his pick

for this year's Joey Votto, right? So an undervalued veteran, and the underlying numbers bear it out for Longoria and Josh Donaldson. Next up, Scott, Manny Machado, 93.1 mile per hour, average exit velocity, 13.3% barrel rate, that was a career high. Yet his home runs-of-fly ball ratio

was below 15% in 2020. That was over 20%. In 2019, that was right around 17%. So, based on the SACCast numbers that he posted, should have hit more home runs. And just overall, if you look at his expected batting average, his expected slug, he really underperformed both of those things quite a bit. So I don't think that we're getting some kind of crazy discount on Manny Machado.

He's still a second, third round pick. But it would not surprise me if maybe he returns to that first round form, which we saw in the shortened season based on some of these underlying numbers. Yeah, I want to surprise me either. In fact, I've talked about on the podcast how it was a real dilemma for me, failed Devers or Manny Machado as my number two third baseman, I ultimately went with the crowd and Devers because I think there's probably some untapped upside there for him too. But it wouldn't surprise me considering Machado's the better base dealer of the two if he ends up more valuable.

If the hitting stats are close enough that those steals put Machado over. The next one up here, Scott, I want to get your thoughts because this one's kind of interesting because he's coming off a renaissance season. And it's Paul Goldschmidt. 92.6 exit velocity, 13.6% barrel rate, also a career high. Let's think about this. Like, Paul Goldschmidt had some amazing fantasy seasons

where he was consistently a top five pick in fantasy baseball. Last year was his career high barrel rate. 16.3% home runs-to-fly ball ratio. That's below the numbers where he was at, you know, in 2019, 2018, 2017, when, you know, he was closer to his prime. he hit 31 home runs and 158 games last year. He was amazing.

But based on this exit velocity and barrel rate, Scott, it actually tells me that he could have hit even more home runs last season. Could have. Yeah, I mean, that's the reason why I'm more or less taking his numbers at face value is because the stat cast data is so strong for him. Otherwise, I might be inclined to say, okay, that was cute, Paul Goldschmidt, But we've seen your work the past few years, and we know you're not that guy anymore. But the data says he was.

So it makes it a little easier to buy into it. I don't know that, you know, I would expect even better numbers from him next year. And that's kind of the issue with barrel rate for me. I'm not a stat cast expert, so I may have this wrong. But my perception of barrel rate is, yes, it's great. rate, it correlates strongly with home run, with damage, with a hitter doing damage. You know, stronger than exit velocity does. Barrel rate has a stronger correlation than that.

But it's, it's, you know, it gets back to the question of, does it explain what already happened or does it predict what's going to happen more? I mean, all of this stuff explains what happened more. Yep. But exit velocity, I feel like, is so intrinsic to a player. Like, you don't see wild fluctuations in exit velocity. Usually, the player is basically who he is every year. So that makes it something you can trust more when it comes to predicting.

Barrel rate, yes, I mean, there is some intrinsic quality there, but you see greater fluctuations from year to year. And so I don't know if it's as useful for predict. for prediction purposes as average exit velocity is. You're exactly right, Scott. I mean, it's very similar to looking at ERA estimators. They only really matter if a pitcher continues to pitch the way that he has, right? It tells us what his, based on ex-fib, what based on expected ERA,

what a pitcher's ERA should be based on what they did. But they have to continue to do that moving forward to actually see progress. So Paul Goldschmidt, he has to continue to cross the ball the same way that he did this past season, and if he does that, maybe there's a chance that he can get back to hitting 35 home runs. I wouldn't bet on it personally, but like you, this gives me a little bit more faith in Paul Goldschmidt,

and this being the real Paul Goldschmidt, you know, maybe for at least another season here in 2022. I've actually, this might be a bit of a take, but I've moved Paul Goldschmidt ahead of Matt Olson. So I want to see where Matt Olson winds up in terms of where he's traded and stuff.

But yeah, just the track record. It could only be better than Oakland, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, who knows? You know, Francis Goulda traded away and, you know, it took some time to adjust with the meds. So who knows?

I mean, something similar could happen with Matt Olson. The last one I wanted to highlight here, J.D. Martinez, 92.1 mile per hour, exit velocity, 12.4% barrel rate. That was his highest since 2018. But is 15.7% home runs of fly ball ratio.

