Michael Clifford shares his draft strategy on identifying players using counting stats.
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“Let the stats fall where they may”.
It’s a mantra I learned when getting into fantasy baseball. It means that when drafting hitters, look for maybe a good average, look for power and speed, and let the counting stats work out on their own.
Of course, that is an inaccurate way to look at it. Baseball, especially fantasy baseball, is a numbers game. There are indicators to look for almost regardless of what the desired result is. In that sense, it’s worth taking a look at what numbers can mean good run and RBI producers, and how that helps at the draft table.
Runs
The runs scored category is generally an afterthought more so than RBI. As I mentioned, there are some numbers that can give fantasy owners preparing for their drafts an idea of what to look for.
Runs across baseball are down which of course means runs scored are down. From Baseball Reference, there were 67 seasons of players reaching at least 100 runs scored in any season between 2008 and 2010. The average, then, would be just over 22 players each season scoring 100 runs. Over each of the last three seasons (2012-2014), there have been just 28 instances of a player scoring 100 runs in a campaign, or an average of just over nine players per season. Last year, there were just seven such players. So the first thing fantasy baseball owners need to realize is that the 100-run player is rare, and expectations need to be lowered.
Let’s look for some characteristics possessed by high-run scoring players (all information in this article was pulled from Baseball Reference or FanGraphs):
- From 2012-2014, there were 69 players to score at least 90 runs in any of those three seasons. Of those 69 players, just one had an on-base percentage under .316. Furthermore, of those 69 players with at least 90 runs scored, just 11 of them had an on-base percentage under .330. In that sense, someone like Billy Hamilton, who walks very little but hits at the top of his lineup, will struggle to crack 90 runs unless he has a .290 batting average.
- There were 41 players in 2014 that cracked 80 runs. That’s part of the lowered expectations I mentioned earlier; don’t scoff at 80 runs scored. In a 12-team league with an even distribution of talent, over half the teams wouldn’t have had four hitters crack 80 runs.
- An elite batting average is not necessary to score runs unless the player can’t draw walks: just 8 of the 41 players with 80 runs scored hit .300 or better, while six of the 41 players hit under .270. Of course, of the six players who hit under .270, only Yoenis Cespedes had a walk rate under 8-percent. It isn’t everything (Seth Smith was tied for 7th in baseball in walk rate last year, with 521 plate appearances, but scored just 55 runs), but being able to take a walk helps mitigate batting average risk.
- Of those 41 players in 2014 with 80 runs scored, just one (Kole Calhoun) had fewer than 600 plate appearances. That would seem to limit guys with somewhat lengthy injury histories like Troy Tulowitzki and Hanley Ramirez. Runs and RBI are counting stats, and hitters need plate appearances for the counts to accumulate.
Targeting players who can take a walk and can stay healthy are important to scoring runs. Here are some guys who can fit that bill and aren’t among the top draft picks by NFBC ADP:
RBI
It’s pretty obvious that a big part of driving runs in is being able to hit home runs: over the last two years, there have been 46 instances of someone getting to the 90 RBI plateau, and only three of those 46 instances were players with fewer than 20 home runs. In that sense, if owners are looking to solidify their RBI totals, names like Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler, Joe Mauer, and Melky Cabrera are unlikely to be players that can help.
Here are some other characteristics to look for:
- Only one hitter last year out of 24 that cracked 90 RBI had a slugging percentage under .400 (Ryan Howard). While batting order position is certainly a factor as well, players like Ben Zobrist and Matt Carpenter probably won’t make a significant dent in the RBI column.
- As I mentioned, batting order position is important: of the 24 batters with at least 90 RBI last year, only Ian Kinsler didn’t have the majority of his at-bats come in the third, fourth, or fifth slot. This was no more evident than with the Dodgers last year, as Adrian Gonzalez (.482) and Yasiel Puig (.480) were virtually identical in slugging, but Gonzalez had 47 more RBI. Puig spent most of the year hitting second while Gonzalez spent most of the year hitting third or fourth.
- Again, like runs scored, plate appearances matter: of those 24 hitters with at least 90 RBI, only three players had fewer than 600 plate appearances (Duda, Encarnacion, and LaRoche). Relying on oft-injured players, as with runs, is bad news for counting stats.
Guys who produce runs have pop in their bat, can go deep with regularity, can stay on the field, and hit in the meat of the order. That helps give some parameters to run producers rather than just letting the RBI fall where they may. Here are a few names not going too early in drafts – outside the first 75 picks – who can help solidify RBI:
- David Ortiz
- Jay Bruce
- Lucas Duda
- Pablo Sandoval (and hope he stays healthy)
Remember that baseball is still pretty random at times, so none of this is exact. Identifying characteristics of players with good counting stats, though, is one step further away from “let the stats fall where they may”.
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Michael is a writer for XN Sports. You can follow him on Twitter @slimcliffy.
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