There’s one common issue with fantasy baseball player rankings – they don’t translate to custom league settings. Most sets of player rankings are built toward a traditional roto 5×5 setting and most people play in leagues with custom settings. I’ve been posting my fantasy baseball rankings for years to my old website (no longer active – www.fantasyaceball.com) and in my twitter and facebook feeds under the same name (@fantasyaceball). I tend to play in OBP or OPS H2H leagues that include holds, quality starts and all sorts of other options, including keeper options, so that’s where my annual rankings lists tend to lean.
So, how do we overcome this problem? This summer I had the idea to create rankings based on core fantasy skills (named fScores for “fantasy scores”), rather than simply ranking one guy over another guy based on standard fantasy baseball league settings. This way, if you play in a points league or OBP league, something like plate discipline can be sorted to re-rank players for your specific league settings and re-weighed.
This article will pertain only to my hitting fScores and I’ll have a future article coming out relating to my pitching fScores. I’m going to jump ahead and disclose that I did discover about 70% of the way through doing my hitting fScores that I have some suggestions to improve the fScores that I have already written into my 2023 equations… you may ask why wait until 2023, it’s not even 2022 yet… well, I’m not a programmer and I probably spent 150-ish hours entering data sets into my equation spreadsheets to come up with the fScores you will see broken down by position in future articles. If someone is a programmer who can build an algorithm and wants to work with me on keeping these up to date, I’m game to share my equations to make that happen. I work full time as an entrepreneur about 70 hours per week, so unfortunately I don’t have the time to backtrack and spend another 150 hours on the hitters before the start of the season.
There are five main skills that go into an effective fantasy baseball hitter.
- Contact ability (fContact)
- Plate Discipline (fDiscipline)
- Power (fPower)
- Speed (fSpeed)
- Durability (fDurability)
NOTE: In 2023 I’ll be adding “external factors” as a sixth category, though it’s not really a skill – which will take ballpark and lineup factors into account, which will help factor in counting stats like R and RBI, which are not always directly attributable to the above player skills.
Let’s go through these skills one by one where I’ll briefly describe what goes into each of these in my equation and also how each one plays off the other. After we go through the skills, I’ll go into the rankings and fScores position by position in future articles and podcasts.
fContact
fContact is the hitter’s ability to make contact with the baseball weighed against an average MLB starter. Now, contact isn’t a direct correlation to batting average, because the ability to reach base is also dependent upon power (is the hitter hitting the ball in the infield or the outfield? Is the contact a weak ground or a line drive?) and speed (can the hitter outrun the throw from the fielder on a weak grounder?).
The way to think about contact in regards to fantasy stats is probably something like this:
fContact + fPower +fSpeed = BA above replacement player
fContact + fPower = HR above replacement player
Higher fContact hitters will also likely be hitting higher in the order and have a better shot at racking up counting stats. In 2023 we will see how fContact + fPower +EF (external factors) will result directly in RBI totals, while fContact +Discipline +fSpeed + EF will result directly in R totals.
How are the fScores weighed?
We are weighing all of these fScores on the career totals along with the last 3 seasons (including additional weight on the last ½ season).
Career totals are given a 10% weight
3 seasons back is given a 10% weight
2 seasons back is given a 20% weight
Last season is given a 30% weight
Last ½ season is given a 30% weight
How do fScores project forward?
Additionally the total fScore is weighed based on expected 2022 fScore with a spread included on the way the player is currently trending. If a player is aging or injured and their skills are trending down, this will be seen in their second “future” fScore. If the player is young and improving their skills, they will be trending up in their second fScore.
What stats go into fContact?
Most of these skills can be correlated to a large degree on a few simple statistics. fContact is judged by contact rate and batting average after removing BABIP luck or advantage from the equation.
Examples:
Wander Franco scored the highest fContact in baseball with a 1.20 (meaning he is 20% better at making contact than the average major league starting hitter).
Bobby Bradley scored the lowest fContact in baseball with a 0.66 (meaning he is 34% worse at making contact than the average major league starting hitter).
Rookies / Small Sample Sizes
Both of these guys are young, so obviously I don’t have as much information to pull from at the Major League level and have had to attempt to synthesize their minor league stats at approximately an 85% downgrade into translating to the majors.
This by no means is a perfect translation from minor league stats to major league stats and many of the fScores utilize Statcast data, which is more or less not provided for minor leaguers. So this should be kept into consideration when analyzing the fScores of minor leaguers / prospects, rookies and more or less anyone with less than two seasons of experience at the Major League level.
fDiscipline
fDiscipline is the hitter’s ability to judge the strike zone, see breaking pitches, take walks and avoid strikeouts against an average MLB starter.
fDiscipline isn’t a direct correlation to OBP, because it’s also taking into consideration avoiding strikeouts and hunting good pitches to hit, so technically a higher fDiscipline will likely also lead to a higher batting average, higher HR total, higher R total and a higher SB total. fDiscipline compliments all other skills and boosts the ability to achieve higher stat totals all around.
What stats go into fDiscipline?
fDiscipline is a weighted aggregate consisting of stats such as BB%, K%, O-swing% and SwStr%.
