Noteworthy Hitting Leaders (xBA) - Statcast Review for Fantasy Baseball

Eric Samulski reviews the Statcast leaderboard to identify top hitters for expected batting average (xBA) that could be draft sleepers for 2022 fantasy baseball.

There are stats for everything now. It's great, but it can also be overwhelming at times. Depending on where we look, we can tell ourselves all different types of narratives about a player. As a result, I've always been a proponent of identifying the stats that you find to be most useful/beneficial and focusing on those unless your intention is to do a deep dive on one particular player.

While I've been covering barrel rate early in the offseason, with one article on gainers and another on fallers, today we're going to look at one of the most often used x-stats. X-stats are simply the expected results for specific statistics based on all the data collected from batted balls (velocity, launch angle, location, etc.). This means that a player's x-numbers tell us what, mathematically speaking, should have happened, but we all know that sports and life are never about what should have happened. We can't simply take a player's x-stats and assume they will do that the next season but we can use them to validate performances that we may not have fully believed in.

In this article, I'm going to look at some interesting players on the xBA leaderboard. You'll see below that I not only included the xBA numbers but also the difference between the expected stats and the real statistical outcomes to see who maybe had a fluky year or an unlucky one.

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xBA Leaderboard

Here is the 2021 leaderboard (minimum of 200 at-bats - with one exception).

Jesse Winker, OF Cincinnati Reds

The Jesse Winker Breakout Experience was fun while it lasted. The 28-year-old hit .305/.394/.556 with 24 HR, 77 Runs, and 71 RBI before having his season ended in September by an oblique strain that had also cost him a month earlier in the year. While many people will point to the fact that Winker has yet to play a full Major League season in his career, I think it might be more important to discuss that the strong 2021 was simply a continuation of an improved 2020 and might signal a true talent level for Winker.

For starters, Winker cut his strikeout rate (K%) back down to 15.5%, which is pretty consistent with his career numbers. While his walk rate (BB%) also dropped, much of that has to do with Winker being a more aggressive hitter, both in the zone and out of the zone. When hitters increase their swinging rate outside the strike zone (O-Swing%), we often think of it as a red flag, but Winker's O-Swing% was so low before and his contact on pitches outside of the zone (O-Contact%) actually went up 11% in 2021. That increase feels more like a correction to the norm and an identification of how he can improve as a hitter. In fact, Winker's contact rate overall jumped up 8%, so Winker was being more aggressive. However, since he has such a solid understanding of the strike zone, was being aggressive on pitches that he was able to hit. As a result, his called strike rate dropped and his swinging strike rate (SwStr%) dropped, and the additional contact led to more hits and a higher batting average.

In 2021, Winker also carried over gains in his xwOBA (96th-percentile), wOBAcon (88th-percentile), and rate of balls hit in the air (Air%) which was in the 80th-percentile in 2021. He also kept most of his barrel rate growth (82nd-percentile), had an average exit velocity on balls in the air of 95.6 mph (82nd-percentile), and remained in a steady 73rd-percentile in the rate of barrels hit over 100 mph. All of which is to say that Jesse Winker is a good hitter with a solid power profile and now also appears to be a more selectively aggressive hitter, which has led to massive gains in meaningful contact. While you may not get a full season out of him, he's going to give you solid production when healthy. It's not hard to see Winker as a .290 hitter with 25+ HR power who could drive in and score 160+ runs combined. That's really good value outside the top 100 picks right now.

Bryan Reynolds, OF Pittsburgh Pirates

Since Bryan Reynolds has always been known as a plus batting average hitter, it's no surprise to find him on this list. In his two full MLB seasons (not including the short 2020 season), Reynolds finished with an xBA in the top 7% in the league, hitting over .300 in both seasons. He also hit over .300 in at every stop in his minor league career, so Bryan Reynolds can hit. We can all just accept that as a veritable fact.

I want to talk about Bryan Reynolds' power for a minute. Reynolds hit 21 home runs in 2019 across 13 Triple-A games and 134 MLB games and then hit 24 home runs last year, but nobody wants to take him seriously as a 25+ home run threat. Yet, there are a couple of reasons I have some optimism. For starters, Reynolds has improved his barrel rate in each of his three MLB seasons, jumping up to 10.4% in 2021. He has also increased his fly ball rate and decreased his groundball rate in each of his three MLB seasons, which coincides with him raising his launch angle slightly in each season, now sitting at 13.4-degrees. He has always been a high contact rate hitter with a good feel for the strike zone, but he's become slightly more aggressive, raising his zone swing percentage from 74.2% in 2019 to 78.2% in 2021. Obviously, swinging at pitches in the strike zone more often is a positive development for a strong hitter.

As a result, you can see that Reynolds has seen clear growth in his expected slugging metrics, even while accounting for the dip he experienced in the summer of this past season.

