Analyzing 2013 HR Totals for 2014 Sleepers and Busts

A home run in one park might not be a home run in another park. That fact creates a messy situation when we’re trying to analyze players based on their actual home run totals at the end of the year. HitTracker tracks data about every home run hit throughout the season which gives us the unique ability to be able to identify players who had too many or too few lucky HR’s within their stats.

For a breakdown of the different terminology used by HitTracker, check out their glossary. For some more details on my HR analysis process of using No Doubt HR’s, Just Enough HR’s and Lucky HR’s, read my post from last season.

Players Due For A HR Decline

Name
HR
ND HR
JE HR
Avg SOB
Brandon Belt
17
1
10
101.6
Coco Crisp
22
0
8
99.1
Franklin Gutierrez
10
1
5
101.6
Jedd Gyorko
23
2
12
102.3
Matt Wieters
22
0
11
102.5
Ryan Zimmerman
26
0
12
102.8

All of these players have several marks against them in regards to being able to sustain their HR totals from last season. They all had a below league average percentage of No Doubt HR’s and speed off bat for their HR’s with an above average percentage of Just Enough HR’s. Add that together and you have players who were barely getting the ball over the fence but padding their HR totals in the process. I would expect to see a decrease of anywhere from 2 to 7 home runs for each of them in 2014.

Ryan Zimmerman has been declining a bit each year as a fantasy player but his power numbers haven’t dipped yet. It seems that 2014 might be the year where those start to fall off a bit as well.

Players Due For A HR Increase

Name
HR
ND HR
JE HR
Avg SOB
John Buck
15
5
2
105.5
Kyle Blanks
8
3
2
107.8
Ike Davis
9
3
2
105.8
Ian Desmond
20
6
3
106.1
Chris Young
12
6
1
104.6

These are players who hit significantly less HR’s than the group above but had a number of positive signs hidden in their numbers. They’re basically the opposite of the first group being that they had an above average percentage of No Doubt HR’s and speed on their HR’s which means they’re knocking the ball way out of the park. They had a below average percentage of Just Enough HR’s so they’re not getting the benefit of those type of HR’s to pad their total. Each of these players should increase their HR total by a fair amount in 2014.

Ian Desmond has shown good power over the past two seasons without breaking the 30 HR mark yet but 2014 might be the year for him to do it. Ike Davis was a huge disappointment last season and is a decent buy-low candidate since he should rebound a bit in the power department.

Are there any surprises on this list to you? Are there any players that you have a sneaking suspicion might have been a bit lucky or unlucky last year that you’d like me to investigate? Let me know in the comments section below.

Update 12/27/13: You can view all of the HR Tracker data in this public spreadsheet.

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