2024 MLB Outlier Data Points 2.0
Digging into outlier data points to spot potential buys and sells for fantasy baseball.
The “Two Point Oh” thing is so 90’s I love it. Reminds me of the “Dot Com” stuff. Man I love thinking about the early days of the Internet.
^ Many hours spent on those when I was a teenager.
Anyways, we’re back for another OUTLIERS post. I want to do these frequently, and I’d like to keep them brief. So let’s bust into a few more outlier data points.
Outlier #1: Bobby Witt Jr.’s Quality of Contact
Witt Jr. is outrageously talented. Some of these other standout names in bigger markets have overshadowed him a bit, but he’s a top five hitter in the game and I don’t think that’s in question any longer.
The start he’s off to this year, however, I would call unsustainable.
He currently sits with a 25% Brl%. Since 2021, there have been only seven hitter seasons with a barrel rate above 20% (with 400+ PAs):
Aaron Judge 2023: 27.5%
Aaron Judge 2022: 26.5%
Shohei Ohtani 2021: 22.3%
Fernando Tatis 2021: 21.3%
Yordan Alvarez 2022: 21.0%
Bobby Dalbec 2021: 20.2%
Kyle Schwarber 2022: 20.1%
Those are some big boys, and most of those seasons came with below-average strikeout rates (meaning higher K%). Witt Jr. does not strike out much (career 19.5%), and that’s nothing but a good thing - but it does tell you that he is not a hitter going up there selling out for power in the way that some of these other super high barrel rate hitters are.
I’m not saying he definitely can’t keep a barrel rate above 20% for the year, it’s possible, but I would call that a sub-25% probability.
He’s also currently averaging a ridiculous 97.5mph of average exit velocity.
To put that in perspective, only Aaron Judge exceeded 95mph last year. So it’s possible, but Bobby Witt Jr. at 6’1’’ is no Aaron Judge. You just aren’t going to get that high of an average EV from a guy that isn’t a physical giant.
Why do I even point this out? I’m actually not sure, I guess I just wanted to show those plots. Witt Jr. was #2 off the board in drafts this year, and if we were drafting again today he might just be #1 given Acuna’s early-season struggles. So that means there’s no actionable advice on Witt Jr., other than for me just to tell you that this guy is not hitting 50 homers this year or anything Judge-like, and my prediction would be for the barrel rate to fall toward 15% as the season progresses. Still an elite fantasy player, but a bit of an overly-hot start to the 2024 for Witt Jr.
Outlier #2: Dylan Cease’s BABIP (and ERA)
Your BABIP leaders after four starts:
Cease .176
Crawford .180
Sears .203
Gilbert .206
Javier .215
Last year, Cease’s BABIP was at .333. That’s a bit high, but within the range of expected outcomes. He is a fly-ball pitcher (27% last year, 33% this year), which is good for BABIP since most fly balls get caught, but it’s not good for home runs allowed.
Cease has allowed six barrels and just one homer so far, that’s an outlier mark as well. You expect about 50% of your barrels allowed to go for homers, so you could say he’s been fortunate there as well. He sits with a 3.82 SIERA and a 1.99 ERA, so yes, it’s been a lucky start.
The other important note here is that Cease’s command has been worse than last year so far:
2023: 38.2% Ball%, 9.7% BB%
2024: 39.3% Ball%, 12.2% BB%
It’s a four-star sample, so these numbers can move a ton in a week, but you’re basically getting a worse Cease right now with a sparkling ERA. Given that he was very unlucky last year, some people might buy more into the great ERA cause they kind of just threw out last season altogether.
So my advice would be here to be willing to sell high on Cease. He’s been up-and-down in his career, which is common of any pitcher with bad command. There will be some great outings, but there will be some very bad ones as well. So far, you haven’t had a bad one, so now would be the time to shop around to see if you can find a buyer who might be a little bit too excited about Cease on his new team.
Outlier #3: Power Outages: Tellez/Polanco/Neto
Diving into the PLAYER CHECKLIST resource here for this one!
I was interested to see what hitters had the two components of high barrel rates without the actual barrel rates. The two components of a barrel:
Hitting the ball in the air
Hitting that ball hard
So my player check list covers that by highlighting hitters with low ground ball rates and hitters that are hitting their fly balls hard. These three names earned checks in both of those categories but came up short in barrels.
For reference, there are 33 hitters with “Ground Balls?” and “FB Velo?” checked, and just three of them don’t also have the barrel rate box checked. Looking to last year, there were 51 hitters with the first two checked, and just TWO didn’t get the barrel check (Josh Naylor, Martin Maldonado).
The stats:
Zach Neto:
45% GB%, 107.8mph 90th FB Velo, 5.3% Brl%Jorge Polanco:
38% GB%, 106.6mph 90th FB Velo, 8.1% Brl%Rowdy Tellez:
33% GB%, 106.6mph 90th FB Velo, 6.1% Brl%
The league average 90th percentile fly ball exit velocity is about 104.3. All of these guys are well above that while hitting a good number of fly balls, and yet they are all below the league average in Brl% and have just four homers collectively (3 for Polanco, 1 for Rowdy, 0 for Neto).
There should be some more bombs coming from that trio of hitters if they keep this up (and these numbers stabilize quite quickly).
And that does it for Outliers TWO POINT OH! Thanks for reading, this post will remain free all year long.