Another thing to keep an eye on is that Reynolds' HR/PA fell from 75th-percentile in the first half to 39th-percentile in the 2nd half. However, he maintained a relatively similar barrel rate and hit the ball in the air harder and more often (up 6%) in the second half of the season, so the drop in HR/PA – which accounted for his dropoff in home run production – feels flukey. I'd rather bank on a proven strong hitter with an improving profile continuing to build on those gains. Reynolds is not likely to ever become a true power threat, and we don't need him to, but when looking at the whole package, I'm likely to view Reynolds as a 25+ home runs threat going forward. Considering he is also a threat to hit .300 and put up both 90 runs and RBIs, he's being under-drafted as his current 107 ADP.

Alex Kirilloff, OF Minnesota Twins

I seem to be writing a lot of words about Kirilloff this offseason. Two weeks ago, he featured on my barrel rate improvers article, and now he finds himself here. It shouldn't come as a surprise since he was such a highly-touted prospect, but it's interesting considering he currently has an ADP of 175. In 2021, Kirilloff hit .251/.299/.423 with eight home runs, 34 RBI, and 23 runs in 59 games. However, with xBA of .291 and an xSLG of .541, Statcast seems to be telling us that he had a much better season than we're remembering.

For starters, his 12.8 barrel rate was 87th-percentile and his xWOBA was 91st-percentile, so Kirilloff had an elite quality of contact. A potential issue for the rookie was that his fly ball rate was below 30%, and he was hitting nearly 50% ground balls, which is not ideal. However, I believe a breakout was coming before injuries cut short his season. As the season went on, Kirilloff became more selectively aggressive, not swinging at the first pitch so much. He also became more pull-centric with his contact and his launch angle began to rise.

Considering Kirilloff was in the 87th-percentile on average exit velocity on balls in the air (96.2 mph) and was in the 90th-percentile on rate of balls in the air hit over 100 mph (45.1%), elevating the ball more could easily lead to more home runs. To sum up, this is a high-level prospect who made elite quality of contact all season who began to hit the ball in the air and to the pull side more as the season went on. Yes, please. He's locked into near everyday at-bats on the Twins and is absolutely somebody we should be scooping up before his 175 ADP.

Alejandro Kirk, C Toronto Blue Jays

There is a large segment of the fantasy community that wants Alejandro Kirk to be a thing. I mean, really wants him to be a thing. After hitting .242/.328/.436 in 60 games with eight home runs, 19 runs, and 24 RBI, the larger public greeted Kirk's 2021 season with an indifferent yawn. In fact, Kirk didn't even make the leaderboard above; however, his .284 xBA actually put him in the top-10 in the difference between xBA and BA during the 2021 season (for players over 200 at-bats - even though Kirk finished just below that).

There are a few other things we should take note of with Kirk. For starters, his xwOBA was in the 93rd-percentile, his barrel rate was in the 79th-percentile, his average exit velocity on balls in the air was 78th-percentile, and his rate of balls in the air hit over 100 mph was in the 87th-percentile. Combine that with a 47% hard-hit rate and you see a hitter who makes solid contact, well above league average, regardless of position. That's obviously even more enticing when you factor in that he's a catcher, which is a position that carries few league-average hitters.

Then, you see that he has only an 11.6% strikeout rate, an 86.2% zone contact rate, and only an 8% SwStr% and you realize that this is also a player with a good feel for the strike zone who is consistently making contact. So he consistently makes contact and that contact profile is well above league average? To me, that sounds like a recipe for success, even if the results haven't been there yet at the major league level.

However, there are some concerns that keep me from being as all-in on Kirk as many others are. First, he has never put together elite power numbers. Even though he makes strong contact, he hits a fair amount of groundballs and line drives and uses the middle of the field more than he pulls it. Given his shorter stature, that contact profile will make it hard for him to consistently drive the ball out of the park, so I think he might have 15 HR upside, maybe pushing to 18-20, which is fine, especially for the catcher position, considering he will likely also hit .280 and above. Yet, people are still bullish on him being a 20+ home run bat, and I just can't get there yet.

Lastly, he has some defensive questions at catcher, which is likely why Toronto kept playing Danny Jansen down the stretch despite Jansen continuing to disappoint with the bat. Even if Toronto eventually moves on from Jansen, they have Gabriel Moreno down at Triple-A, and he might be an even better prospect than Kirk with far fewer defensive questions and power that is beginning to come on. As a result, I don't think Kirk will really be able to rid himself of a timeshare in Toronto, which makes me like him as a hitter but feel a bit lukewarm on him as a fantasy player unless I was in a format with deep benches and mid-week roster changes, like a Draft Champions league.

Connor Joe, 1B/OF Colorado Rockies

No, you're not blind. Connor Joe's name does not appear on the table above because he finished with an xBA just below the cut-off, but I still wanted to include him for reasons other than him maybe being my best punt selection in Draft Champions formats last season. After 211 at-bats for the Rockies, Joe finished with a .285/.379/.469 line with eight home runs, 23 runs, and 35 RBI. His .282 xBA put him .006 points behind Kirilloff and off the list, but we need to talk about him because his ADP is currently 398, which means nobody believes what he did was real.

