Those who read my first article will hopefully remember that I did a deep dive into the merits of wOBA and xwOBA while attempting to illustrate how they can be used together to help identify underperforming hitters.
As great as it is to have two stats that can give you a quick snapshot view of every hitter’s effectiveness and expected effectiveness, after tracking both wOBA and xwOBA for long enough you’ll likely notice a couple important trends:
First, sample size matters. Major leaguers are capable of seemingly improbable feats over short periods of time. There are periods when they hit the ball harder than usual and when the ball falls into play more often than usual or into the stands more often than usual. There is a lot of randomness in baseball, and over short periods of time statistics can be a bit “noisy” or distorted by random, unsustainable events.
Consequently, some players with noticeable disparities between wOBA and xwOBA tend to normalize over time. I remember writing a Reddit post earlier this season where I noted that Ty France, who was struggling at the time, had a Statcast page that “looked redder than Rudolph’s nose.” He had a .385 xwOBA and an Exit Velocity over 93 MPH, both of which are in the range of some of the game’s best hitters. Everything about France screamed unlucky and breakout.
But the breakout never came and even the offense-starved Mariners eventually cut him loose.
What happened to France? Why didn’t he break out?
I honestly don’t know, but he currently has an xwOBA of .308 and his EV has imploded below 88 MPH.
What I’m getting at here is that this game, and the statistics that measure it, are not an exact science. There is no perfect statistic and frankly, nobody has ever claimed there is. Even the best, most objective statistics can’t shine a light on everything that happens in the 2,430 games and 43,740 innings played in a baseball season.
That’s honestly not a bad thing. It’s actually what makes player analysis fascinating and fantasy baseball fun and often unpredictable.
If all we had to do was look at one statistic to evaluate, understand, and predict player outcomes, fantasy baseball would be dead and you would actually have to focus on doing real work at the office for a change.
Now, for all you anti-analytics people out there, this isn’t a mea culpa or a retreat from my first column. It’s an acknowledgment of the following truths about baseball:
Truth #1: Never pitch to Aaron Judge in a close game.
Truth #2: Never pitch to Aaron Judge in any game.
Truth #3: Aaron Judge is Keyser Söze.
Wait, those aren’t the points I’m trying to make.
Here it is: The one undeniable truth in baseball is that nothing is ever 100% certain in this game, except you don’t pitch to Aaron #$%^#@ Judge and live to tell about it.
That actually is true.
More to the point, what I’m really trying to say is nothing in this game is ever 100% certain. Not the Dodgers running away with the World Series this year like everyone expected, or the A’s breaking the record for most losses which everyone expected, or so many improbable things that have happened just this season alone.
So, if no one stat is perfect, and nothing is certain, what are we doing here?
Well, you’re probably here for the same reason I’m here: because you want to go deeper down the statistics rabbit hole. You want the red pill. You want answers to life’s great questions, like is that obscure 19-year-old in A Ball who is only known by his parents worthy of a spot on your dynasty team?
Well, I’m not the Oracle, and as much as I wish I was, I’m not Morpheus either.
However, I do use tools that can help me (and you) get as close to the answers as humanly possible, which is better than relying on blind luck or the eye test which has fooled the baseball masses for decades.
That brings me to the real focus of today’s article: moving beyond the assumption that any one or two statistics can unlock all the answers in baseball and digging deeper into the stat pile to try to uncover promising players who maybe, just maybe, could be on the verge of breaking out.
So, without further ado, here are 5 promising hitters with interesting stat profiles, beyond just looking at wOBA and wxOBA disparities:
Deeper Down the Statistics Rabbit Hole: 5 Promising Hitters With Interesting Stat Profiles
Player #1: Gabriel Moreno, Arizona Diamondbacks (C)
I think Moreno is going to be a star. I’m fully convinced of that. Not a 40 HR slugger type of star. Not necessarily even a fantasy star. He’s not that kind of hitter. I’m talking about a real-life baseball star, who also happens to have considerable fantasy value.
You might not know it yet, because Moreno hasn’t put up big numbers. However, Moreno does almost everything you want a great hitter to do.
