Fangraphs: Hard hit Rate, How it shows quickly, How it indicates future success, and how sox rookies fared

[bmags]

Great article:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/steven-kwan-geraldo-perdomo-and-the-victor-robles-problem/

Money line:

Quote

 If you want to know how well a rookie will hit in the future, you might be better off ignoring how good they are now and looking solely at how hard they hit the ball. Again, this might not surprise you, but it does illustrate the stickiness of EV and hard-hit rate, and the extent to which they affect wRC+ over a longer sample.

So I put together some notable sox young players, added Nick madrigal as a low bench mark for reference.

That last column is coming from here, but keep in mind for both Carlos Perez and Lenyn they had so few balls in play they were below any threshold set in this article. But I included them because I was already on the page.

Sox young'ns old'ns

Some things that are interesting. 

Danny Mendick was great last year, but it's unlikely he repeats his very nice .350 babip with how weakly he hits again. He's a nice guy though and i'm fine taking his rehab case on

Jake Burger hits the ball really, really hard. I kinda wish we'd just let him go to the pirates. I really think he can hit.

Seby being in that 97-104 range is kinda nice. Exactly what he kinda looked like.

Obviously takeaway here is Romy hits the ball hard and gets above that 40 BIP threshold. With time, ideally it gets him to nicer production.

Fun thing here is this is what the chart looks like if I include James Outman's 6 Balls in Play

LOL. 

[chw42]

I feel like once we get statcast metrics for all the minor league games, it'll be a lot easier to objectively evaluate prospects. I know Charlotte currently has a system in place, but it's only at certain minor league parks and the numbers aren't aggregated. You can only see them on a game-by-game basis. 

[bmags]

Just now, chw42 said:

I feel like once we get statcast metrics for all the minor league games, it'll be a lot easier to objectively evaluate prospects. I know Charlotte currently has a system in place, but it's only at certain minor league parks and the numbers aren't aggregated. You can only see them on a game-by-game basis. 

Would be nice but I'm not holding my breath. 

[maxjusttyped]

Sosa was regularly putting up plus EVs & max EVs during his games in Charlotte, IIRC.

[bmags]

1 minute ago, maxjusttyped said:

Sosa was regularly putting up plus EVs & max EVs during his games in Charlotte, IIRC.

yeah this was unfair to do, I think both him and perez look much better with some more time.