Using BABS during the season

by Doug Gruber

Your draft is over, Opening Day is nearly upon us, and you are wondering how best to use BABS once the season begins. We have been taught that BABS is best used as a draft preparatory tool. During the season, the land of small samples often leads to statistical ranges that are just too wide for BABS to provide us much value.

To put this into perspective, let’s look at the impact that last year’s shortened season had on the BABS asset ratings for the player pool. The below table lists the skills ratings for six batters. The first three had an extremely poor season by their standards, and the bottom three had league-leading performances. The first and third columns represent the BABS pre-season asset ratings for 2020 and 2021, respectively. The middle column shows the actual asset rating for their 2020 shortened season.

	2020		2021
Player	Pre-Season	Actual	Pre-Season
Christian Yelich	PW,s,A+	PW | -A	PW,s,AV
J.D. Martinez	P+,s,AV	PW | -A	PW,AV
Kris Bryant	p,a	| -A	p,a
Corey Seager	p,AV	PW,s,A+	PW,AV
Luke Voit	PW,a	P+,AV	PW,a
Jose Abreu	p,AV	PW,A+	p,AV

As you can see, the ratings generated by ~60 games barely moved the skills needle, if at all. Yelich for example, despite being in the bottom 25 percent for batting effectiveness in 2020, falls just one notch year-to-year, from A+ to AV. Conversely, Jose Abreu’s AL MVP season based on his outstanding 60 games was not enough to move him into a higher asset group entering this season.

As such, as we progress through this 2021 season, regardless of how a player has performed by Memorial Day, good or bad, it will matter little to his overall skill set in almost all cases. BABS has provided us broad skills groupings for good reason…to help prevent us from overreacting to small sample sizes. Assets generally change slowly.

That does not mean we should toss BABS aside now that our pre-season work is finished. The pre-season charts will always provide perspective on player skill when you need to dip into the free agent pool or need to validate an early outlier. There are two areas in particular where BABS can also have great benefit.

Call-ups: The current charts have asset ratings for more than 1300 players, which include hundreds of minor leaguers who may or may not see the inside of a Major League stadium this year. But we also have major league equivalent BABS ratings based on minor league performance from 2019, 2018 and 2017. All of this input can help provide a richer picture of who these young players are and what their true potential might be.

For instance, going into 2020, Trent Grisham (pictured) had a BABS rating of just () — well, no above average assets, actually. But his minor league rating was (PW,s,a), which showed the higher upside. He finished the season with a rating of (SB), and while his current pre-season rating is just (s*), you have to tuck that minor league level away as his potential upside down the line.

Bullpen speculations: The closer situation remains a mystery for several teams as we enter this season, and early weeks may not offer that much clarity either. But as you watch the bullpen roles begin to take shape, use your BABS asset rankings to identify those high-quality arms who might add value to your teams, even in a shared closer capacity. Last year, pitchers such as Ryan Pressly (E+,K+), James Karinchak (ER,K+) and Devin Williams (ER,KK) were ranked among the most skilled arms in baseball and earned their owners substantial profits from a successful speculative in-season pickup.

Other uses for BABS during the season could be to evaluate potential trade offers or to find players with skill sets to fill category holes such as stolen bases or power. Just be sure to take a measured approach as the season progresses and do your best to avoid those small samples and recency biases.

Note that there may be a few updates to the BABS database during the season, containing in-season ratings and rankings. BABSbaseball.com members will receive an email notification when these updates take place.