Moreno has an incredible approach, makes a lot of contact, and he hits the ball hard. If you remember my last column, those are the three attributes of nearly all great hitters.
You’ll notice that I’ll continue to come back to those three traits in this column and future columns as well. Nearly all statistics I provide reinforce those skills.
Just take a look at his Statcast page from Baseball Savant and you’ll see a lot to like there.
Again, incredible approach. Moreno this season has a 10.8% BB rate to 14.3% SO rate, both excellent.
He’s among the league’s best at making consistent contact with a 6.6 Swing-Strike %, 90.2 Zone Contact %.
And he hits the ball reasonably hard, with a 90.4 Exit Velocity. You’ll see on his Statcast page that his Average Exit Velocity and Hard-Hit % are both above average. Moreno has more power than you would think, especially if you’re judging by his home run totals.
Just how great Moreno ends up being will come likely down to two factors:
1) Can he hit the ball with more authority? He’s already squaring up the ball nicely as we can see from his Statcast data and his EV is above average. But he’s not a big power guy and that’s one of the reasons why his HR totals have been so underwhelming. We see this in his modest Barrel Rate too. Barrels and Barrel Rate a better indicator of power than Exit Velocity.
2) He needs to lift the ball more. His launch angle is just shy of 10%, which isn’t terrible, but more barrels at a higher angle would significantly boost his HR rate and power output, allowing him to fulfill his promise as one of the best hitting catchers in baseball.
Will he get there? Time will tell. He’s still young enough to add power. Honestly, if he could just get himself to a place where he is hitting 12-15+ HR a season, the rest of the package is compelling enough to make him one of the better options at the catcher position in fantasy baseball, and one of the better players in baseball.
Player #2: Tyler Soderstrom, Oakland A’s (C/1B)
Soderstrom is another one of my favorite up and coming young players and prior to getting injured he seemed to be on the verge of breaking out.
He was hitting the ball harder: His Exit Velocity was 92.7 MPH, up from 89.3 MPH in his disastrous 2023 big league debut and his Barrel Rate is 14.7% up from 6% in 2023.
He was swinging and missing less: His swing-strike rate was down to 14.5% percent and was continuing to trend down prior to his injury.
And he was chasing pitches outside of the zone less frequently: he had an improved outside of the zone swing rate (O-Swing%) of 28.4.
Some of these improvements appear to be small and incremental, but the better contact quality coupled with better contact and swing decisions makes him one of the more intriguing young players in baseball.
He still struggles with off-speed pitches and with only 304 career plate appearances, we are very much in small sample size territory here. But there’s a lot to like about Soderstrom. If you’re in a dynasty league and you want a player with prospect pedigree, big power, and a chance to be special, all at a price tag well below most top 100 prospects, Soderstrom is as good of an investment as any in my view. He just needs to continue to progress as he was prior to injury.
Player #3: Ben Rice, New York Yankees (C/1B)
I love Ben Rice. He was near the top of my wOBA vs. xwOBA disparities leaderboard in my post a week ago (.375 xwOBA vs. .310 wOBA) and he barrels the crap out of the ball at an insane rate of 19.3 Barrels/Batted Ball Events. That’s good for 4th in all of baseball among players with at least 50 batted ball events, behind only Aaron Judge, Shohei Othani, and Juan Soto.
Yes, you read that correctly. Aaron Judge, Shohei Othani, Juan Soto, and then Ben Rice. He is CRUSHING the ball.
From Baseball Savant:
Now, it’s important to remember that we’re still in very small sample size range AND Rice is mainly taking at bats against RHP, as the Yankees have been using him sparingly against LHP. Any time you optimize a player to their strengths and limit their exposure to more vulnerable areas of their skill set, you are likely to get misleading results that exaggerate a player’s ability on a rate basis. In Rice’s case, it is fair to assume his batted ball data would take a sizable hit if he played every day against both RHP and LHP.
