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Rick Lucks discusses Launch Angle and Barrels as predictive tools as his series on making sabermetrics more accessible to fantasy baseball managers continues.
Previously, we looked at how the exit velocity is only one piece of the fantasy baseball analysis puzzle. Baseball broadcasts will commonly cite Launch Angle (LA) to complement their EV figures, but it is given in terms of degrees.
LA is basically a fancy way of saying things that the fantasy community has used for years. Let's simplify things a bit to see how these numbers can actually benefit our analysis.
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What is a Barrel?
Here is the batted ball type produced by the various degree measurements:
| Batted Ball Type | Launch Angle |
| Ground ball | Less than 10 degrees |
| Line drive | 10-25 degrees |
| Fly ball | 25-50 degrees |
| Pop-up | More than 50 degrees |
Most batters want to live in the 10-50 degree range, as grounders rarely produce power while pop-ups rarely produce anything other than easy outs. Well-struck balls in this range of launch angles are the batted balls that fantasy managers are most interested in. A Statcast stat called "Barrels" filters out everything else, allowing us to evaluate who is hitting the most of these high-value batted balls.
A Barrel is defined as "a ball with a combination of exit velocity and launch angle that averages at least a .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage." It should be noted that the numbers above are only a minimum threshold. In this respect, the stat is like a Quality Start. It is possible to register a QS with an ERA of 4.50, but the actual average ERA of all MLB Quality Starts falls well below 4.50.
The range of EVs and LAs that combine to form Barrels is called the Barrel Zone. This means that higher EVs can compensate for less ideal LAs to produce the .500/1.500 minimum. Batted balls must have an EV of at least 98 mph and fall within the 10-50 degree LA range to be classified as Barrels. We care about fantasy production, not the intricacies of a mathematical relationship. You don't need to worry about the math.
With this in mind, Aaron Judge led baseball in Barrels in 2022 with 106. He was followed by Yordan Alvarez (78 Barrels), Kyle Schwarber (76), Shohei Ohtani (72), and Austin Riley (71). This group passes the sniff test, as it includes the HR leader in each league and the most exciting player in the game. Still, we already knew this. What do Barrels add to the equation?
The Value of Barrels
Barrels become more instructive when you stop looking at them as a counting stat and start examining them as a rate stat. By taking the number of Barrels and dividing it by the total number of Batted Ball Events (BBE), we get a percentage that tells us how frequently a player's batted balls are Barrels.
Judge topped this list as well in 2022 with a 26.5% Brls/BBE figure, followed by Alvarez (21%), Schwarber (20.1%), Mike Trout (19.7%), and Giancarlo Stanton (19.3%). Guys like Trout and Stanton didn't have the raw BBEs to crack the Barrels leaderboard, but the rate stat suggests that they are still in their primes when healthy.
Some analysts prefer Brls/PA (or Barrels per PA) instead of Brls/BBE, but there isn't much difference between the two stats. The 2022 Brls/PA leaderboard for 2022 consists of Judge (15.7%), Alvarez (14.1%), Trout (12%), Schwarber (11.4%), and Stanton (11.3%). It's the same players as the previous list in a slightly different order.
This data helped identify sleepers in every year of its existence. Chris Carter had an 18.7% Brls/BBE in limited 2015 playing time. He led the NL in homers the next year with 41. Gary Sanchez ranked eighth in the league with a 15.8% Brls/BBE in 2016, foreshadowing his strong 2017.
Joey Gallo's 22.1% rate of Brls/BBE over 253 batted balls in 2017 suggested that his 41 HR were real, and he effectively repeated them the next season (40 HR). Likewise, Luke Voit's third-place finish in Brls/BBE in 2018 foreshadowed his .263/.378/.464 line with 21 HR in 510 PAs for the Yankees in 2019.
The sleeper from last year's list is probably Stanton, who didn't have the best surface stats but maintained the superlative contact quality that has categorized his entire career. It says here that you should take any discount available on him.
Conclusion
Viewing Barrels as a rate stat can be beneficial, but important considerations like strikeout rate still aren't captured by the metric. That said, few metrics have proven to have the predictive power that Brls/BBE has shown in recent years. There have been a few delayed reactions (Tyler O'Neill led baseball in Brls/BBE in 2018 but didn't break out until 2021), but in general, it's a stat you want to look at. Stay tuned to learn more about how advanced stats can help you become a better fantasy baseball manager.
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