MLB Weighted Home Runs Plus Stolen Base Leaders
MLB Weighted Home Runs Plus Stolen Base Leaders
Jul 23, 2024
Author: 3-1Count.com
I went down a Fantasy Baseball rabbit hole today. It started with me taking a look at which players lead MLB in combined home runs and stolen bases. After all, these are arguably our two most precious counting stats categories.
Once I took at look at the top players for home runs and the top for stolen bases I wanted to see a list with weighting applied. This was an effort to balance the contributing values as there are many more home runs hit than bases stolen. I took a few liberties in doing this for the sake of making it a bit easier, which it did. One of these was to limit the input to players that have reached at least 10 home runs and 10 stolen bases on the season. The reason I did this was to focus on players that contribute effectively in both categories.
The outcome of the 2024 weighting formula is to calculate stolen bases at a value of 1.26 each while home runs are valued at .83.
So, let’s take a look at the 2024 weighted leaders (qualifier at least 10 HR and 10 SB) through Jul 22. It’s roughly 100 games into the season so I added a projection for the full season based upon 100 games played:
2024 HR + SB Weighted Leaders (qualifier: 10HR/10SB)
Once I had done this for 2024 I had to go back and look at 2023. We need comparisons of course. So here are the combined home run + stolen base leaders for last year along with a value weighting applied. Here I used 15 home runs and 15 stolen bases as a qualifier.
The weighting for 2023 came to a stolen base valued at 1.34 and a home run at .80.
2023 HR + SB Weighted Leaders (qualifier: 15HR/15SB)
So what’s to be learned from this that we don’t already more or less know? The answer is I’m not all together sure. The Fantasy Industry is rife with value calculators and good projection systems. And I certainly wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel.
Thinking about it, what I feel this exercise did pretty well is to showcase the fantasy impact of players that make meaningful contributions in home runs and steals. The weighting also gives us a way to recognize some possibly hidden value in players that can really pump up your steals while not hurting (and maybe helping) you in home runs.
Also, the weighted leaderboard makes for a great trade or draft target list. Not perfect, as we still have to be aware of the drag an awful batting average or a lack of runs or RBI’s can have. But it’s pretty safe to say a fantasy team with 4 or 5 of these players will be in a great position. Not overly dependent on one players stats and more flexible to make adjustments in season.
Looking at specifically the 2024 list it showcases a number of names I consider to be undervalued in many leagues. And, to be fair, some that are overvalued. If you are looking to make a move for your pennant run consider pushing in hard and dealing for Jose Ramirez who probably has existed on more winning fantasy teams than most anyone else over the last 8 years. Or Francisco Lindor who gets pulled down a bit by his middling batting average but just keeps putting up stats. Or players like Brenton Doyle, Jarren Duran, Willy Adames, CJ Abrams, Spencer Steer, and Zach Neto that are just joining this conversation in the last year or so.
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