Squaring It Up: 2020's Biggest Brl/BBE% Gainers

Eric Samulski analyzes the barrel rate leaderboard from last season to identify the biggest gainers and decide which hitters are worth their early ADP in 2021 fantasy baseball drafts.

Often when it comes to fantasy baseball, we get overloaded with statistics and it becomes hard to sort out what's useful from what's misleading. Many experts can write pages about why they swear by certain stats as being the most predictive for future success or accurate in reflecting who had a good season.

In the end, the best approach is always to never rely too heavily on one stat in particular but use a multitude of them to put together an honest portrait of a player. For my money, a hitter's barrel rate is one of the most important stats for a fantasy manager's toolbelt. It may be a little "old school baseball," but, when I was playing, I always knew that if I was finding the barrel consistently, good things were going to happen.

Now, there are a lot of things that can dictate whether or not a hitter is able to square the ball up and hit it on the barrel. A hitter consistently finding the barrel can mean his bat path is perfect, his eyes are locked in, or his timing is right on. However, make no mistake about it, hitting the ball on the barrel consistently is a challenging skill at any level. Only the best hitters are the ones that can do it regularly, and when you notice somebody beginning to do it more consistently, it's usually time to take notice. Good things are bound to happen when hitters start feeling that utter weightlessness of squaring a ball up perfectly. With that out of the way, we can dive into the actionable info.

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Barrel Risers

Below is a table of the hitters who improved their barrels per batted ball event (Brl/BBE%) most in 2020. Brl/BBE% is more useful than just counting barrels because players with more batted ball events (times they make contact) have more of a chance to simply accumulate barrels, but the rate shows how consistently they can get it done. However, as with any rate metric, we need to keep in mind how many events there were so we're not working with too small a sample size.

For the purpose of this article, I only included players who had 100 batted ball events in 2020 (except for one exception I'll mention below). I also dug into a few of the most intriguing names on this list to try and make sense of how this information should impact our fantasy decisions.

Jesse Winker (ADP: 208)

Winker finished the season with a .255/.388/.544 triple slash, belting 12 HRs while knocking in 23 runs in 54 games. However, that doesn't come close to revealing the true level he showed last year. Winker came out of the gates on fire, hitting .369/.459/.798 with 10 HR and 16 RBI in 28 games. He raised his launch angle, hit the ball an average of three mph harder, and found the barrel at a ridiculous rate (as the table above clearly shows).

Unfortunately, Winker, who missed time with a neck/back injury in 2019, injured his back in September and, although he was able to play through it, his production slipped drastically. He hit .104/.302/.250 in September and October and his power basically vanished.

I think the barrel metrics above show a legitimate change in approach for the 27-year-old. His rising K% is here to stay, but he will always have a good eye at the plate, so I don't expect the OBP and AVG to tank, and I think he could easily push for 25 HR in a full season in Cincinnati

Corey Seager (ADP: 28)

It's always been about health for the 26-year-old shortstop. When his body holds up, Seager delivers, and we saw that last year with a .307/.358/.585 triple-slash to go along with 15 HR and 41 RBI in 52 games. In addition to his barrel rate jumping, he also saw career-highs in a number of areas, while finishing in the top 2% of the league in xBA, xSLG, xwOBACON, and Hard Hit %. The table below shows his progress over the years, with the top row being stats from his rookie year in 2015 and then progressing down to 2020.

The lowered launch angle actually led to a 3% drop in infield fly ball rate and likely helped fix an over-correction from the year before when he raised his launch angle four-degrees but saw his pop-up percentage go up. With the adjustment, plus an increase in pull percentage, Seager was able to find the barrel more consistently and do damage, which carries tremendous value in the middle of a stacked lineup. You'll always be taking an injury risk when you draft him, but there are few shortstops better in terms of upside.

Brandon Belt  (ADP: 322)

I don't want to spend too much time on Belt, but I do want to point out that I think he is a valuable CI option or deep-league 1B, and he's too often overlooked because he plays in San Francisco. The fact is that Belt is only 32-years-old, the Giants made adjustments to make their park more hitter-friendly, and Belt clearly benefited from swing changes last year. After spending four years in a row with a launch angle close to 22-degrees, Belt dropped the launch angle to 18-degrees last year. His FB% dropped 6.1%, his infield fly ball rate fell from 7.8% to 0% (yes, zero), and his line-drive rate went up 4%. Yes, his HR/FB jump from 8.8% to 19.1% is likely unsustainable, but it also shows that the swing change caused Belt to be able to square the ball up more consistently and drive it more effectively. In fact, his Brls/BBE% was good for 10th-best in all of baseball last year.

Considering those changes and Oracle Park changing its dimensions and playing as the 12th best park for HR power, Belt's new swing gives him more value than the market seems to think.  I mean, 322!? Come on. That's after Edwin Rios, Wilmer Flores, and Joey Wendle. It's still early, but Belt is shaping up to be one of my favorite draft values this year.

