Statcast data has become increasingly popular with the real and fantasy baseball communities in recent years.
Fantasy managers should familiarize themselves with terms like exit velocity, barrel rate, hard-hit rate, and launch angle to stay on top of trends and identify areas of strength and weakness for their players, just as managers of MLB teams do.
The information below looks into several of these Statcast metrics for batters to help guide fantasy managers moving forward.
Aaron Judge (OF – NYY) 23% barrel rate
According to MLB.com, to barrel a ball means the ball’s exit velocity is, at minimum, 98 MPH and the launch angle is between 26 and 30 degrees. If a ball is hit any harder, the range of launch angles to qualify it as a barrel becomes wider.
Additionally, a barrel means that the hit results in at least a .500 batting average and 1.500 SLG, making it all the more impressive that Aaron Judge has done this 23% of the time. For perspective, the average barrel rate in baseball as of April 27 is 7.7%.
Statcast data has become increasingly popular with the real and fantasy baseball communities in recent years.
Fantasy managers should familiarize themselves with terms like exit velocity, barrel rate, hard-hit rate, and launch angle to stay on top of trends and identify areas of strength and weakness for their players, just as managers of MLB teams do.
The information below looks into several of these Statcast metrics for batters to help guide fantasy managers moving forward.
Aaron Judge (OF – NYY) 23% barrel rate
According to MLB.com, to barrel a ball means the ball’s exit velocity is, at minimum, 98 MPH and the launch angle is between 26 and 30 degrees. If a ball is hit any harder, the range of launch angles to qualify it as a barrel becomes wider.
Additionally, a barrel means that the hit results in at least a .500 batting average and 1.500 SLG, making it all the more impressive that Aaron Judge has done this 23% of the time. For perspective, the average barrel rate in baseball as of April 27 is 7.7%.
Only two players finished the 2021 season with a barrel rate above 20% – Shohei Ohtani and Fernando Tatis Jr. Six players in 2022 have a barrel rate above 20%, including Judge, Mike Trout, Seiya Suzuki, Giancarlo Stanton, Joey Gallo and Ji-Man Choi.
However, only Judge is top six in barrel rate, average exit velocity, and hard-hit rate (he is actually top three in all of those stats, is the only player in the top three of those stats, and is top 10 in max exit velocity as well).
This data is vital because hard contact is a rare commodity, especially in a player who also hits for average. Only 15 players besides Judge finished 2021 with above-average barrel and hard-hit rates and matched or exceeded his .287 batting average. There are 16 players who fit those parameters this season. Notably, Judge is not on this list because his batting average is .274, although his xBA is .320.
This list will likely narrow as the season goes on, making Judge’s combination of hard contact and batting average more critical.
Rowdy Tellez (MIL – 1B) xBA .303
Tellez is the lefty half of a platoon with Keston Hiura in Milwaukee, and despite a .218 batting average, he has a .303 xBA. That difference is the seventh-largest in baseball behind Jesse Winker (140 point difference), Kyle Tucker and Carlos Santana (126), Whit Merrifield (103), Nelson Cruz (99), Trey Mancini (98), and Miguel Sano (91).
Only Sano and Mancini have hard-hit rates higher than Tellez’s 45.5% out of those players. Only Sano, Santana, and Mancini have an average exit velocity higher than Tellez’s 90.9 MPH. However, Tellez has the best barrel rate of the bunch at 15.9% and has a superior 114.2 maxEV.
By looking under the surface, it is easy to see why Tellez’s hard contact is not turning into a high batting average. Even though he improved his strikeout rate from last year, maintained a 78% contact rate, and largely avoided hitting into the shift, his BABIP is a measly .220.
His 47.7% fly-ball rate has only resulted in three home runs. That is a 14.3% HR/FB rate, four percent lower than his career average.
Tellez is prime for a boost to both power and batting average and would be an excellent speculative add, especially for daily leagues.
Mike Trout (OF – LAA) .886 xSLG
Slugging percentage measures a batter’s total bases per at-bat, and Mike Trout is slugging .808, leading baseball by 73 points. What is more incredible is that his league-leading xSLG of .886 is even higher than his actual slugging percent and is 222 points higher than the second-place player (Rowdy Tellez).
The record for highest SLG in a season is .974 and belongs to Josh Gibson, who did it in 1937. In fact, the top four highest SLG rates in a season and seven of the top 10 all-time occurred in seasons before 1945. The three others belong to Barry Bonds from 2001, 2002, and 2004. If Trout were to end the season with a .886 SLG, it would be the second-highest of all time.
This early-season success certainly seems like Trout’s resurgence, whose recent injury woes have limited him. The first step he will have to take to maintain his SLG and xSLG rates will be to stay healthy.
He will also need to maintain his league-leading 26.8% barrel rate or close to it. If the season ended today, it would be the best barrel rate of his career by 8% and the highest ever barrel rate in the Statcast era.
While that is unlikely, it looks safe to say so far that Trout has returned to form, and those drafters that selected him at the back end of round one and into round two got a relative steal.
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Taylor Tarter is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Taylor, check out his archive.