Lower than his career mark. It is higher than where he was at in 2020 when he just had a completely awful season. We didn't really know what to make of that. But in 2019, his home run to fly ball ratio was 23.4%. And his barrel rate last year was higher than it was in 2019. So I understand like stackass numbers were up across the board last year because that was like part of the baseball composition.

But I still think that J.D. Martinez probably deserved more home runs than he actually wound up with last year, which was 28, over 148 games. So I was a little bit worried about J.D. Martinez's final four months were not great, Scott. But seeing something like this tells me, all right, you know, maybe he could actually get back to being a 30 home run hitter in 2022. You know, I would like to see a month by month breakdown of the stat cast data,

and that's something I don't think is available, right? You can't see month by month exit velocity or anything like that. You can do it, Scott. If you go to baseball savant, they have a little graph underneath all the, stackcast batting statistics and it's automatically set to pitch percentage but you can set it to average exit velocity and then you can do it by month and it'll show it to you on a little

line graph so yeah you can see exit velocity by month there um okay well i'll have to play with this more but yeah again i'm not a stack as expert yeah so you know if if because jd martinez is the age he is 34, you know, could be on the verge of a decline here. It could come in any moment, right? You could begin to lose it. If he lost it over the course of the season as, and maybe you could see, as I'm saying this,

if the decline in power production, because he hit nine of his 28 home runs in April alone, and then no more than four in any other month. And, you know, it would worry, me if the if the data declined as the home run production did. All right. So I got it for you here, Scotty. Let's see. In April, it was 92.6 miles per hour. In May 92.2. Not a big drop off. In June 92.3. So right there. July 90.7. That was quite a big

dip. August was 91.5. So getting back on track. And then in September, it was 93.3, his highest of any other month. So it was really just. That doesn't sound. particularly concerning to me. Yeah, really just July and August for JD Martinez. So I was a little skeptical on him, myself, just going into the offseason because, you know, again, I think it was like a sub-800 OPS bat over the final four months. But seeing something like this and the fact that he plays in the ALE still, I still expect the Red Sox lineup to be pretty good.

I kind of like, I kind of like J.D. Martinez. I think he's fine at his going rate right now. A few others, I'm not going to expand on these guys, but we'll quickly mention Jorge Salare, Tommy fam, Trevor Story. Those were three other names who, it seems like they underperformed their home run to flyball ratio based on their batted ball data. A few names who got lucky last season, Scottie. Avisa Aal Garcia, he posted a 12.2% barrel rate. His home runs a flyball ratio, 26%.

And that was much higher than his career mark, which was 17%. I mean, look, he was better last year than he ever was, but that's a big jump, right? So he had 20. I think that was the 11th best in baseball. I just wrote about him for Busts 1.0. Yeah, 29 home runs over 135 views. I mean, it's not just that. That's part of it, how he seemed to overperform,

but also him going from Milwaukee to Miami. I mean, we see how the reverse move impacted Christian Yelich. And, you know, for a guy who doesn't have a great track record for power already, I worry about it for Avi Seale Garcia. I think you're probably going to like to hear these two on this list, Scottie, because I know that you're not a fan of either one, really. Javier Baez. He posted a 28% home runs-to-fly-ball ratio last year,

21% for his career. His barrel rate was pretty damn good at 13.4%. But this home-runs-to-fly-ball ratio was a clear outlier for him. He had 31 homers over 138 games. And then Randy or Rosarina, while he didn't hit a ton of home runs, only 20 over 141 games, he had just an 8.2% barrel rate.

So we know the stat cast numbers didn't really like a Rosarena. And yeah, apparently him and Javier Baez. They represent two of the bigger outliers here. Yep, both on Bus 1.0 as well. I'm the least concerned, you know, looping, roping Ave Sal Garcia back into this discussion. I'm the least concerned about Baez of the three. He is in the bus column still. But he's kind of been a fixture there the past few years and how has that worked for me?

