Beginner Rotisserie AVG Draft Essentials

Beware of Platoons 

With stronger farm systems, scouting tools, and data-driven decisions for each matchup, platooning is the norm and not as rare as it used to be. Many platoon players can have high batting averages as they only face the pitchers that they have success with and usually based on handedness.  Basically, if you have a right-handed batter who is in a platoon situation, he will generally only face left-handers, giving him far fewer plate appearances than a left-handed hitter in that platoon situation or an everyday player.

The result: even with a good batting average, it will not protect against bad batting average players on your team.  If you have a .290 right-handed platoon hitter who gets 300 at-bats for the season.  If you have a .230 hitter who gets 600 at-bats as a full-time player.  The .290 hitter has only raised the combined batting average to .250.  The platoon hitter is also likely to get fewer home runs, runs scored, and RBI just based on opportunity.

As a rule, stay away from platoon players except in leagues where the available player pool is super thin.

The Analytics Behind Predicting Future Batting Average

You don’t want to draft based on last year’s batting average. You want to draft based on skills that stabilize batting average. The best predictors:

1. Contact Frequency & Plate Discipline

Players like Jacob Wilson who make contact and don’t strike out a lot will most times have the most predictable batting averages.  Some metrics to look at:

• Contact% (CT%) - Having over 85% contact rate is elite and can insure a strong batting average
• Strikeout % (K%) - seems obvious, but most hitters cannot hit for average if they are striking out a lot.  Luis Arraez and Jacob Wilson are good examples.
• Walk % (BB%) - best example here is Aaron Judge, who last year parlayed his crazy 23% BB% to a .331 batting average even though he struck out 160 times or 23.5% of the time.

2. Contact Quality & Luck

We talked about a couple of these metrics when we discussed how to draft for home runs.  There are a number of cross over metrics that are important to consider.

Two Statcast metrics matter most:

• Barrels - A “barrel” is a batted ball with the combo of exit velocity and launch angle.  It shows that the ball is hit hard and on an angle to go for extra bases.
• Hard Contact (Hct) - Seems obvious that this metric combined with CT% would give you high batting average players.
• xBA (expected batting average) - Like we discussed in the how to draft for ERA piece, the difference between what is expected and what actually happens is an indicator as to when a player’s hitting should have a better batting average.
• BABIP (batting average balls in play) - This is my favorite indicator.  When a player has a bad batting average, you can look at his BABIP compared to his career average.  If a player has a career BABIP of .305 (the league average) and his current BABIP is .245.  This means that he has hit the ball in play, but got out more than his average.  This is unlucky.  For each 20 points, he should hit 5 points better on batting average.

Your draft day choices should be based on better hard contact, better exit velocity, and players who have been unlucky told by xBA and BABIP.

4. Age 

There are of course exceptions, but in general, players learn to hit for average by gaining plate discipline in the earlier years of their career.  In the middle, they hit for average.  After 33 years old or so, the average almost always drops at least 10 points a year.

Summary

We gave you what to look for in players and how to avoid getting too far behind in batting average.  The opposite is true.  When players don’t exhibit these traits or metrics, then stay away.  Remember that when you draft a player who is expected to have a low batting average, you need to have the same number of at bats above your target to make sure you stay in range.  For me depending on the league, the target is between .260 and .270.  So to put a bow on this piece, if your target is .260 and you drafted say, Lawrence Butler who should have more than 20/20 next year, but hit .235, you will need to draft someone who will have 600 at bats and hit .285 like a Kyle Stowers or Geraldo Perdomo did in 2025.

Protect. Protect. Protect.