February 19, 2023

Eric Samulski reviews the Statcast leaderboard to identify top hitters for expected batting average (xSLG) that could be draft sleepers for 2023 fantasy baseball.

After diving into the xBA leaderboard last week, I'm continuing my look at Statcast metrics by turning our eye to the xSLG leaderboard. We'll go through some of the leaders in the hopes of not just giving you Statcast numbers but explaining how I believe those numbers impact the projections I have for the given player heading into 2023.

Expected Slugging Percentage (xSLG) "is formulated using exit velocity, launch angle and, on certain types of batted balls, Sprint Speed." As we mentioned with xBA, we can't just say, "Oh, this hitter had a .540 xSLG, so he'll slug .500 this year," but we can say, "The quality of contact he made was on par with a hitter who slugs .540." That can be useful because it gives us a better feel for the batter's quality of contact because it removes defense from the equation.

While Statcast metrics are not perfect, they enable us to look beyond just what the result on the field was and start to see the quality of contact or pitches and get a sense of who was performing at a consistently high level, whether the results were there or not. That's how we can hopefully unearth some value.

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The Best Way to Use This Article

While there are many articles like this that highlight certain stat leaderboards, it's important to know HOW to use them.

In my opinion, the most basic starting place for any fantasy baseball season is to familiarize yourself with the player pool and the current ADP and start putting together projections. Even if you download built-in projections like ATC, which you can find on RotoBaller, it's important to see if those numbers align with your views on the players. In order to do that, you need to have your own thoughts on who's in for a bounceback or letdown season, and then manually tweak the projections if need be.

That's where these articles come in handy. If you believe that the current projection for a player isn't properly taking into account the quality of contact they made, the poor luck they had, or the playing time they should earn, then you can adjust those projections and find yourself some players you want to target and/or others you want to fade.

xSLG Leaderboard

I covered Corey Seager, Jose Abreu, and Bryan De La Cruz in the xBA article, so make sure you check that out.

Mike Trout - OF, LAA

2022 Stats: .268/.364/.567, 40 HRs, 97 Runs, and 95 RBI in 601 plate appearances

Eric's 2023 Projection: .279, 40 HR, 97 Runs, 97 RBI in 600 plate appearances

I wanted to cover Trout briefly here because he's a former consensus number-one overall pick who is now being drafted in the second round.

Yes, he has not had 600 plate appearances since 2019, but the quality of contact is still elite. In 2022, Trout actually had the highest barrel rate of his career at 19.7%. He also put up the highest fly ball rate of his career at 56.7%, which led to 40 home runs in just 119 games.

I noticed that Trout's walk rate also was the lowest since 2012, so I checked his overall approach, and it seems that he got more aggressive in the zone, perhaps trying to take advantage of the few strikes he gets before pitchers pitch around him. Trout's zone swing rate (Z-Swing%) was the highest of his career at 67.9%, and his overall swing rate was also the highest it's ever been at 43.4%. He also posted the highest O-Swing% of his career at 26.3%, his contact rate overall was down, and his swinging strike rate was up, so it's possible that Trout was pushing himself to be more aggressive and sell out a bit more for power.

That may mean the power spike we saw is here to stay and also may mean the average dips below the .310 range he used to put up. However, it makes no sense to me that the projections have him hitting in the .260 range. He has legitimately never hit that poorly in his career. Even last year with the higher swing and miss rate, he hit .283. If you give him a small downgrade, you can have him hit in the high .270s, but I can't see any world in which he posts a lower batting average than that, which means he's currently being undervalued at his ADP. Of course, that's if he plays 140+ games.

ADP: 20th overall

Eric's Ranking: 15th overall 

Danny Jansen - C, TOR

2022 Stats: .260/.339/.516, 15 HRs, 34 Runs, 44 RBI, and one SB in 248 plate appearances

Eric's 2023 Projection: .246, 22 HRs, 59 Runs, 64 RBI, two SBs in 440 plate appearances

Yes, we're going to talk about a catcher, and not just that, but a catcher who isn't even the first drafted catcher on his own team. While everybody is swooning over Alejandro Kirk, his battery mate is being overlooked. Yes, Kirk is going to play a lot this year, but Jansen will too. He had 248 plate appearances (PAs) in 72 games while battling injury last year, so him getting to 400 PAs now that it's just him and Kirk behind the dish makes total sense. Especially since one of them could DH against lefties to give Brandon Belt a break.

Jansen made a few noticeable changes last year. For starters, he became more patient at the plate. He cut his overall Swing% and Z-Swing% to the lowest since his rookie year and cut his O-Swing% by over 2% as well. As a result, his SwStr% dropped, his contact rate went up overall, and his zone contact rate was the highest since 2019. He also cut his whiff rate on breaking balls by 10%, which is a monumental shift.