Teoscar Hernandez  (ADP: 70)

There's no question that Teoscar had a great shortened season, going .289/.340/.579 with 16 HR, 34 RBI, and six SBs. It propelled him into an elite fantasy baseball tier and has clearly lead to a massive jump in his ADP. But this price is a bit too rich for my blood. Hernandez is a notoriously streaky hitter who certainly benefited from swinging a hot bat over a two-month season. There's never been a knock on his power and ability to make hard contact, but I still have major questions about him sustaining it over a full season.

For starters, Hernandez strikes out a lot. Even while hitting .289 last year, his K% was 30.4%, and his BB% fell to 6.8%. That K% is the 12th-highest in the league and while many strong power hitters finished in the same range last year, the batting averages of that group were not confidence-inducing: Joey Gallo (35% K% and .181 AVG), Keston Hiura (34.6% K% and .212 AVG), Luis Robert (32.2% K% and .233 AVG), and Matt Olson (31.4% K% and .195 AVG) are among the few that stand out. What that tells me is that Teoscar's average, while deserved last season, is an aberration and not something you should expect in 2021. To add to that, his HR/FB rose 10% despite an identical launch angle and a 5% decrease in FB%, which implies that his overall home run total was a bit flukey as well. When you pair that with a .136 batting average against breaking pitches (after a .179 average in 2019), it's clear that he remains a powerful but likely flawed hitter who has a hole in his swing that pitchers can attack.

I don't mind the Blue Jays outfielder, and think his power and speed can make him a strong performer, but I'm just not buying in at this cost.

Fernando Tatis Jr. (ADP: 3) and Juan Soto (ADP: 4)

They're very good at baseball. That's it. Draft them high.

Matt Chapman (ADP: 120)

If only he had been able to stay healthy. Chapman only had 84 batted ball events last year, but I kept him on here so you don't forget his name and what he's capable of on draft day. Getting him outside of the top-100 would be an incredible price tag.

Dominic Smith (ADP: 100)

Dom Smith was finally given consistent at-bats in 2020 and responded with a .316/.377/.616 triple-slash to go along with 10 HR. He showed solid contact ability with a 22.6 K% and started to pull the ball more, raising his Pull% from 40.6% to 44%. That added emphasis on the pull side helped offset only a 66th-percentile exit velocity, despite the impressive barrel rate. However, what has me more bullish on Smith is his success against a multitude of pitches. Unlike Teoscar Hernandez, who has clear holes in his swing, Smith showed good results last year against all pitch types.

Smith doesn't possess game-breaking power, and he certainly won't give you many steals, but I expect him to put up a batting average around .270 and have opportunities to drive in runs for a solid Mets lineup. However, the biggest concern right now is playing time. The Mets outfield is full and Smith has a starting job, but if they go out and add George Springer or another big name outfielder, as rumors suggest, it will mean that Smith may need to rotate to share at-bats with Brandon Nimmo and Michael Conforto. At this ADP, you better be sure that Smith is going to get close to 500 plate appearances.

Rhys Hoskins  (ADP: 176)

Why do we keep forgetting about Rhys Hoskins? Yes, he had a poor 2019, but there were many in the fantasy community, myself included, who wrote about the Phillies trying to implement a swing change that year, and it simply not taking. With Hoskins back to his old mechanics, he hit .245/.384/.503 last year with 10 HR and 26 RBI across 41 games. Most of his advanced metrics, aside from the barrel rate, stayed the same: exit velocity, launch angle, wOBA, K%, BB%. But here's the thing, he didn't need to change those.

Even in his down year in 2019, Hoskins hit the ball hard, displayed elite patience, and clubbed home runs. Going back to his old swing simply allowed him to square the ball up more often, getting back near his barrel rate from 2017 of 13.5% and allowing him to finish with the 19th-best Brl/BBE% in all of baseball last year, ahead of Freddie Freeman and Jose Abreu and just behind Mike Trout. Now, you don't need to read that as a reason to draft Hoskins ahead of those other 1B, but he also shouldn't be going this late. The Phillies' first baseman didn't become a new hitter in 2020, but he went back to being the hitter we remember when he debuted. That's still good for a .240 average and 35+ HRs in a strong lineup. At his current price, that's a solid value, especially if you're in an OBP league.

Garrett Hampson (ADP: 271)

With David Dahl gone, Hampson now becomes one of the most intriguing players on the list. I'll never fully trust the Rockies not to screw with his playing time, but we've been waiting for Hampson to get enough opportunity to put his elite speed to use. The jump in barrel rate would suggest that we may finally be seeing Hampson emerge as a hitter who can control the bat enough to be a true fantasy asset. However, this is where simply looking at improvements can be misleading. An 8.1% barrel rate isn't bad, but the rest of Hampson's Statcast profile is gross:

That's not something you want to see, especially when it comes with a .224 xBA, 32.6 K%, and 7.1 BB%. The decrease in soft contact this past year was good, as was his near non-existent infield fly ball rate and increase in line drive percentage; however, he continues to struggle with breaking pitches for the second year in a row, and I simply can't see him hitting above .250. If he ever gets a full-time job, he could hit .240 with 10 HR and 15-20 SBs, but speed-first players who struggle to get on base consistently don't really get that many chances at a full-time role.

Personally, I don't think Hampson has the barrel control or patience to ever make consistent use of his speed, and I'll gladly let some other fantasy managers take a shot at him in hopes of winning the stolen base category.

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