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Welcome, RotoBallers, to our overview of Barrels for fantasy baseball. This article is a deeper dive into MLB advanced stat called "Barrels" and is part of our ongoing series "Using Sabermetrics for Fantasy Baseball."
In this article, we'll define Barrels in layman's terms and discover how great they are for hitters. We'll also explore how looking at Barrels as the rate stat, Barrels per Batted Ball Event (Brls/BBE), can be a great tool for identifying sleepers.
You can find our entire sabermetrics glossary, which includes links to many other sabermetric stats as part of this series. Each stat deep dive will be released over the next few days. Stay tuned!
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What Are Barrels? Sabermetrics Glossary
Previously, we looked at how exit velocity is only one piece of the fantasy baseball analysis puzzle. Baseball broadcasts commonly cite Launch Angle (LA) to complement their EV figures, but it is given in terms of degrees. Are we trying to find the hypotenuse of an isosceles triangle?
Fortunately, launch angle is just a fancy way of saying something the fantasy community has used for years. It sounds way more complicated than it is.
A Statcast metric called Barrels represents the ideal marriage between EV and LA, and this article will show you how to incorporate them into your fantasy analysis.
What is a Barrel?
We don't always measure hits in terms of degrees, instead choosing terms like "grounder" or "fly ball." Here is the batted ball type produced by the various degree measurements:
| Batted Ball Type | Launch Angle |
| Ground ball | Less than 10 degrees |
| Line drive | 10-25 degrees |
| Fly ball | 25-50 degrees |
| Pop-up | More than 50 degrees |
Most batters want to live in the 10-50 degree range, as grounders rarely produce power, while pop-ups rarely produce anything other than easy outs. Well-struck balls in this range of launch angles are the batted balls that fantasy managers are most interested in. Barrels filter out everything else, allowing us to evaluate who is hitting the most of these high-value batted balls.
A Barrel is defined as "a ball with a combination of exit velocity and launch angle that averages at least a .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage." It should be noted that the numbers above are only a minimum threshold.
In this respect, the stat is like a Quality Start. Registering a QS with an ERA of 4.50 is possible, but the actual average ERA of all MLB Quality Starts falls well below 4.50.
The range of EVs and LAs that combine to form Barrels is called the Barrel Zone. Higher EVs can compensate for less ideal LAs to produce the .500/1.500 minimum. Batted balls must have an EV of at least 98 mph and fall within the 10-50 degree LA range to be classified as Barrels. We care about fantasy production, not mathematical intricacies - so you don't need to worry too much about the math.
With this in mind, Aaron Judge led baseball in Barrels in 2024 with 105. He was followed by Shohei Ohtani (103), Juan Soto (91), Bobby Witt Jr. (77), and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (72). This group passed the sniff test. Still, we already knew this. What do Barrels add to the equation?
The Value of Barrels
Barrels become more instructive when you stop looking at them as a counting stat and start examining them as a rate stat. By taking the number of Barrels and dividing it by the total number of Batted Ball Events (BBE), we get a percentage that tells us how frequently a player's batted balls are Barrels.
Judge topped this list in 2024 with a 26.9 percent Brls/BBE figure, followed by Ohtani (21.5 percent), Giancarlo Stanton (20.7 percent), Soto (19.7 percent), and a tie between Michael Toglia and Tyler O'Neill (17.3 percent each). Toglia and O'Neill are afterthoughts on draft day but don't underestimate the pop in their bats.
Some analysts prefer Brls/PA (or Barrels per PA) instead of Brls/BBE, but there isn't much difference between the two stats. The 2024 Brls/PA leaderboard consists of Judge (14.9 percent), Ohtani (14.1 percent), Soto (12.8 percent), Stanton (12.4 percent), and a tie between Witt and Corey Seager (10.9 percent each). Again, it's a bunch of names we already know are really good.
Brls/BBE data helped identify sleepers every year. Last season, Matt Chapman was mentioned as a potential sleeper based on his 17.1 percent rate of Brls/BBE tying for fourth in MLB in 2023. He delivered, slashing .247/.328/.463 with 27 HR and earning himself a nine-figure contract extension.
J.D. Martinez was also mentioned as the one tied with Chapman, and he was a disappointment with a .235/.320/.406 line with 16 HR in 495 PAs. Still, his bizarre offseason may have ruined his campaign. Brls/BBE has an excellent track record since its inception in 2015.
Chris Carter had an 18.7% Brls/BBE in limited 2015 playing time. He led the NL in homers the next year with 41. Gary Sanchez ranked eighth in the league with a 15.8% Brls/BBE in 2016, foreshadowing his strong 2017.
Joey Gallo's 22.1% rate of Brls/BBE over 253 batted balls in 2017 suggested that his 41 HRs were real, and he effectively repeated them the next season (40 HR). Likewise, Luke Voit's third-place finish in Brls/BBE in 2018 foreshadowed his .263/.378/.464 line with 21 HRs in 510 PAs for the Yankees in 2019.
The 2020 season is best forgotten, and Giancarlo Stanton was previously identified as a sleeper here. They can't all be winners.
Where Do I Find Barrels?
The best place to find information on Barrels is the Statcast leaderboard on Baseball Savant. All of the data you want is on the far right of the table and looks like this:
That's all three numbers referenced above: the raw number of Barrels, Brls/BBE, and Brls/PA. Baseball Savant prefers Brls/PA since it's color-coded (good numbers are red, poor ones are blue), but this author prefers Brls/BBE. Walks and strikeouts don't involve contact, so why would we consider them in a contact quality metric?
Conclusion
Viewing Barrels as a rate stat can be beneficial. Few metrics have proven to have the predictive power that Brls/BBE has shown in recent years. There have been a few delayed reactions (O'Neill led baseball in Brls/BBE in 2018 but didn't break out until 2021), but in general, it's a stat you want to look at.
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