Monday's Forum: Stats to evaluate hitters. Part 1 of 2.

What the hell is slugging percentage? OPS? Why would I look at a guy and watch how many strikeouts he has? Look there are a lot of reasons to play fantasy baseball. No girlfriend. Bad hygiene. A bunch of old hacks that couldn't cut it in little league.
The Jon, being a winner and a new breed of fantasy baseballer doesn't bother with minute discussions about the difference between having a .459 slugging percentage compared with his .439 on base percentage. Is that even good? Sure I look at those stats, I don't know what the mean, but anything over .400 is probably good. Who "the I can't cuss on this blog" cares?
Babe Ruth is the best player of all-time, but if I had to draft an all-time fantasy team, my first pick would be Ty Cobb baseball's contact hitter. I am a sucker for hits.
What can a hit be: a single, double, triple or homerun.
When a person gets on base what can happen: a steal or a run.
If the hit is a double, triple, or homer, what can happen. An RBI.
What does a player with 185 to 200 hits-plus get: A high average, OPS, SLG and a chance to be on The Jon's team.
Why do I target Ichiro, Vladimir Guerrero, Manny Ramirez, Grady Sizemore, Alfonso Soriano, Michael Young, Juan Pierre and Derek Jeter? Because they are champions ... sorry, Four Horseman moment. Look at those guys. You can find five other offensive categories to select those guys, and it all starts with hitting.
When you are in the dregs of the middle and late rounds, you will still have guys such as Lyle Overbay, Mark Loretta, Edgar Renteria and Carlos Guillen to pick. They are not teams to build around on, but the provide the foundation to support the top hitters that you picked in the early rounds.
Power comes and goes. There are only a couple of hitters that you look at for quantified power: Albert Pujols, Soriano and David Ortiz. You know they will get 40 homers. A guy such as Vladimir Guerrero? He'll be lucky to get 35 homers, but I'll take his 200 hits, 100 RBI and 100 runs. Thanks.
In a week-to-week format that counts hits, all you need is Ichiro and you are set. He gives you 12 hits by himself. Add your other hitters, and you have hits, average, OPS all set. Since hits indicate multilevel greatness in a player, you usually will nab the runs and RBI categories. That is three guaranteed stats with the ability to grab two more stats. Since high hits guys can also be top homerun producers (Pujols has fantasy baseball MVPs because he hovers around 180 hits ... you already know about his power) you can have power as well.
Look, target those other stats as well, but your first entry point to any player is hits. You have the first pick in the draft: Purple Lips, Albert Pujols or Ryan Howard?
Purple Lips is out of contention with his 166 hits last season. Pujols had 177 but was hurt for a couple of months. Ryan Howard had 182 hits plus his power. So Pujols or Howard? Read on.
Look at The Baseball Stars opinions and decide for yourself.

Any Jon can look at HR totals and decide who was the best power hitter in baseball last year: Ryan Howard.
His 58 HRs were the best nonsteroid tainted total since Roger Maris in 1961.
But I’ll actually argue Albert Pujols was more productive and more likely to repeat his statistics. While this may not come as a crazy notion, the reason for it may be: Pujols’ .671 slugging percentage was considerably better than Howard’s .659.
When it comes fantasy stats and projecting future performances, I focus on the “percentage” stats (on base and slugging) and try my best to ignore “dependent” stats (RBI and runs) when evaluating hitters. I also pay some attention to bb/k ratio, but don’t worry so much about totals.
The thing I like about percentage stats is that they simply don’t lie. How good a player’s teammates are has little bearing on how often he gets on base or gets an extra-base hit. Of course, most fantasy leagues don’t reward those stats, but they are solid indicators when determining a player’s future performance.
While this probably sounds overly complicated, I actually think it makes things easier. Stay with me here … There’s no saying how many opportunities someone like Howard will get next year with runners on base (you’re forced to predict too many other factors like how good the guys ahead of and behind him in the order are going to be). But, you can take one look at his .425 OBP and .659 SLG and safely assume he’s going to get on base and hit for power. Will he equal his totals of 149 RBI and 104 runs? Who knows. Will he hit close to 58 HRs and walk 108 times? I’d say there’s a good chance.
It might be more effective to illustrate my point with someone whose “total” stats weren’t so gaudy: Manny Ramirez, whose 35 HR, 102 RBI and 79 runs could be considered a disappointment. Look a little deeper though -- .439 OBP, .659 SLG and a 100/102 BB/K ratio. Those numbers tell me Ramirez was hardly falling off, and is primed for a bounce back year if he has a little more luck and stays healthy.
If you were to base your analysis simply on “dependent” stats you could be excused for thinking someone such as Raul Ibanez deserves to be drafted around the same time.
It can work in reverse too: I’ll offer Ibanez as a prime example. Ibanez drove in 123 runs last year and scored 103 yet posted a .869 OPS, the same as Reed Johnson. Ibanez has proven he’s a solid player but don’t believe for a second he’ll put up numbers anywhere near last year’s. He took advantage of his opportunities and whenever he was on base his teammates picked him up, but people far smarter than me have proven neither of those things are repeatable skills. He also struck out almost twice as often as he walked (65/115).
This is hardly the only way to evaluate players, but if you’re looking for a way to differentiate yourself from the herd, looking at stats not directly rewarded by your league is a great place to start. Often times, they’re better indicators too.

