“If there weren’t luck involved, I’d win ’em all” – Phil Helmuth
The great thing about fantasy sports is that when you win, you can always attribute your wins to your own brilliance and skill. And when you lose, the handy crutch of blaming it on luck is always right there for you.
Major League Baseball players also have this crutch to fall back on. However, in these days of advanced analytics, it is much easier to judge where the luck actually lies. In this post, we will be examining numerous categories that give us an idea about who was lucky and may be overvalued in 2021 because of it. Let’s get to it.
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Expected Batting Average (xBA)
If you aren’t familiar with expected batting average, you can check out the explanation of the statistic in our Sabermetrics Glossary here. Batting average is one of the most random categories in the game. This has to do with the limited control a hitter has after the ball is put in play. Poorly struck balls can go for hits, while well-struck balls can go right at a fielder for an out. xBA gives us an idea of what each hitter’s batting average should have been based on the launch angles and launch velocities they produced.