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Rick Lucks discusses Launch Angle and Barrels as predictive tools as his 2024 series on making sabermetrics more accessible to fantasy baseball managers continues.
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?
Launch angle is basically 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. Let's get started!
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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. It is possible to register a QS with an ERA of 4.50, 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 the intricacies of a mathematical relationship. You don't need to worry about the math.
With this in mind, Ronald Acuna Jr. led baseball in Barrels in 2023 with 86. He was followed by Matt Olson (73 Barrels), Shohei Ohtani (70), and a three-way tie between Aaron Judge, Marcell Ozuna, and Austin Riley (66 each). This group passes 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 2023 with a 27.5% Brls/BBE figure, followed by Ohtani (19.6%), Alvarez (18%), and a tie between J.D. Martinez and Matt Chapman (17.1% each). Both Martinez and Chapman are currently afterthoughts on draft day by ADP, 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 2023 Brls/PA leaderboard consists of Judge (14.4%), a three-way tie between Acuna, Ohtani, and Alvarez (11.7%), and Corey Seager (11.2%). Again, it's a bunch of names we already know are really good.
Brls/BBE data helped identify sleepers in every year of its existence. 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 identified as a sleeper here last year. 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 (Tyler 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. Read up on all types of Sabermetrics to get an edge in your 2024 fantasy baseball drafts.
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