So our crew is set to discuss the importance of various offensive categories for building your squad. Of course, the biggest cliché, acquire power, comes to me. Any hump can tell you that you need a balanced attack to win and this is no doubt true. In recent years power has started to fall into that category of being called “overrated”. Others have come to the forefront to emphasize other statistical categories, homeruns have taken a back seat. Those OBP snobs like FreeSanJose want to make you feel guilty for looking at somebody with 50 homers and 100 RBI and a crappy average. You want to be a man and draft somebody that goes up there and takes his hacks. Well I am your advocate old school power guy. I will reassure you that it is OK to draft a “one dimensional power hitter”.
A few factors have swung the pendulum back towards guys with pop. While it's true, guys such Barroid Bonds are still out there, I do believe that the steroid bubble has burst a little bit. The majors are no longer the anarchist free-for-all of the 1990s. Since we don’t have 15 fifty home run guys per season anymore, true power hitters are harder to come by. Everyone will have a couple of high thirty or low forty homer guys, but you can really make some headway if you get one of the handful of sluggers. There were zero 60 home run hitters last season and exactly one over 50.
In no way am I saying to avoid an across the board stud like Pujols or Ryan Howard for Andruw Jones. Just don't shy away from a Jones or Jim Thome type player in the early rounds because he might hurt you average. Don’t forget that a dinger is also a run, a hit, and an RBI.
In the event that you can’t get enough pillars of power at their traditional spots — 1st base, DH, outfield — you can still fill these categories piecemeal. Get power out of your middle infielders. Chase Utley, Dan Uggla, Ray Durham, Bill Hall, Jimmy Rollins, and Miguel Tejada all ranged from 24 to 35 homers last season. Put that up against whatever slappy middle infielder you opponent is throwing out on a weekly basis. and you can close the gap with other teams that are getting power out of more conventional positions.
The bottom line: true power hitters are at a premium. You need these guys to win. You can always find a punch ‘n’ judy hitter to fill up hits, average and the like, but power will run out sooner than most think. Be a man. Draft a slugger.

There are many “sexy” categories that fantasy owners use to measure talent. Some like batting average, others like homeruns.
Personally I like strikeouts.
I suppose this falls into the Money Ball theory, but when viewed in the right context, strikeouts can help determine if, or when, a player should be drafted.
First example: Adam Dunn.
Everyone loves a slugger because homeruns are a multi-category helper, but does everyone really love Adam Dunn? Sure the guy has value. He hits 40 homeruns every year and is a lock for 100+ RBIs and runs. But he strikes out almost 200 times every season which kills his average (he hit .230 last year), and that in turn drags down your team’s average. Last year Dunn whiffed 194 times in 561 at bats, or 35 percent of the time. Is that really a guy you want to depend on week in and week out? A guy who gives up at least one at bat per game?
I sure as hell don’t, unless I’ve decided to forgo the ratio categories and target power, which is a bad move. This is why I haven’t drafted, or made a run at, Dunn since his rookie season.
Simply put, the number of strikeouts a player accumulates helps you determine how often he puts the ball in play. And the more likely a player is to make contact (less strikeouts), the better his chances are that he could get an extra hit or two a week. Hypothetically, that could add an additional 15 to 20 hits over the course of a season.
In Dunn’s case, that could increase his batting average by 15 points, put him into the neighborhood of respectability, or jettison him into the tier where Andruw Jones resides.
Dunn and Jones are top-notch sluggers who aren’t first-round selections because their low averages. But Jones is ranked higher than Dunn because his .260 to .270 average is much more tolerable than Dunn’s .240.
The same method of evaluation can also be helpful when trying to determine the difference bench guys (fourth or fifth outfielders), players at shallow positions (catcher) or between two speedsters. Look at Juan Pierre and Scott Podsednik.
At some point before or during your draft, you’re likely going to realize that you need speed and the two best options (after Jose Reyes) are Pierre and Podsednik.
The strikeout category is extremely helpful here because you’ll realize that Pierre, who struckout 38 times last year in 699 at-bats (toughest in the majors), is probably worth drafting at least three rounds higher than Podsednik, who struckout 98 times in 524 ABs.
And because the K total affects the On-Base Percentage, this hurts Podsednik’s value as a leadoff man, which then could make him worth that Dave Roberts. Roberts generates similar stats, when playing fulltime, while striking out a third less.
And finally, the stat also helps judge a player’s ability to avoid lulls. Nothing will hurt a team from week to week more than a player who is incredibly inconsistent and prone to slump. Consistency is key in fantasy baseball.
Some could say that on-base percentage measures the same area, but that’s not entirely true. OBP takes into account walks, which may or may not help a player get back into a groove. Walks also may not be a category that your league keeps.