Numbers usually don’t lie when it comes to fantasy baseball. Let’s key in on three players in this week’s fantasy baseball Statcast review.

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Fantasy Baseball Statcast Review

Alec Bohm (3B – PHI)

Alec Bohm has made meaningful strides throughout his three-plus years in the league concerning lowering his strikeout rate. Starting with his 2021 season, his Baseball Savant player page had him in the 18th percentile for K% and he made his way up to the 88th percentile in the 2023 season. In addition to that, we’ve seen his isolated slugging percentage move from a paltry .095 up near a very respectable ~.190 to begin the 2024 season. His Baseball Savant player card is blazing red, but can we expect these power gains to stick around and is there a next level for Bohm?

Strikeout Percentage Gains

One thing is for certain, we’ve seen enough data in his strikeout rates to see that this is a skill that has stuck. The 15-16% rate appears to be his new baseline, which is great news in terms of getting balls into play more frequently and getting more chances to do damage driving in and scoring runs.

Small Sample Size Oppo Power Spike

Now, Alec Bohm generates nearly all his power from pull-side flyballs. He doesn’t have the game power to drive the ball in the air at the premium launch angles (sweet spot percentage) to the opposite field or to centerfield.

That said, his opposite field and center field exit velocities on sweet spot balls are up year-over-year to 91.3 miles per hour (89.9) and 91.8 miles per hour (88.6), respectively. Thus far, these look like small sample outliers to his true skill set based on the timing of some barrel events. We can look at his rolling 21-day control charts for 98+ mile-per-hour events (barrels) and see that he’s in an outlier range (two and three standard deviations above his average) to center and the opposite field. Now, if we see some of these gains start to stick, then we can claim Bohm has gotten to the next level for his power output.

Takeaway

Bohm is a nice fantasy player with an approach to hit the ball hard back up through the middle. He’s not an extreme pull-side hitter in the air unless he can get more consistent in elevating the ball — 45% of his groundballs are on the pull side, which leads me to believe he’s just not that consistent with getting to those sweet spot launch angles. I would not expect the power we’ve seen to begin the year to stick around and push Bohm above the 20-home run season from a year ago. However, we should keep an eye on his barrel percentage and exit velocities to center and the opposite field because that’s where he hits the majority of his sweet spot balls. If he is peaking in terms of physical development and raw power, then we may see some of these gains stick. Right now, we can consider Bohm an excellent source of batting average, runs and RBI hitting in the middle third of a high run-scoring lineup.

Jordan Westburg (2B, 3B – BAL)

Jordan Westburg is another hitter off to a terrific start to the 2024 campaign. He has a minor-league pedigree for walking at a decent clip, putting the ball in play and doing damage when putting the ball in the air. Last year, in his initial call-up, he was unable to do most of those things, but things have changed this year.

The Strikeouts Are Likely Coming Back Sooner Than Later

Despite ranking pretty low in whiff and chase percentages, he’s done a decent job of avoiding strikeouts. At this point, I’d consider his ability to avoid the strikeout at a lower rate than last year to fall more into the category of small-sample-size-trough than a honed skill. Those aforementioned whiff and chase rates are likely to catch up with him again soon. It is worth watching his progress in terms of getting balls into play at a higher rate because he can generate isolated slugging numbers well north of .200

Consistently Average Power to All Fields

One of my favorite things about Westburg is that despite having average-ish raw power, he certainly does have game power to all fields as evidenced by his exit velocities and barrel rates on balls he hits in the air. To begin 2024 he’s barreling the ball more frequently to the pull-side, bringing his exit velocity up over 100 miles per hour on balls hit in the air. Last year he was in the low-to-mid 90s across the board to all fields. However, those exit velocities seem to translate more to consistent “doubles-power” rather than any true home run ability.

Takeaways

If you can find someone to overpay a bit for Westburg after the hot start, find something else you need and consider flipping him. The only downside is that he is hitting the ball harder and more consistently this year. He has also elevated his sweet spot percentage to 40%+ which makes him still a little bit of a mystery in terms of his potential outcomes for the year. There’s some upside here, but when the strikeout struggles come calling there’s a chance you’re happier with the return you received.

Ronald Acuna Jr. (OF – ATL)

This is a public service announcement for Ronald Acuna fantasy owners. A sanity check if you will. An explanation of the early season results that have you wondering why he’s sitting at .250/.360/.350 after eight weeks of baseball. The bottom line is this Ronald Acuna Jr. is simply not pulling many balls in the air to start the year and the balls he’s hitting to center and the opposite fields haven’t been hit very hard — hence his inability to do much damage in terms of slugging. On top of these bad outcomes, we’ve seen his strikeout percentage balloon back to pre-2023 levels in that 23-25% range. When I see outcomes like this, I check to see if the player is being pitched differently.

Fastball Location Has Shifted Up & In

Sure enough, we find it pretty quickly. Pitchers have changed how they are attacking Acuna Jr. The non-sinking fastball locations that were out over the plate in 2023 are all now clustered extremely up and in. I love it when a hypothesis comes together.

Let’s shift to looking at the outcomes of these types of fastballs. Overall, Acuna has gone from a 97-mile-per-hour average exit velocity on flyballs down to 85.7. We can also see that he’s no longer generating as many sweet spot balls on fastballs and more of these balls in play have been pop-ups.

Takeaway

You need to stay patient with your Acuna fantasy shares while he works through a counter to the pitchers’ new approach against him. We saw a similar pitching shift occur against Christian Yelich after his 2018 MVP finish.

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