Donaldson remains on top; Trout joins him

I am pleased to announce that BABS is officially on track to be automated by next season. I have secured a programmer who is going to create a multi-year database of BABS data that you will be able to search and download, and create all sorts of reports.

In the ongoing quest to increase BABS’ usability, I’ve made a few changes to the chart this month.

Batters and pitchers, individually, are ranked by skill, but now they are each separated into two sections. For batters, I’ve grouped the full-time and mid-timers together and separated out those with 30-187 plate appearances. I found that these fringey players were cluttering up the chart, especially since their BABS ratings were less credible than those with more playing time. Those with less than 30 PA have been omitted because their ratings were pretty much useless.

You can still identify the skills tiers within each list, but the separation helps delineate how much faith you should be putting in the ratings. You can still cherry-pick upside bats on the part-timer list, though it’s clearer now that these are speculations.

I’ve separated the pitchers into starters and relievers. The starters are essentially those with around 12+ batters faced per game – so there are some long relievers in there – but this roughly captures all those with rotation potential. By separating out the relievers, we can better see which pitchers are getting the saves and which ones have just as much skill as those anointed with 9th inning work.

JULY 27 UPDATE: [EXCEL] [VIEW/PRINT]

The progression of individual player ratings, month-by-month, shows how BABS settles down and increases its credibility as playing time accumulates. This is insightful:

Player           Draft        April           May            June          July
=============    ======       =========       ========       =======       =======
D.Fowler         p,SB,+       P+,SB,AV+       P+,s,AV+       PW,AV+        PW,AV+
N.Castellanos    PW,a         P+,SB,AV-       P+,AV          P+,AV         P+,AV
J.Altuve         SB,AV        P+,s,AV+        PW,s,AV+       p,s,AV+       p,SB,AV
M.Betts          p,SB,AV      p,S+,a-         p,S+,AV        p,SB,AV       p,SB,AV
S.Marte          p,SB,AV      PW,SB,AV-       p,SB,AV-       p,S+,AV-      p,S+,AV-
C.Blackmon       p,SB,AV      SB,+            PW,AV          PW,AV         p,AV

The top BABS players through July are currently Josh Donaldson and Mike Trout, with identical [P+,s,AV+] ratings. Donaldson’s rating is identical to the one he posted last month. Trout’s excellent July so far (5 HR, 7 SB, 1.123 OPS) has boosted him from last month’s PW,AV+ mark.

Some observations this month…

There are 37 players currently with P+ ratings (24 full-timers and 13 mid-timers). Compare this to the pre-season list where there were 35 players (27 full-timers and eight mid-timers) who merited that rating. Given all the hubbub about this year’s power surge, the relative number of players with extreme power skill has not changed significantly.

In the Catchers chapter in the “Other Book,” I took some heat for BABS’ claim that Buster Posey and Jonathan Lucroy had identical [p,AV] skill sets, the only difference being Lucroy’s injury risk. Currently, Posey’s rating remains at [p,AV] while Lucroy has improved to [PW,SB,AV]. This brings up an interesting question – are we suppressing the true upside of players who have had injury issues early in their career? I think of others like Nelson Cruz, Edwin Encarnacion and Manny Machado (and maybe now Wil Myers). These players were never rated as elite players due to ongoing health concerns but exploded once they found a way to stay on the field. Of course, this is just cherry-picking, but it does beg the question.

Clayton Kershaw remains atop the starting pitcher list but his lingering injury may ultimately drop him to mid-timer status. Behind him is the identically-rated Brandon McCarthy, though in a much smaller sample. The huge variance to his draft rating does not bode well for him to sustain this level. Dodgers teammate Bud Norris seems to have rediscovered some life but his [k] rating is identical to his draft expectation. In short, if LA thinks those two can be adequate replacements for Kershaw, they’re nuts.

The newly separated reliever listing makes it easier to see that there are six current closers with extreme skill, but another eight non-closers who are potentially just as elite. Seung-Hwan Oh is listed among this latter group only because he only has 5 saves thus far, but you can see that he fits in perfectly well. Kelvin Herrera and Addison Reed have closing experience as well, and we all know about Dellin Betances’ potential. Non-closers with superior skill are good to own in deep enough leagues because they will rarely hurt your bottom line and could always back into some stray saves.