Predicting The 2024 Opening Day Roster

Contact rates have nothing to do with BABIP. Hitting the ball hard is what drives BABIP, and I don’t think it’s controversial to say Duran has a lot more raw power than Ellsbury did. We don’t have EV data to compare, but the next best thing—the hard/med/soft percentages from FG’s batted ball data—backs that up.

Duran also doesn’t need a .400 BABIP to be a good player. He might need one to be a star, but there’s plenty of room for him to hit for something like a .340 BABIP and be a solid 2-3 WAR player. A 2-3 WAR player with two pre-arb years left is really valuable! Not sure why you’re so set on the impossibility of that seeing as that’s basically what he was projected to be as a prospect.

What basis do you have for saying Ellsbury was faster beyond your memory from a decade ago? They’re both among the fastest players active and stretch the defense with their speed. Either way, Ellsbury slowed down as he hit his 30s and his BABIP dropped 30 points for the Yankees. For his Red Sox career it was .326.

xwOBA incorporates sprint speed. It may only be for ground balls / singles though, not sure

add: but yes I do expect him to regularly outperform his xwOBA based on his profile, but whether it will be by as much as in 2023 is TBD

The power difference is not marginal. Ellsbury did not hit the ball very hard at any point in his career. He made a ton of contact and sprayed balls around the field, but his should’ve-been-MVP year was largely fueled by a HR/FB rate that was more than double what he did in any other full season in Boston. It should not be surprising that Duran hits the ball harder because he is very clearly much stronger than Ellsbury was at any point in his career. And for what it’s worth, Duran was on a 4 fWAR pace last year, so saying he was a 2-2.5 WAR player is underselling how good he was by quite a bit.

I just don’t think it’s obvious at all that he’s due for regression, but if you’re right there’s probably no point trading him because he’s probably worth more being a cheap fourth outfielder/pinch runner than he is in a trade. You and I probably aren’t seeing trends that MLB front offices are missing.

Well if sprint speed is incorporated into xwOBA already I wouldn't expect adding it in would account for a great amount of the difference between wOBA and xwOBA as is. No?

Also, baserunning instincts are somewhat measurable (and I would argue pretty much fully captured by WAR). UBR doesn't take into account opportunity rate or turning singles into doubles, but it does capture scoring from 2nd (the other example used), and this is considered in Duran's WAR. And no need to consider how speed turns singles into doubles of course because they are already treated as doubles for WAR purposes.

Broke: Sign Teoscar, trade Duran
Woke: Sign Imanaga + Giolito, get in on that overheated trade market for cost controlled starters with Kutter Crawford

Bespoke: trade Duran AND Crawford as part of the “acquire Fernando Tatis without giving up Mayer/Anthony/Teel” package

I think your statement "[xwOBA] is designed to be a pure measure of quality of contact" is actually the correct definition of xwOBAcon since xwOBA includes outcomes (i.e., it's a blended metric).

Its probably much easier to see a correlation between sprint speed and infield hit % than it is to calculate which extra bases are stolen because of speed.

LOLOL

Considering Martin nor Jansen are relevant to us after 2024

You definitely trade then if the deal is right