Examining Statistical Scarcity in 2024 Fantasy Baseball Drafts
Investigating each standard roto category, looking at where those stats are concentrated in the draft and giving you tips on how to catch up in each category later on in the draft.
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We have already talked about position scarcity, and continue to do so during the position preview series. That is very important stuff to know before your draft. What’s also good to know is about statistical scarcity, so that’s what we’re covering today.
What Is Statistical Scarcity
What I mean by that is knowing where certain stats are located. Where they are concentrated, where they dry up, and where you can catch up late in the draft if you’re behind.
So we’re focused on standard leagues here, meaning:
R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG
Let’s go category by category and talk about each. We’ll group this by ROUND (ADP 1-12=Round 1, ADP 13-24=Round 2, Etc.), and also hitter group (Group1 = Hitters by ADP 1-20, Group2 = Hitters by ADP 20-40, etc.). That will all be more clear as we move forward.
Runs Scored
Our first graphic for each stat will be “average hitter projected ___ by round”. I grouped each hitter into their round, using as 12-team league. So all the hitters in the top 12 ADP around round. I take their average run projection (using my own system and The Bat X), and then show that data by round.
So first-round hitters average 106 projected runs. That’s by far the most, which will be a common thing in the first round.
It’s a pretty steady decline after the first round, with some up-and-downs. Round 8, for example, goes above round seven because Kyle Schwarber is there as well as Christian Yelich and Bryan Reynolds. Three solid top-of-the-lineup hitters there.
Looking at it while grouping by twenties:
So the first 20 hitters sum up to 2,022 runs scored, and then the next 20 sum to 1,728. Steady decline the whole way down there.
This isn’t super useful yet, but here are some late-round guys to help you catch up in runs if you’re short there in the middle of the draft:
Player Name | ADP | Projected Runs
Brandon Nimmo | 195 | 87
Ketel Marte | 121 | 86
Yandy Diaz | 135 | 85
George Springer | 121 | 84
Dansby Swanson | 132 | 82
Teoscar Hernandez | 146 | 82
Xander Bogaerts | 116 | 81
Ezequiel Tovar | 196 | 80
Jorge Soler | 156 | 80
Anthony Santander | 147 | 79
Others (later):
Steven Kwan, Nathaniel Lowe, Riley Greene, Jarren Duran, J.P. Crawford
Home Runs
We are once again quite top-heavy at home runs, but plenty of long balls do slide into the second round this year. Ohtani, Olson, Harper, Alvarez, Seager, and Riley are all in that second round, so it’s a pretty great spot to buy some bombs.
When we group by 20 hitters instead of two rounds, a pretty high percentage of the home runs available are in that first group:
The elite hitters separate themselves from the pack more than the elite pitchers. We’ll see this same kind of thing happening with steals in a minute, and for that reason - I really want to start every draft with at least two hitters. Get a big steals source and a big homers source with your first two picks. You could do that with two HR+SB guys rather than one of each, but I would say your target should be to have 50 projected HR+SB with your first two picks. Some ideas:
Corbin Carroll + Austin Riley
This gets you 58 projected homers and 44 projected stealsTrea Turner + Matt Olson
This get you 61 projected homers and 31 projected stealsBobby Witt Jr. + Corey Seager
This get you 63 projected homers 44 projected steals
Or you could just get Ronald Acuna Jr. and be good to go on that no matter what you do in the second round. He’s a real cheat code this year. If you take Acuna at #1, I would almost surely be taking an SP with your second or third pick.
Later Round Targets:
Player Name | ADP | Projected Runs
Jorge Soler | 156 | 32
Marcell Ozuna | 160 | 29
Anthony Santander | 147
Teoscar Hernandez | 146
Jake Burger | 158 | 28
Willy Adames | 189 | 28
Matt Chapman | 273 | 28
Rhys Hoskins | 205 | 27
Giancarlo Stanton | 302 | 26
Max Muncy | 170 | 26
Others (later):
Christopher Morel, Nolan Gorman, Eugenio Suarez, Jorge Polanco, Byron Buxton
RBI
RBIs almost always mirrors homers, since those two stats are highly correlated.