However, it’s too soon to give up on Rice against LHP. He doesn’t appear to be too overmatched by them given the fact he has a lower strikeout rate and higher walk rate against them. But he hasn’t hit for much power against lefties to this point (again, small sample size) and until the Yankees give him a chance to face them regularly we won’t have a clear picture of his full potential.
He’s also still quite young and inexperienced, so he has time to grow in this area.
What this all translates to is an incredibly compelling young player with loads of offensive potential. Will he reach his ceiling, hit lefties, and become one of the game’s elite hitters? I’m pretty conservative in nature, so I wouldn’t bet on him being the next great Yankee slugger. But I do think he has a chance to be really, really good, and I’ve put my money where my mouth is by recently trading for him in one of my 30 team dynasty leagues. I’m all in.
Player #4: Austin Wells, New York Yankees (C)
I’m going to present to you with two different player profiles, both catchers:
- Player A: .330 wOBA, .354 xwOBA, 88.8 EV, 8.2 Barrel%, 29.4 O-Swing, 11.8 SwStr%
- Player B: .328 wOBA, .333 xwOBA, 88.8 EV, 7.7 Barrel%, 30.5 O-Swing, 7.3 SwStr%
Player A is Austin Wells. Can you guess Player B? No, it’s not Aaron Judge. Actually, it’s Adley Rutschman. Yes, the same Adley Rutschman someone likely spent a 3rd or 4th round pick on in your draft this past winter.
It’s pretty wild how similar the metrics are for these two, and you might not know it but Adley is actually a year and a half older than Wells.
Wells lept onto my radar early this season for the same reason many other players do. It was early but he was putting up really nice batted ball rates and demonstrating an excellent approach, with a well above average walk rate and a modest strikeout rate to boot. But he was struggling, and I was dumb for not taking a chance and making a trade for him.
Here are Wells’ wOBA by month this season:
Mar/April – .292
May – .237
June – .335
July – .397
August – .414
Clearly I screwed up. Royally.
Unlike his teammate Ben Rice, Wells does not have a split against LHP (or RHP). I was asked very recently on Reddit who I prefer between Wells and Rice. I chose Rice, but I may be reconsidering that one. I certainly think Wells is the safer bet to be a productive everyday player in the big leagues and a solid option at catcher in fantasy leagues for a very long time.
Player #5: Christopher Morel, Tampa Bay Rays, (3B/DH)
Morel burst onto the scene last season after tearing up AAA pitching and showed a lot of promise as a high strike out, low batting average power hitter. Unfortunately for Morel, Cubs fans, and fantasy managers, he has had a bit of a stinker sophomore season — It’s August and he’s currently batting .197 with a .303 wOBA. We expected low average but not THAT low.
Interestingly enough, the low average has come despite significant improvements in the contact skills department. His strikeout and swing-strike percentages are both down considerably and yet so is his batting average.
So what gives?
Morel seems to have traded a bit of power for less swing and miss, as his Exit Velocity and Barrel Rates have declined from his rookie season. But they’re still quite good. His 89.6 Exit Velocity and 12.2 Barrel Rate are still comfortably in the range of a hitter who does damage to baseballs, and the improved strikeout rate should result in a higher average, not lower. This is not the profile of a .198 hitter.
I attribute a lot of Morel’s struggles to just poor luck. Morel has a .216 BABIP despite strong batted ball data and now respectable swing-strike rates that should have closer to league average (.300 BABIP) in that area. He’s definitely an extreme fly ball hitter, which can result in lower BABIP rates, but nothing like this. Nobody is a .216 BABIP hitter. Not even me, because I wouldn’t make enough contact to even register a BABIP.
I’m not sure when Morel will snap out of this funk, but I’m fairly certain he will. I also think there’s a chance we see a major regression from the player he was dealt for, Isaac Paredes. That’s why that deal was my favorite of the trade deadline. The Rays placed two big bets — Morel will improve, and Paredes will regress. They typically come out on the winning end of those types of trades. Time will tell, but the data is on his side.
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Which of these players with interesting stat profiles do you like the most? Who would you have included that I did not list here? Comment below and I’ll do my best to respond with my own thoughts.
