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Rick Lucks breaks down Statcast metrics for pitchers and evaluates what role they should play in fantasy baseball analysis as his series on making sabermetrics more accessible to fantasy managers continues.
Statcast metrics such as Barrels and Brls/BBE are great ways to evaluate a fantasy baseball batter's performance, so it is only natural to assume that the metrics would be predictive for pitchers as well. As much as batters want to hit a Barrel every time, pitchers want to avoid them at all costs. Yet, there is evidence that pitchers do not have the same influence over Barrels as a batter does.
Ronald Acuna Jr. finished with a league-leading 86 Barrels hit in 2023. Miles Mikolas copped the league lead among pitchers by allowing 66, a significantly lower number than Acuna's total. It takes fewer Barrels to lead pitchers than hitters. This fits well with DIPS theory, which states that batters can do more to influence batted balls than pitchers can.
It's also not fantasy-relevant, as Mikolas isn't an appealing fantasy option. The next five names on the leaderboard include Jordan Lyles (57) and a four-way tie at 56 (Patrick Corbin, Lance Lynn, Lucas Giolito, and JP Sears). Are these numbers indicative of anything?
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How to Interpret Statcast Contact Quality Allowed
All five of those names are fantasy-irrelevant at this stage of their careers. Maybe we need to simplify this and use average airborne exit velocity. The top five in FB/LD EV allowed last season were Jake Woodford (97.9 mph), Luis L. Ortiz (96.8), Kyle Finnegan (96.5), Scott McGough (96.3), and Carlos Carrasco (96). All five are terrible arms we don't want to roster in fantasy.
Using the Brls/BBE leaderboard might seem like a better bet than raw Barrel totals, and that list contains some interesting names: Eric Lauer (13.9%), Taylor Clarke (12.7%), Michael Kopech (12.7%), Hayden Wesneski (12.3%), and Carlos Rodon (12.2%). You might interpret this as a sign it's time to give up on Kopech or avoid Rodon, but that's not the case.
The best way to determine why is with a case study: 2021 AL Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray. Ray's Statcast contact quality metrics weren't good by any means, as his raw total of 46 Barrels allowed tied for the 10th-highest among qualified pitchers while his 9.8% rate of Brls/BBE ranked 15th that year. It also didn't seem to matter if his 2.84 ERA was any indication. Take a look:
Ray was in the 15th percentile for average EV allowed, 16th for Barrel%, and 17th for hard-hit%. He still "deserved" a batting average against of just .219, suggesting the contact quality metrics failed to capture much of anything.
Lest you dismiss Ray's 2021 season as "lucky," it's worth pointing out that his reputation for allowing hard contact isn't reflected in his career Statcast numbers. The following chart lists Ray's Brls/BBE and ERA in each year of the Statcast Era, exempting 2020 for sample size purposes:
Year Brls/BBE ERA
2015 5.1% 3.52
2016 6.9% 4.90
2017 5.1% 2.89
2018 8.7% 3.93
2019 10.6% 4.34
2021 9.8% 2.84
2022 7.9% 3.71
Ray's Barrels allowed fluctuate wildly, with his best ERA corresponding to his second-worst Brls/BBE mark. In 2022, Ray's ERA ballooned by almost a full run despite dropping his rate of Brls/BBE by nearly two full percentage points. If there is anything predictive here, this author fails to see it.
Ray is only one pitcher, so maybe he defies a broader trend. Nope! Yusei Kikuchi had the second-highest rate of Brls/BBE allowed in 2022 at 14.8%. Naturally, he cut that to 9% last season en route to a career-best 3.86 ERA over 167 2/3 IP. His teammate Jose Berrios tied for fifth in Barrels allowed with 52 in 2022. He allowed 46 last season but trimmed his ERA from 5.23 to 3.65 regardless.
Looking at contact quality metrics would have prevented you from rostering two profitable arms in 2023. The top five lists in the past have included names such as Justin Verlander, Luis Castillo, Shane McClanahan, Framber Valdez, and Nathan Eovaldi, all of whom have been fantasy stalwarts since their appearances. Ouch.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Statcast metrics such as Barrels and average airborne exit velocity should probably just be ignored for pitcher analysis. These metrics are great for evaluating batters, but this author can't get anything out of them for pitchers even with the benefit of hindsight. That conclusion may make this seem like a worthless article, but it isn't.
Seemingly every fantasy analyst uses contact quality to credit pitchers, either through the Statcast numbers above or an approximation such as the Hard% posted on FanGraphs. This type of analysis may explain a pitcher's performance after the fact, but it seems to have zero predictive value. Therefore, there may be a competitive advantage to be gained by ignoring this type of analysis completely.
Stay tuned to learn more about predictive metrics that could give you an edge throughout the 2024 fantasy season.
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