By swinging at better pitches, Jansen was able to do more damage with his swing, hitting for a 13.1% barrel rate that almost doubled his career-high. He also continued a two-year trend of trying to lift the ball more, registering a 50.6% groundball rate that allowed him to hit 15 home runs in 72 games despite putting up a lower Hr/FB% than each of 2020 and 2021. This wasn't a flukey power boost.

Now, it was also only 248 PAs, so we need to see if Jansen can carry this new approach; however, we know that a new approach (and new eyewear) was something Jansen was working on during the 2021 season too. From May 1st of 2021 through his full 2022 season, Jansen was hitting .268/.342/.549 across 404 PAs with 26 home runs and an 18.8% strikeout rate.

If I insert that exact line into my projections, Jansen becomes the seventh-ranked catcher. If I dial it back a little bit to the line I have above, Jansen is the 12th-ranked catcher and a great value where he is currently being drafted. And that's if we're being conservative about his changes.

ADP: 170th overall

Eric's Ranking: 163rd overall

Christian Walker - 1B, ARI

2022 Stats: .242/.327/.477, 36 HRs, 84 Runs, 94 RBI, and two SBs in 667 plate appearances

Eric's 2023 Projection: .252, 28 HRs, 76 Runs, 87 RBI, two SBs in 625 plate appearances

There was so much talk about Christian Walker's slow start to 2022 that I'm not quite sure people realize how solid his end-of-season line actually was. Walker had a strong contact profile in the first half with a 19.2% strikeout rate, 13.5% walk rate, solid 44.1% pull rate, and 47% fly ball rate, but the hits just weren't falling, thanks in large part to a .188 BABIP.

In the second half, Walker kept the strikeout rate around 20% but walked far less, making more contact overall and benefiting from a .315 BABIP to hit .285. However, his power profile was actually worse in the second half, where he hit 14 home runs compared to 22 in the first half, thanks to an out-of-whack 14.8% infield fly balls in 70 second-half games.

However, when you dig in, you see that his launch angle didn't change much in the second half of the season.

In fact, there are few major changes to Walker's approach during the season. He pulled the ball a little less and hit more line drives and fewer fly balls in the second half, but his hard contact actually went up. As a result, the lower home run total in the second half doesn't seem like the result of anything other than the ebbs and flows of a season.

On the whole, Walker lifted the ball more in 2022 and was far more selective, lowering his swing rate by 9% and his O-Swing% by 5%. His zone contact was a career-high and his SwStr% was a career-low so that more selective and lift-centric approach seems to be geared towards more power. If we believe the first half was a little unlucky with batting average but a little lucky with power, then I think the line above makes sense and makes Walker a pretty good buy at 1B.

ADP: 98th overall

Eric's Ranking: 130th overall

xSLG Under-Performers Leaderboard

This leaderboard shows us which players had an xSLG much higher than their actual slugging percentage. Meaning, which players "should" have produced a much SLG and might have sneaky value. 

I covered Nolan Gorman in my article about players with defensive concerns, so make sure to check that out here.

Jesse Winker - OF, MIL

2022 Stats: .251/.362/.436, 18 HRs, 62 Runs, 59 RBI, and one SB in 505 plate appearances

Eric's 2023 Projection: .256, 18 HRs, 60 Runs, 57 RBI, one SB in 480 plate appearances

While Jesse Winker figures to be ready for Opening Day, this is a player coming off of both neck and back injuries who will open the year as the team's designated hitter as Tyrone Taylor, who is out of options, gets a long look in the outfield along with intriguing rookie Garrett Mitchell and Christian Yelich.

Much of Winker's value will depend on the totally subjective opinion of how much he improves after his surgeries. He claims it has removed mobility issues in his neck and issues with his grip, which are both positive signs. However, I think we also have to wonder how much his breakout in 2021 was a bit of a fluke.

That season saw him hit .305 with 24 home runs in 110 games, but he also put up a career-high BABIP and an inflated 20.7% HR/FB rate. However, we can also acknowledge that his 9.7% HR/FB rate last year was lower than it should have been, especially given his pull rate was almost the same as in 2021 and his fly ball rate was even higher. Of course, it also came with a 17.4% infield fly ball rate, which is something he'll need to fix.

Yet, Winker kept many of the gains he made in 2021. His swinging strike rate was still down at 8% and his zone contact rate was back up to 88% as he continued to cut his O-Swing% and attack pitches in the zone more frequently. He also cut his whiff rate on breaking balls by 5% as he became a bit more selective.

However, his barrel rate and overall quality of contact took a major hit, which could be because of the injuries or just regression to the mean after 164 games between 2020-21 of peak performance. I find it tough to believe all 164 games were a fluke, so I think we should expect to see some minor hard-contact gains for a player who has a long history of strong plate discipline and who made a conscious decision to lift the ball last year. Now that he's playing in a park that is more conducive to power, I think Winker should see a bit of an offensive boost; however, his poor defense, which I covered here, makes me a little skeptical about his plate appearance totals but still comfortable drafting him at his ADP.

