Fantasy Baseball Hitter Targets: Using contact rate to find value

We’re now a full five weeks into the fantasy baseball season, and we’re all starting to get a much clearer sense of just how good (or bad) our teams may be. More stats have started to stabilize, top prospects have been called up, and position battles have been won, so it becomes a little harder to find those impactful players on the waiver wire.

Yet, it’s still early enough in the season that there are plenty of talented hitters mired in long slumps or hitters off to hot starts who are being written off as a “fluke” by the majority of fantasy managers. My goal for today is to try and see if we can come up with a way to determine who our true targets should be and who is just experiencing a hot month.

For that, we’re going to turn to a set of stats I think are often overlooked: swing rates and contact rates.

Fantasy Baseball Hitter Targets – Rationale

The rationale behind focusing on these stats is pretty simple. Hitters who make the most valuable contact are the ones who produce the most fantasy value (duh). But making the most valuable contact doesn’t always come from barrel rates or exit velocities. Oftentimes, the most valuable thing a hitter can do is swing at good pitches and not swing at bad ones.

It seems simple, but it bears itself out in the numbers and is something we often overlook. As you can see from the graphic put together by the awesome Kyle Bland over at Pitcher List (follow him here), the most impactful decision a hitter can make in terms of Run Value added is to simply not swing at a pitch that isn’t a strike.

That’s a +4.8 Run Value on simply seeing a pitch outside of the strike zone and letting it go for a ball. No other swing decision even provides ANY level of positive run value. The next closest is seeing a pitch in the strike zone and deciding to swing, and even that creates -0.3 Run Value. Obviously, seeing a pitch in the strike zone and taking it and seeing a pitch out of the strike zone and swinging provide clear negative value, but look at that gap. There’s an over 10-run value difference from when a hitter takes a ball versus when a hitter swings at a ball.

It should then go without saying that having hitters on your team who will NOT swing at a ball increases your chances of producing great fantasy value from your hitters. To help us find those hitters, I created a leaderboard of Overall Swing%, Zone Swing%, Zone Contact%, Chase% (or O-Swing%), and Overall Contact Rate. I then deleted anybody worse than league average in any of the metrics. That means we should have a leaderboard of only players who swing at the right pitches, swing at them often, and make a lot of contact on them.

That’s a good list to be on.

However, I wanted to take it one step further. We know that swinging at strikes is good, but clearly, not good enough on its own since it still provides a -0.3 Run Value. To determine who is making the best decisions when they do swing at the zone, I also included Pitcher List’s Zone Decision Value metric, another Kyle Bland stat that qualifies how valuable each hitter’s swings in the zone are. Did you turn on a fastball on the inside half, or did you reach for a 2-0 slider on the outside corner? This metric qualifies the overall Run Value of each pitch in the given count and location and ascribes the hitter a Decision Value for his decision to swing at that pitch or not. By removing all hitters who had a below-average Zone Decision Value, that means I also eliminated hitters who swing a lot in the zone and make a lot of contact in the zone, but tend to swing at pitches that aren’t really beneficial.

At the end, this should give us a list of hitters who swing at pitches in the zone that they can make meaningful contact on, swing at them often, and make a lot of contact on those pitches. Those should be hitters we want on our team. So who are they?

Fantasy Baseball Hitter Targets – Waivers

There are fewer hitters in baseball hotter than Jorge Polanco, and he’s probably been scooped up in most places, but when I had him on the waiver wire article on Sunday, I got a lot of questions on Reddit about whether we should believe in what he’s doing, so I’m keeping him in the waiver wire section for now. Polanco has the highest chase rate of any hitter on here, so that’s something to watch, but it’s right around league average, and he continues to make nearly 80% contact overall, so the approach is working for him. He’s obviously not going to hit .389 or keep up with Aaron Judge when it comes to home run production, but Polanco is a good hitter who is feeling healthy and seeing the ball well right now.