But yeah, I mentioned when we talked about bust the other day that he became even more of an outlier than he already was in that home run to fly ball rate as well as the BAPB, also career high Babbat, which I didn't think was possible. And that helped him ask that he had the worst plate discipline of his career, the high strikeout rate of his career. Because of the track record and because, you know, three of the past four years now, he's done 20, you mentioned his career, home run to fly ball was 21%. three of the past four years now, it's been 24 or higher. The early years when he wasn't really a fantasy stud yet, dragged that number down. But he is going to a new environment, like Avisao Garcia, he's going to Detroit.

And if you look at his spray chart, Bayez hit a good number of home runs last year to right center, which is a dead zone in Detroit. So I think there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about him. I, you know, he does steal some bases too. But, and he's, I, I don't think his going rate is particularly unfair. I mentioned before, I might actually have a decent number of shares of bias, but I could see things going really wrong for him in his first year in Detroit.

Yeah, let's just ask Nick Cassiano's how things went for him in Detroit. And he's actually the next one up on this list. Just a 10.6% barrel rate last year, which is good, but is it really, is it like 34 home runs good? Probably not. And 22.8% home runs a flyball ratio last year for Nick Castellanos. Those things, obviously don't really line up for me. We know we've very highlighted this. He's, he was amazing in Cincinnati when he was home last year. I mean, his home road splits were not great. We'll see where he winds up. I think if he, if he signs with the Phillies, I'll probably still feel pretty good about him because that's a, that's a good. park to hit in as well and it's a pretty good lineup. But if he goes to like the Marlins, for example, I mean, that would just be an absolute train wreck. The other name. I mean, honestly, Detroit could use him, right? The, um, I don't think he'd go back there given his complaints.

Yeah. The other name on this list guy. He's also on bust 1.0 for me. It's like, I got to just made my bus list from this data. Right. Again, with stipulating, it depends on where he signs ultimately, but I do think where he signs is tied closely to his value. And he's probably the one.

from that that bus column that doesn't have true bottom out potential he's one of the best line drive hitters in baseball he's going to hit 280 I think at least no matter where he goes but if it's 280 with 25 homers as opposed to you know 310 with 35 homers like he hit last year then that's you know he's probably more of a 10th round pick than the fifth round range where he's going right now the last one I wanted to mention was someone who was in my bus columns got he might have been in yours too Marcus simeon

9.8% barrel rate. An 18.4% home run to fly ball ratio for Semi in last year. That was about double where he was in 2020. And it was by far a career high. Even in 2019 when he was the top three MVP candidate with the Oakland A's, it was 15.3%. He was even better last year. All three parks that he hit in while playing with the Blue Jays were great hitters parks.

Obviously the American League East. He leaves that now. He goes over to Texas. bigger parks in general in the AL West. And yeah, look, the ADP just needs to come down, Scott. I think he's still going in the top three rounds. And he has to be discounted a similar way that Corey Seeger has been discounted to this point.

Yeah, I mean, even in Toronto, it said he overperformed pretty significantly, one of the biggest overperformers in baseball. And now he's going to a worse park, or worse division for hitters, much worse supporting cast. I mean, that alone could cost them 30 to 40 combined runs in RBI, I think. So, yeah, I see, and it goes without saying. I mean, he just had a career year, just hit more home runs than any other second baseman ever in a season.

But, you know, going beyond that, I see nothing but downside for Marcus Simeon. You heard it here first, Scott. There won't be much of a difference between Marcus Semyon or Francisco Lindor this upcoming season. In fact, Francisco Lindor could be even better than Marcus Semyon. Oh, he could. He could. It's a possibility. Can I name a few other hitters who I think are notable in terms of disappointing us in home runs last year.

And because of what I found in average eggs of velocity, I don't think we should be counting on a bounceback. Sure. Trent Grishon is a big one, 38th percentile average eggs of velocity for him. Michael Conforto might surprise. a lot of people. I know he's, I've seen him named a bounce back candidate

in a number of places, 35th percentile average exit velocity for him last year. And even in the year, he hit 33 home runs 2019. It was only 50th percentile exit velocity.

So he's, he's never been a guy who hits the ball especially hard. And by the way, neither does his teammate Dominic Smith. He's on this list as well. Jeff McNeil,

28th percentile, average exit velocity. Tray Mancini, 42nd, Cavend Vigio, 42nd. Cavend Bizio, I think is just done as a fantasy asset.