ADP: 254th overall

Eric's Ranking: 243rd overall

Spencer Torkelson - 1B, DET

2022 Stats: .231/.317/.399, 17 HRs, 57 Runs, 58 RBI in 525 plate appearances

Eric's 2023 Projection: .235, 18 HRs, 57 Runs, 57 RBI, two SBs in 540 404 plate appearances

Despite being a former first-overall pick and one of the more highly-touted prospects in the minor leagues, Spencer Torkelson seems to be a forgotten man. Hitting .203 in 110 games will do that to a player. But perhaps that's a mistake?

The 23-year-old played in only 156 minor league games, hitting .258 with 35 home runs, a .889 OPS, and a 24.6% strikeout rate in what amounts to a full season of baseball. In his MLB debut, Torkelson struck out 24.5% of the time but had a lower walk rate than any season he's ever had in the minors, likely due to major league pitchers not trying to pitch around him the way they did in the minors.

However, there are some things that bode well for the former top prospect. After a slow start to the season, his Hard Hit% increased noticeably from early June on.

He also increased both his Pull% and his launch angle as the season went on, which is something you want to see from a 220-pound hitter with 78th-percentile max exit velocity.

Considering a 10.5% swinging-strike rate and 86.2% zone contact rate aren't much to be worried about, it seems like Torkelson doesn't have major swing-and-miss risk coming into his second season. He underperformed in both his xBA and xSLG, even though neither metric suggested he should have had a great season.

However, I'm intrigued by a young hitter who had a 75th-percentile chase rate and 63rd-percentile walk rate and started to hit to his pull side more as the year went on. Torkelson has admitted that he was sped up last year and "lost [his] swing a little bit," in his debut, which is not uncommon. He's been a talented hitter his whole career, and he's going to play nearly every day for the Tigers, so I think it's smart to bet on a small bounceback here, but perhaps not as many as the ever-rising ADP seems to suggest.

ADP: 280th overall

Eric's Ranking: 292nd overall

Matt Vierling - OF, DET

2022 Stats: .252/.307/.383, seven HRs, 39 Runs, 35 RBI, and eight SBs in 370 plate appearances

Eric's 2023 Projection: .256, 9 HRs, 43 Runs, 39 RBI, 10 SBs in 400 plate appearances

Matt Vierling came up during my xBA research as well, but I chose not to put him in the article, so when I saw him pop up on the xSLG leaderboard, too, I decided it was time to dig in. Lo and behold, I came away pretty intrigued by Vierling as a deep formats option given his speed and contact ability.

For starters, Vierling was a fifth-round draft pick back in 2018 and was a decent minor-league player in the Phillies organization. Due to the COVID season without minor league games, Vierling only had 280 minor league games under his belt before being called up to the majors, but he hit .267 during his minor league career. However, that number is actually weighed down by a poor 2019 season that saw him hit .232 in his first season in High-A.

The FanGraphs scouting report on him prior to the 2022 season said he was "poised to be a lefty-killing, multi-positional role player in 2022." True to that, Vierling hit .295/.333/.426 off of lefties with two home runs and three stolen bases. He also started games at 1B, 2B, 3B, and all three outfield positions.

Now he moves to a Tigers team that certainly has spots in the lineup for Vierling to fill, and I would expect him to be an everyday starter versus left-handed pitching, taking the place of Kerry Carpenter or Akil Baddoo. But here's the thing, I think he can earn more playing time than that.

Even against right-handed pitching, Vierling makes solid contact with just a 21% strikeout rate against them last year and was 80th percentile in whiff rate overall. He also hits the ball with authority when he does make contact. He was 85th percentile in hard-hit rate and 82nd percentile in max exit velocity. That solid contact approach and good quality of contact gave him a .279 xBA, which was good for the top 7% in baseball.

He also saw a batting average boost in the second half of the year by hitting the ball on the ground more, which seems counterintuitive, but he doesn't have natural raw power. What he does have is 97th-percentile sprint speed. He's now moving into a park that's not great for power but is the ninth-best offense park for doubles and the best offensive park for triples. If Vierling can keep his line drive/groundball approach, the spacious nature of the park should help him pile up a few more impactful hits.

What this comes down to for me is simply opportunity. We have a player we know will play every day against LHP who is competing for playing time against potentially below-average major league baseball regulars. Vierling is also more likely to make contact than Baddoo and Carpenter, who have swing-and-miss issues. That should give Vierling a path to more playing time, which will enable him to be useful to managers in deep leagues or AL-only leagues.

ADP: 502nd overall

Eric's Ranking: 364th overall

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