You also know by now that Carson Kelly is off to a tremendous start, so it’s not a shock that he’s on a leaderboard that tries to highlight players with good process. Kelly is chasing out of the zone just 13% of the time, which is well down from his 23.7% career mark, and that’s why his walk rate is an absurd 23%. He’s also being more aggressive in the zone, but his Zone Decision Value, which is a Pitcher List metric that attributes run value to every swing decision made in the strike zone, is just league average. Kelly is also seeing fewer pitches in the strike zone than he ever has, which may explain his walk rate. This feels like a situation where pitchers will start to get more aggressive in how they attack Kelly, and then the regression will hit. Maybe not hit hard enough for you to want to drop him, but enough that he won’t produce like one of the best catchers in the league.

Brandon Nimmo may have gotten scooped up in a lot of leagues after his 9 RBI game on Monday, but he was also one of the most dropped players in Yahoo formats over the weekend. Even after his huge game on Monday, he’s hitting just .218/.261/.418 on the season, so there may still be some shallow leagues where he’s out there. His 12.1% barrel rate is indicative of the type of contact he’s making, and his .218 average comes with a .266 xBA. Buy into the approach and quality of contact here.

Wilyer Abreu doesn’t get the respect he deserves in fantasy circles, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that he doesn’t face left-handed pitching. That’s also why he’s on the waiver wire in more leagues than he should be, and unless you’re in a full week lineup lock league, Abreu deserves to be rostered. He’s on this list because his approach is really solid, and he scores a 128 on Pitcher List’s Zone Decision Value chart, which is the best score of any hitter in this entire article. If somebody wants to write off his good numbers to the hot first week, go ahead and let them, and get Abreu on your team.

Max Kepler is in a similar spot, where he essentially only plays against right-handed pitching for the Phillies. I also don’t love that Kepler is being more passive in the zone than he was last year, and also hitting the ball on the ground so often, with just a 33.3% fly ball rate. That being said, he’s chasing out of the zone far less than last year and swinging and missing less overall. His 8.3% barrel rate isn’t lighting up any leaderboards, but I think if he can reduce the groundball rate just a bit, we could see some strong summer production in that Philadelphia ballpark.

There’s also a lot to like in what Victor Scott II is doing. His zone swing rate is one of the highest on this list, but his Zone Decision Value score is also in line with Francisco Lindor and Jorge Polanco, two players off to really good starts. My only issue with Scott right now is that he’s raised his fly ball rate, and his 14.8-degree launch angle is too high for me. He’s sporting just a 31% groundball rate right now, which is not ideal for a player with his speed. I like a lot of what he’s doing in terms of his swing decisions, but I need him to focus more on line drives and hard groundballs, and I think we could see a strong stretch of production.

I know Joc Pederson and Miguel Vargas are hard to get behind as adds because their surface-level stats are so bad, and I get it. But perhaps you can just add them to your proverbial watch list, given his information. Both of them are swinging a lot in the zone and making a lot of contact in the zone. They’re both well below league average when it comes to chase rate and have better than league average swinging strike rates as well. Additionally, both of them have solid, but not great, Zone Decision Value scores. Honestly, most things under the hood look pretty good for both of them, except that Vargas is being too passive right now. His Swing Aggression score, another Pitcher List metric, is the third-worst of any player on this list. Maybe you just decide to keep an eye on whether or not he raises his overall swing rate and try to buy in then, but Vargas has come up for me on a lot of lists that highlight players with good process, so I think there’s something here.

I was of the mind that Gleyber Torres needed a fresh start away from the Yankees, and that could be the case. We’ve heard great things about his leadership in Detroit, and he’s off to a really solid start to the season. He’s chasing less outside the zone than he ever has and making more contact than he ever has, both of which are great. His 7.2% SwStr% is a career-best, but he’s also swinging at the lowest rate he ever has in a full season. His swing aggression score is the worst of any player on this list, and while I know part of that is helping him to not chase bad pitches outside of the zone, I think he can afford to be a little more aggressive in the zone since his Zone Decision score is slightly below league average.

It should not be a shock to find Carlos Santana and JJ Bleday on a leaderboard about contact rate and swing decisions. Both of them have shown a consistent ability to command the strike zone and not get themselves out on bad decisions. However, neither one is producing great results so far this season. Santana’s batted ball profile is similar to his career norms, but he’s hitting the ball on the ground a bit more, and his contact rate is down despite not really chasing more out of the zone. Perhaps that’s age catching up with him? Bleday is also hitting the ball on the ground 8% more than last year, which is the only difference I can spot. His swing decisions are still similar, and he’s chasing less outside of the zone, but he’s also putting the ball in play early in counts more often than last year, which is why his Zone Decision Value score is league average. Perhaps he needs to be more selective about what he swings at in the zone, and he’ll need to do it fast because Denzel Clarke is having a good season at Triple-A.