Examples:
Juan Soto scored the highest fDiscipline (of non prospect players) in baseball with a 1.92 (meaning he is 92% better at judging the strike zone than the average major league starting hitter).
Javier Baez and Adolis Garcia tied to score the lowest fDiscipline in baseball with a 0.62 (meaning they are 38% worse at judging the strike zone than the average major league starting hitter).
fPower
fPower is the hitter’s ability to consistently hit the ball out of the park or hit line drives that lead to extra base hits against an average MLB starter.
fPower isn’t a direct correlation to OPS or HR, because fContact and fDiscipline must be achieved to hit the ball enough times to make fPower meaningful and fSpeed will increase the ability of the hitter to turn hard hit balls in the outfield into extra base hits.
What stats go into fDiscipline?
fPower is a weighted aggregate consisting of stats such as ISO, barrel% and average EV.
Examples:
Bobby Dalbec scored the highest fPower in baseball with a 1.91 (meaning he is 91% better at making hard / line drive contact than the average major league starting hitter). He is also a prime example of the above that fPower alone will not result in a 40-50 HR hitter, fContact and fDiscipline are necessary to result in more usable power.
David Fletcher had the lowest fPower in baseball with a 0.49 (meaning he is 51% worse at making hard / line than the average major league starting hitter). However, since he has a 1.13 fContact, he is likely to get more HR or TB than someone like Nico Hoerner who has a 1 fContract and a .52 fPower.
fSpeed
fSpeed is the hitter’s pure speed matched with the ability to steal bases.
fSpeed isn’t a direct correlation to SB, because the hitter has to be able to get on base to steal bases and additionally, fSpeed weighed footspeed heavier than SB – CS, because fSpeed is an important skill to correlate to base hits and extra base hits when paired with fContact and fPower.
What stats go into fSpeed?
fSpeed is a weighted aggregate consisting of stats such as SB – CS / H + BB and sprint speed.
Examples:
Leody Taveras scored the highest fSpeed in baseball with a 3.41 (meaning he is 241% better at stealing bases and foot speed than the average major league starting hitter). He is also a prime example of the above that fSpeed alone will not directly result in SB. The player must play and get on base to get steals Taveras has a .88 fContact and .79 fDiscipline; where a guy like Sterling Marte has a .99 fContact, .9 fDiscipline and 2.27 fSpeed. Due to the ability to get on base and play baseball games, Marte will almost definitely have more steals than Taveras. Showing again the importance of pairing these stats together.
Yoshi Tsutsugo had the lowest fSpeed in baseball with a 0.35 (meaning he is 65% worse at stealing bases and foot speed than the average major league starting hitter). It should be noted the average of a low foot speed (24-25 sprint score) with 0 steals and 0 caught stealing is about .48… which there are a lot of players in this range. So anything under means the player likely was caught stealing more than they had successfully stolen a base.
fDurability
fDurability is the hitter’s ability to stay healthy, play games and be good enough to garner consistent ABs against an average MLB starter.
fDurability should be used primarily as a way to measure the players skill with their ability to stay on the field and produce. If a player scores above average in all of the other skills, but can’t stay healthy (ie: Byron Buxton or Adalberto Mondesi), then it’s going to affect their total value to your fantasy team.
What stats go into fDurability?
fDurability is a simple weighted aggregate of G and ABs against the average MLB starter.
Examples:
Whit Merrifield scored the highest fDurability in baseball with a 1.21 (meaning he is 21% better at staying on the field than the average major league starting hitter). Hitting at the top of the lineup for three plus years is going to increase the fDurability score, which also will help increase the total value of the player to use their other skills.
Nick Senzel had the lowest fDurability (of active players) in baseball with a 0.32 (meaning he is 68% worse at staying on the field than the average major league starting hitter). Minor leaguers are harder to judge on this statistic, as they generally don’t play as many games as major league hitters and are constantly changing levels, so they will have a lower than average fDurability and this doesn’t even account for the fact that service time manipulation may occur or they may be 2nd half call-ups, so this must be taken into your own hands when considering if them.
fScore (Total and Future)
The provided total fScore is based upon a direct average of fContact, fDiscipline, fPower, fSpeed and fDurability because all five skills play off each other.
fScore (Future) is considering the trending nature of all the stats aggregated into the fScore skills. They take into account the following questions: Are the consolidated skills on average trending up or down? By what percentage are they trending up or down?
When you take fScore and Future fScore it should provide you a range that the player should fall between, not taking any major player skill or habit changes such as swing change, diet change, work out regimen change that happen outside of the standard deviation of volatility in the sport.
Using the spreadsheets in the future positional articles, a fantasy baseball player can change how they weigh the skills or grade players based on a skill that can provide an advantage to them in the settings of their fantasy baseball league.
In future articles we will go position by position using my fScores spreadsheets and discuss player rankings and tiers. By providing each player an fScore, tiering players out is more clear than ever before. Additionally, you will note I do not follow in my rankings the fScores by the “T” but use them as a strong guideline and may shift players up or down based on my biased notions of perceived progress or possibility to avoid injuries or get better in certain areas that can’t be shown by numbers scouting, which the fScores undoubtedly are doing.
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