Hi Folks,
Welcome to the start of our 2024 Fantasy Baseball Season! With a full year of data on the Shift Ban, Pitch Clock, and Size of Bags (base path distance)....pitchers will need to make an adjustment, as league wide ERAs increased by 4/10th of a full run in 2023.
As I have written in the past, the art of MLB player projections continues to evolve. With the advances in data collection, there are new indicators introduced every season which aid us in breaking down a player's core skill/ability. Indicators that measure batted ball speed, quality of contact, and location are helping us refine our projections model into unprecedented territory. Indicators such as HR/FB rates are no longer looked at as universal or blanket rates. Each hitter has a unique ability to control and command these rates, and we're finding that the determining factors are more eloquent than just simply batted ball speed. Directional tendencies are now charted and those with a higher pull% tend to compensate for lower batted ball speeds, while those with higher opposite field ability tend to command a higher BABIP. Our batter projections model separates each projected plate appearance into one of three categories: ground balls, fly balls, and line drives. From there, indicators such as: quality of contact, speed, home park factors, and direction of contact help us ascertain the likely outcome of a player's batted balls. Needless to say, I'm excited about the correlation relationship that we're seeing in our baseball forecasting model.
Below are some of the screenshots of Player Projections | Draft Advisor program:
Whether you are utilizing our player projections software to produce customized cheat sheets, research player historical trends, as a live draft advisor, or as a Mock Draft tool, the 2024 version is wired for your fantasy championship quest. Once again, back this year will be all of the essential season services including our Minor League Prospect Central, Analysis & Press News, Player Production Charting, Player Recommendations, Player Tracker, online fantasy databases, 14 day pitching rotations, and our weekly lineup submission aid.
Over the coming days we're going bring you a different perspective served up by some of the best analysts in the business. If you are new to us, please be sure to sign up for our free player projections newsletter. The end game is of course providing you with a competitive season, and we hope that you'll start it with what we believe is our best product to date. Stacking the odds in your favor from draft day, round by round, to season's end. Click here to register for 2024.
Fantistics Draft Advisory Software
Helping you win your Fantasy Baseball League in 2024
New For 2024 in the Fantistics Draft Advisor: We've added a few more Sabermetric indicators to the Fantistics Fantasy Advisor this season. Categories which we consider to be some of the best indicators in explaining a player's performance.
Hitters:
Velocity (Velo): Expressed in MPH, Average batted ball speed off a hitter's bat. League average for top 200 hitters is 89.1 MPH
Contact% (Cont%): Percentage of balls that where hit (fair or foul) verses missed. League average for top 200 hitters is 78%
Barrel% (BRL%): Batted balls that have a superior combination of Batted ball speed and launch angle. Defined by Statcast as having led to a minimum .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage since Statcast was implemented Major League wide in 2015. League average for top 200 hitters is 8.4%.
Elevation (Elev): Average Launch Angle of batted balls. Helps identify groundball hitters, who could benefit from a lift in swing. League average for top 200 hitters is 12.6%.
HardHit% (Hard%): batted balls with an exit velocity greater than 95MPH divided by total balls hit in play. League average for top 200 hitters is 40.2%. Also expressed in Percentile.
Contact% (Cont%): batted balls contacted divided by total swings. League average for top 200 hitters is 78%.
Pitchers:
Velocity (Velo): Expressed in MPH, Average speed of fastball. League average for top 120 pitchers is 93.6 MPH.
GB%: Groundball rates thrown by pitcher. For some pitchers, groundballs are considered fundamental in keeping a pitcher's ERA respectable and predictable. League average for top 120 pitchers is 42%.
SwStr%: Swinging Strike Rate. Percentage of balls thrown that a batter swung and missed. A sign of dominance. League average for top 120 pitchers is 11.1%. Also expressed in Percentile.
BB/9: Walk Per 9. Along with SwStr% and GB%, Walks per 9 is one of the three tenants that we use to quickly measure success for pitchers. Pitchers who keep walk rates below league average typically have an ERA which is below league average. League average for top 120 pitchers is 2.9%.
Catch the Fantistics Insider Baseball Radio Show on Sirius XM 87/210 weekends from 11am to 1pm ET, as hosts Lou Blasi, Schuyler Dombroske, Brandon Kamerman, and Anthony Perri help you navigate the waters as you head into your Fantasy Baseball Drafts.
Also catch the latest Fantistics Baseball Podcast (The Three Pillars of Starting Pitcher Success) on Apple, Spotify, and Google Play