For starters, let's just cover that Joe is not a no-name prospect. He was drafted 39th overall by the Pirates in 2014 and, after two years with the Pirates, was traded to the Dodgers and became a fairly solid prospect for them. He never made top-100 lists and was rarely mentioned among the Dodgers top prospects given the talent in that farm system, but he hit .300 with 15 home runs, 82 runs, and 68 RBI in a full season at Triple-A in 2019. In 2018, he hit .299 with 17 home runs, 69 runs, and 55 RBI across both Double-A and Triple-A. He has a career minor league batting average of .274 and OPS of .813, which aren't eye-popping numbers but demonstrate his stable production throughout his career.

Joe signed with the Rockies before the 2021 season and only had 54 at-bats during the first half of 2021 in Colorado, hitting .241, but when he was given a starting opportunity late in the season, he capitalized, hitting .304/.392/.552 with eight home runs, 19 runs, and 29 RBI across 37 games. The x-stats back up the production too. In the second half, he had a .512 xSLG and a .288 xBA. He also had a 91st-percentile xwOBA, 79th-percentile barrel rate (12%), and 80th-percentile rate of barrels over 100 mph. His launch angle also rose four degrees, up to 15.8-degrees, which helped his HR/PA to register in the 80th-percentile; however, he remains just slightly over league average in average exit velocity on balls in the air, so even though we like his contact profile, we shouldn't confuse him for a masher.

What we have is a talented but not extraordinary prospect with a history of solid contact signing in the most hitter-friendly park in baseball, getting a starting job, and then showcasing solid but not outstanding pop. Joe also showed defensive versatility, splitting his time pretty evenly between LF and 1B, and while he rated out better in the outfield, he was above average at both spots, which should help him to maintain a spot in the lineup. As it stands right now, Joe is penciled in as the Rockies' starting LF and lead-off hitter, a spot out of which he hit .274 with a strong .394 OBP last season. If Colorado doesn't sign anybody else, Joe could give fantasy managers around 110 games, hitting .280 with 17-20 home runs and 100 or more Runs+RBI. Given his dual position eligibility and home park, I'm not sure how a player like that is going close to pick 400.

Austin Riley, 3B Atlanta Braves

We're going to end with one of the darlings of the 2021 season and another player who just missed the leaderboard cut-off, finishing with an xBA of .279. However, considering Riley had a true batting average of .239 in 2020, his batting average performance in 2021 was certainly worth taking note of.

For starters, we should point out that Riley's poor batting average in 2020 feels like a bit of a fluke. He had actually improved his strikeout rate by almost 13% from his 2019 debut and maintained his hard-hit rate and xSLG numbers, but his fly ball rate dropped too much and his groundball rate rose 15%. That caused him to hit too many balls on the ground and suppress the batting average which would have likely been closer to .250 had he gotten his usual BABIP numbers as well. That means Riley's jump in 2021 isn't as out of nowhere as it seems. However, it is the result of a few crucial changes.

For one, Riley's O-Swing% dropped for the third year in a row, as did his swinging strike rate. While it's nice to see Riley get more selective and drop his overall swing rate by 4%, the argument could be made that Riley actually was too passive at times since his zone swing rate dropped 5% and his called strike rate went up almost 3%. Considering Riley's overall contact rate actually went up, his increased patience was still a net positive, but it shows that there could be room for even more growth as Riley figures out how to navigate the balance between being selective and not letting good pitches go (more on that in just a little bit).

Another major jump for Riley was his improvement with offspeed pitches.

After hitting just .074 against them in 2020, Riley's batting average jumped to a ridiculous .341, which was mostly supported by a .284 xBA on offspeed pitches. In fact, he had a higher slugging percentage on offspeed pitches than any other offering in 2021. When you pair that with the fact that his Whiff% on offspeed pitches went down but his PutAway% on them stayed the same, it seems clear that Riley was swinging and missing at fewer offspeed pitches early in the count. This comes back to his more selective approach at the plate. It seems as though Riley was pickier with what he swung at early in the count, meaning that he was forcing pitchers to throw early breaking balls and offspeed pitches for strikes rather than offering at them outside of the zone. This likely led to better pitches to hit, hence his increased production on those pitches.

Since we know Riley has elite batted ball quality (87th-percentile barrel rate and 92nd-percentile max exit velocity), his newfound plate discipline has taken his game to the next level. He increased his launch angle as the year went on, which, given that he hits the ball in the air at an average of 95 mph (77th-percentile), is a good thing.

Also, to pay off my teaser from earlier, it actually looks like he got more confident as the year went on, which could have led to him being more aggressive. He pulled the ball 13% more in the second half and dropped his groundball rate 11%, which is why he saw his OPS rise from .826 to .976 and why his HR/PA jumped from the 66th-percentile to the 89th-percentile. Considering he is only 24-years-old, I take second-half gains like that to be a sign of a young player getting more comfortable and coming into his own.

He's unlikely to sustain a .368 BABIP, so that batting average could fall back down into the .270-.280 range, but he has legit 35 HR power hitting in the middle of a good lineup with a strong chance for 100 RBI. That's a big reason why he is going pick 56 right now, but I'm not against it and might take him ahead of guys like Paul Goldschmidt and Nick Castellanos, who are often going ahead of him.

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