Later Round Targets:
Player Name | ADP | Projected Runs
Nick Castellanos | 110 | 90
Willy Adames | 188 | 89
Anthony Santander | 147 | 88
Jake Burger | 158 | 88
Teoscar Hernandez | 146 | 87
Spencer Torkelson | 122 | 85
Marcell Ozuna | 160 | 95
Jorge Soler | 156 | 85
Dansby Swanson | 132 | 84
Josh Jung | 110 | 84
Others (later):
Rhys Hoskins, Eugenio Suarez, Vinnie Pasquantino, Jose Abreu, Carlos Correa, Jeimer Candelario, Andrew Vaughn, Nathaniel Lowe
Stolen Bases
Steals blew up last year, the league stole 40% more bases. That doesn’t mean much for fantasy purposes, however, because we have to beat our opponents, whose teams are also stealing more bases. You can see that round one is far and away the top round for steals, so I would be pretty interested in getting one of those guys.
Most of those are with Acuna (51), Witt Jr. (42), and Carroll (41), but J-Rod (30), Turner (29), Tatis (28), and Tucker (24) all project well in steals to boot.
So my priority is to get one of those bats in the first round, and then a big power bat in the second.
Later round targets:
Player Name | ADP | Projected SB
Esteury Ruiz | 121 | 47
Jarren Duran | 178 | 28
Tommy Edman | 166 | 27
Andres Gimenez | 114 | 25
Cedric Mullins | 147 | 25
Starling Marte | 229 | 25
Thairo Estrada | 143 | 23
Brice Turang | 323 | 23
Anthony Volpe | 134 | 23
TJ Friedl | 156 | 22
Others:
Willi Castro, Jose Siri, Trevor Story, Maikel Garcia, Jake Fraley, Whit Merrifield, Will Benson
As I wrote in the Athletics preview, I wouldn’t hitch my wagon to Ruiz on steals. There’s a chance he could lose his job (he’s not a very good real-life player), and if you are depending on him to get you 50 steals to keep your team afloat, that feels like too many eggs in one basket. I would rather fill in with Duran + Estrada + Friedl types in the mid rounds as long as I’m getting several big power bats around them.
Batting Average
More of the same here with the batting average loaded up in the first round. After the first few rounds, we have a lot less batting average to go after.
With batting average, more than other categories, we find very good projections later in the draft. As a general strategy, I don’t recommend drafting a Luis Arraez type where you’re only getting positive value from them in batting average. Batting average can be pretty fickle (as evidenced by Arraez batting just .236 in August), so if you’re depending on Arraez to hit .320 and he only hits .280, which is not unlikely at all, you’re in big trouble since he’s tanking you everywhere else. I don’t like to take one-category players, although at some point you often have no choice.
There is merit to combining specialists. You can pair Kyle Schwarber with Luis Arraez and end up with something like a .270 batting average with 48 homers, 176 runs, and 159 or so RBI. Those two pair nicely together, and there are many other combinations like them.
The key point is understanding where you’re at while you’re building your team. You should be keeping track of how your team projects in each category. If you ever find yourself dead last in the league in batting average, then maybe you take Arraez. If you’re at the bottom in homers, reach ahead a little bit for a Jorge Soler or Anthony Santander type, and so on and so far.
Later round targets:
Player Name | ADP | Projected AVG
Luis Arraez | 164 | .307
Yandy Diaz | 135 | .290
Jung Hoo Lee | 256 | .285
Masataka Yoshida | 177 | .282
Brendan Rodgers | 354 | .281
Vaughn Grissom | 292 | .279
Vinnie Pasquantino | 169 | .277
Gabriel Moreno | 149 | .276
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. | 227 | .276
Josh Naylor | 136 | .272
Others:
Amed Rosario, Brendan Donovan, Jeff McNeil, Steven Kwan
Pitchers
It’s way tougher to project pitchers than hitters, so I don’t really want to study too much here. As I’ve said before, I depend much more on my own analysis than projections on the pitcher front. Pitchers change year-to-year more than hitters, and there is a lot more randomness in the game since we’re mostly trying to accrue ERA and WHIP.
