Finding Elite Skills: Bat Speed vs. Sprint Speed
Locating hitters with fantasy upside powered by a combination of bat speed and sprint speed
I do not allow my kids to say, “That’s not fair.” That phrase is banned in my house. Even before I had kids, I knew that I would make a special effort with my eventual kids to try my best to keep them out of that headspace. The idea that everything should be fair and that everybody should get the same thing. It sounds nice and all, but if you walk into the real world with that in mind, you’re screwed.
You’ll hear a kid say, “That’s not fair!” and then the parent says, “Life’s not fair.” And a lot of people think that’s a bad answer from the parent. But what other answer is there? That’s the perfect answer. People are all equal in the eternal value of their soul, God certainly does not view any person as inherently better than another, but that’s pretty much where equality ends.
Every person who makes it to the Major Leagues is really freaking good at baseball. It’s kind of funny when we say a professional athlete “stinks” or whatever word you want to use. These guys are all in the top 0.1% at what they do. That said, there is a wide range of what guys can do physically. Elly De La Cruz and Steven Kwan are not the same. It’s not fair!
That brings me to today’s analysis. I want to locate the league’s most talented players in two categories:
Bat Speed (strength)
Sprint Speed (speed)
And I want to find the guys that excel in both.
I’m mostly focused on category-based fantasy leagues on these pages, and I tailor my projections primarily to the five category leagues (R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG). That makes home runs and stolen bases 40% of the game, and when you factor in that RBI is highly correlated with HR, you probably get over 50% by just focusing on these two skills.
What you see every year in drafts is that the first round is full of guys who hit a lot of homers and steal a lot of bases. It’s no different this year.
I project just ten players for a 25-25 season. All of them are inside the top 30 in ADP. Nine of them are in the top 20, and six of them are in the top 15.
Players that can do both are extremely valuable in the fantasy game. Therefore, what we want to do here is to find the guys that you can find in the later rounds who can contribute in this same fashion.
I could do that based on projections, but it’s a bit more interesting to look at raw skills instead. Projections rely primarily on past production. If we look just at the skills, we will find plenty of players who have the physical ability to hit homers and steal bases but, for whatever reason, may not have put that all together yet. They could be a few tweaks away from having a huge breakout year in the fantasy game.
What I’ve done is taken two data points for all of the league’s players:
90th percentile bat speed
Max sprint speed
I put them all in an Excel sheet, and then I added two columns to find the percentile of both of those. In the case of bat speed, we have a percentile of a percentile. The reason for that is to get both attributes in the same easy-to-understand format. The data looks like this, here are your top bat speed players:
And your top sprint speeds:
So, we have data that can be easily filtered! As per the usual arrangement, I will share the link to the full data to paid subscribers after the paywall. But first, I will point out a bunch of names that stand out to me. We’ll start at the top and work our way down.
The Super Elite
90th Percentile or Better in Both
Three first round studs and then Garrett Mitchell and Rece Hinds. Very interesting stuff right off the bat, and it introduces a theme we will see. The primary reason a player could have these elite skills and not have already turned into a fantasy darling is the strikeout rate.
There is also playing time, and that is what is keeping Rece Hinds completely off the fantasy radar this year. His playing time is influenced by his strikeout problems, so it’s pretty much the same thing. I imagine if Hinds could manage a 25% K% in the Majors, he’d be in the lineup for the Reds every day. But with a minor league K% 38% last year, that’s just not going to happen.
I don’t recommend drafting Hinds. But the skills would justify an in-season add in the unlikely case that he vastly improves that strikeout rate and finds his way back into the Reds MLB lineup.
The most interesting name and poster boy for this post is Garrett Mitchell. He’s had a lot of trouble staying healthy, seeing just 108 total plate appearances (at all levels) in 2023 and then just 276 more last year. He has seen 364 total MLB plate appearances and has done this:
.261/.340/.457, 34% K%, 10.4% BB%, 13 HR, 20 SB
That’s a very concerning strikeout rate, but you can see the huge 20-35 pace there in the homers and steals. At the age of 26 and with a clean bill of health, I am going to be drafting him a ton with this ADP. If he can get that strikeout rate even to 28-29%, he’s a no-doubt starting outfielder in all fantasy leagues.
The Elite
85th Percentile or Better in Both
When we loosen up to 85, ten more names appear. I was surprised to find that Matt Chapman is this fast. He was not worth much at all in the fantasy game in 2023 with just 17 homers and four steals, but he added ten homers and 11 steals for the 2024 season and proved to be a very valuable late-round third baseman:
The speed has always been there, he just was not trying to steal bases. That changed last year as his attempt rate tripled. The cost has risen to match, but with an ADP that puts him in rounds 12-14 in most drafts, I’m into it. The floor is very solid, and the skills-based ceiling is higher than most people give him credit for.
The other four names:
Jo Adell: We have seen enough from Adell to know that it can’t happen. He has just a .218 batting average and a 31% K% in 936 MLB PAs since 2021.
Sam Hilliard: He’s a lot like Adell. He was a super interesting prospect when coming up Colorado’s system back in 2018-2019, but he was never able to hit enough to stay in anybody’s lineup. He went to Atlanta in 2023 and then ended up back with the Rockies last year, where he did go for a solid .812 OPS in 58 games (158 PA), but the strikeout rate was still at 35%. I doubt he will get playing time as a 31-year-old next season.
Luke Raley: Raley is a legitimate option for moderately deep fantasy leagues. He had a nice season last year with a .790 OPS, 22 homers, and 11 steals. The problem is that he’s a platoon bat. He will rarely face left-handed pitching, and that takes him off the table in a lot of leagues where you can’t change your lineup every day. In deeper leagues with daily roster changes, he’s very strong at cost.
Joey Ortiz: Ortiz hit very well in the early parts of 2024 with Milwaukee but sputtered down the stretch to a closing line of .239/.329/.398. He hit 11 homers and stole 11 bases in 511 PAs, so the skills didn’t bear out to what we’d be looking for. But as a young guy (26) with job security in the Brewers infield, he’s a worthwhile bet, given the skills we see here.
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