And one who's not on this list because the home run production wasn't underwhelming, exactly. It was okay. But he's done better in the past. And that's Chris Bryant. Do you know what percentile

Chris Bryant's average X-Evelocity was in? last year? Oh, I'll say 48. 29th percentile. Yuck. That's down there with like Jeff McNeil.

Not great. So again, I don't want to reduce this to single factor analysis and clearly it wasn't bad enough for, you know, Brian hit 25 home runs last year. Because of other aspects of his hitter profile,

he may still be capable of doing that. But it does, it does make me feel a little queasy. I'm counting on him as my third basement or outfielder. Yeah, I hear you, Scottie. All right, let's wrap up with a few email questions here. Fantasy Baseball at cbsi.com.

That's the letter I, and we will have a mailbag podcast coming out tomorrow as well. So continue to send in your questions or leave an Apple podcast review and drop a podcast rating and drop a question in the review. This one's from Seth. Curious for your thoughts on my keepers

in a five-by-five head. Head to head, 10-team Roto League. So that's a 10-team Categories League. We can keep five for up to five years. Salaries increase $5 each year. The first four keepers are obvious. Acuna, Otani, Sale, McClanahan. The last four options.

Eloy Jimenez at $9. Willie Adams at $6. Ozzy Albi's at $21 and Mitch Hanigar at $8. I'm debating Albies' well-rounded contributions versus Eloy's power and longer eligibility. has four more years, Albies has two. Okay. I would say

this is a 10 teamer, he said? Yep. Yeah, I think you just keep the best one if it's any kind of discount at all. And I would keep Albies because it's such a shallow league. You just want maximum impact at every position. All right, let's see.

Our salary cap values are live on the site as well. And Scott, you have Albies as a $29 player in Categories leagues. I have them at 31. So yeah, you're still getting a good discount there at $21 for Aussie Albies. This one's from Derek. I have to choose either Mike Trout or Bryce Harper for the next three years in a Keeper League. Same value, six by six, head-to-head categories, total bases and OBP instead of batting

average. I'm leaning towards Harper. Is that the right decision? I believe Harper is two years younger than my. Mike Trout? I don't know if that factors into your analysis here, Scottie. Not really. Harper is 29. I believe Trout is 30. Yeah, Trout turns 31 and

It doesn't really factor in when you're talking about only three years. And I mean, we both have Harper if we're talking one year, we both have Harper ranked ahead of trout, right? Yep. And if it's OBP instead of, I mean, Trout's a monster and OBP too. So I guess that doesn't make a difference. But yeah, I mean, I think at this point you got to lean Harper. Yeah. My man. Brycey Bryce. All right. I agree with you, Scott. Let's do it. This one's from Ben.

I am in a 12 team head-to-head points league and I get to have three keepers. There is no penalty for keeping players. After the season, the league will reset and all players will be eligible for drafting in 2023. Wondered who you would keep. Garrett Cole, Wander Franco, Lucas Gialito, JD Martinez, Carlos Correa, and Nelson Cruz. So you need to to keep three, Scott, for just this season. Well, I mean, if it's for just this season, I feel like you could just look at our rankings, right? Sure. That's the easy answer.

But I'm pretty sure my top three ranked from this list are Garrett Cole, Lucas Golito, and actually Wander Franco, even though you think of him more as a long-term option. Yeah, I'm with you. Those would be my top three ranked in head-to-head points this year. Last question's from Caleb. This is my first time emailing in,

so I hope I'm doing this right. are, Caleb. So we appreciate your email. In a dynasty Categories League in which I am rebuilding, should I trade Byron Buxton for Joe Musgrove and Trent Grisham? And he's rebuilding.

Well, you heard me just say Grisham, this new ball might be a problem for Grisham. What we saw from him last year might be a permanent situation for him. So I am not putting a lot of I'm not assigning much dynasty value to him.

Okay. And so if it becomes Byron Buxton and Joe Musgrove straight up, I mean, I think that's a pretty easy answer. You keep Buxton. And so that's my answer. We're going to wrap there for Scott. I am Frank. Thank you all for listening and watching fantasy baseball today.

We'll be back again tomorrow with a live mock draft stream and a Melbaig podcast. Bye-bye.