Injuries are more common here as well, and no pitcher is safe. Throwing a baseball as hard as you can while trying to spin it as fast as you can and doing that thousands of times a year isn’t a recipe for your body staying in working shape for long, but somehow - some guys manage to do it!
Innings
Nobody would argue that Gerrit Cole is no more likely to throw 200 innings than Tyler Glasnow this year, for example, and the projections do have some insight into that. So let’s take a look at projected workloads.
We’ll skip grouping by round here, because pitcher ADP is pretty variable draft-to-draft. Let’s just group by tens.
So the first ten SPs off the board by ADP average 174 projected innings. The second group isn’t far behind at 172. After that, things get much more shaky. Once you’re outside of the top 40 SPs, you’re under 160 projected innings.
If you haven’t adjusted your mindset on expected innings over the last few years, it’s time to do that. We should no longer be wanting 200 innings from our aces. While that’s great, it’s not realistic. Only a handful of guys will do that this year, so nowadays, we’re calling 175-180 innings a full season.
Some later round names projected for big workloads:
Player Name | ADP | Projected IP
Chris Bassitt | 139 | 181
Mitch Keller | 168 | 181
Dylan Cease | 107 | 178
Jordan Montgomery | 140 | 173
Merrill Kelly | 150 | 173
Shane Bieber | 176 | 173
Lucas Giolito | 314 | 172
Jose Berrios | 170 | 170
Lance Lynn | 303 | 169
Eduardo Rodriguez | 188 | 168
Others (later):
Reid Detmers, Dean Kremer, Brayan Bello, Charlie Morton, Jon Gray, Marcus Stroman, Ranger Suarez, Yusei Kikuchi, Seth Lugo
Strikeouts
This look a lot like the innings pitched plot, because the most important predictor of raw strikeouts is innings pitched.
Some later round names to draft for raw strikeouts:
Player Name | ADP | Projected SO
Dylan Cease | 107 | 200
Jesus Luzardo | 84 | 193
Hunter Greene | 136 | 189
Joe Ryan | 93 | 186
Carlos Rodon | 170 | 179
Nick Pivetta | 183 | 177
Reid Detmers | 239 | 175
Lucas Giolito | 214 | 174
Charlie Morton | 234 | 172
Mitch Keller | 168 | 171
Others (deeper):
MacKenzie Gore, Lance Lynn, Eduardo Rodriguez, Hunter Brown, Yu Darvish, Jon Gray
Some deeper league K/9 league targets:
Hunter Greene
Chris Sale
Carlos Rodon
Dylan Cease
Nick Pivetta
Charlie Morton
Kyle Harrison
Andrew Abbott
Edward Cabrera
Reid Detmers
ERA
I don’t even really want to get into this, because ERA is so tough to project.
It also basically perfectly follows ADP, you can see a steady increase in the height of each bar there. Quickly, here are some late-round SPs that project decently in ERA:
Chris Sale
Joe Musgrove
Sonny Gray
Michael King
Hunter Brown
Shane Bieber
Carlos Rodon
Bryan Woo
Tanner Bibee
Taj Bradley
WHIP
Same thing with WHIP here:
Here are those later-round targets, I’ve gotta wrap this bad boy up!
Joe Musgrove
Chris Sale
Justin Verlander
Carlos Rodon
Bailey Ober
Nestor Cortes
Yu Darvish
Tanner Bibee
Shane Bieber
Taj Bradley
So there you go. Not my most well-done work, but a lot of names to jot down before your draft if you’re focused on filling each standard category.
How do you track your team projections as you are doing a draft?