Oswaldo Cabrera makes this list, but he’s really only a deep league option because there is very little power and speed here. The plate discipline and swing decisions should keep his batting average solid, and he’ll score some runs as the everyday third baseman in that lineup, but there’s little else here.

Fantasy Baseball Hitter Targets – Trade

Some of these guys are players it’s going to be hard to trade for – like Francisco Lindor, Kyle Tucker, Cedric Mullins, William Contreras, and Matt Olson, but since they qualified, I wanted to make sure I at least kept their names on here.

Willy Adames is hitting just .212/.286/.305 on the season and just signed a big contract, so there were plenty of people projecting a bad year, which means more than a few would be willing to get rid of him in a trade. If we trust our leaderboard, he should be somebody we want to try and go get. However, I should note that he BARELY made it on the list. Technically, his swinging strike rate (SwStr%) is 0.1% too high, and his contact rate is 0.6% too low. However, those felt negligible enough to me that I decided to keep him on here. Especially since his SwStr% is actually 1.1% better than what he posted last year, and his contact rate would be the highest he’s had since 2019. Adames is pulling the ball and hitting it in the air slightly less than last season, but maybe that’s an adjustment to his new park. He’s making more contact in the zone than he ever has and chasing less than he has since 2021. The issue here appears to be that his swing rate and zone swing rate, which are both better than league average, are still down from last year. He’s being more passive than he was in his best seasons. Maybe it’s him worrying about trying to do too much on his new team, but we’d like to see Adames get a bit more aggressive because the rest of his profile is very much in line with what we’ve seen in the past.

Dylan Crews is another hitter who technically had a contact rate that was too low and a SwStr% that was too high, but he’s a young player who is currently on a hot streak, and his numbers over the last three weeks are much better than the numbers that kept him under the threshold, so I decided to allow him to stay. A young hitter who is not chasing out of the zone too much and is being aggressive in the zone while making lots of contact in the zone is a hitter we should want to get behind. Now, pitchers are aggressively attacking him in the zone, and not all of his decisions in the zone are good ones, but his 105 Zone Decision Value is above average. I think the approach we’re seeing from Crews is good, and the 15.3% barrel rate supports that, but he simply needs to continue to adjust to MLB velocity and sequencing. I believe it will happen and maybe is already happening.

I’m surprised to see Marcus Semien and Alec Bohm on here, but here we are. At the time of my writing this, Semien is hitting .177 with a .493 OPS while Bohm is hitting .221 with a .526 OPS. All of that is gross. However, both of them are chasing about 28%, which is below the league average. They’re both swinging about 49% of the time overall, which means they’re not being too passive. Neither one has a below-average swinging strike rate, and Bohm’s is at just 6%. They’re swinging in the zone more frequently than league average and making more contact in the zone than league average, with Bohm sporting an 88% contact rate overall. All of that is stuff we should love. In fact, Semien has a 127 Zone Decision Value, which is second of any hitter on this sheet, behind only Wilyer Abreu. Semien also has a 9.3% barrel rate that would be the second-best mark of his career. Semien is 34 years old and is being challenged more in the zone than he ever has, but he’s also seeing a 6% boost in sliders faced and is seeing fewer fastballs, so I don’t think this is a velocity thing. Right now, I just don’t see a reason why these guys are struggling as much as they are.

Jordan Westburg is a weird one to show up on here. I was a big fan of his coming into the season, but I think that March injury has been impacting him for a while now, and this trip to the IL for a hamstring injury could be just what he needs to let his body reset. His barrel rate is at 12.9%, he’s chasing less out of the zone, making more contact in the zone, more contact overall, and dropping his swinging strike rate to 10.2%. The biggest change I see in his profile is that his pull rate is down 13%, so the exit velocities are way down, and the power hasn’t been there. I really think the March “upper body” injury plays a big role in that, and I’d be looking to acquire Westburg while he’s on the IL right now.