Ok so heres a quick guide on evaluating players, you can use this to see what to expect from new players to your team, figure out if a player is worth picking up in fantasy baseball, or even what to expect from call ups.
Look At The Situation:
Ok so first thing you should do in evaluating a player is first figure out what kind of situation your looking at, for instance is this a minor league call up who has no experience in the majors, a traded player, a high end free agent signing, a player returning from the DL, etc. Now the reason for this is because there are certain expectations you should have in these different situations because obviously a player returning from the DL will not likely jump back into the same production they had pre-injury the game they return to the lineup. Also don't forget to adjust for what ball park they are in as some are more hitter or pitcher friendly.
In addition to this if you hadn't noticed hitters that go to the AL generally get a bit of a break and thats because the pitching isn't as strong in the AL as it is in the NL (see pitchers like Clayton Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, Adam Wainwright, Matt Harvey, etc.) and the opposite applies to hitters moving from the AL to the NL, which is also amplified because the presence of the DH in the AL, which allows hitters more opportunities to get regular at bats. Now pitchers that move from the NL to the AL generally have a reduction in their stats again because the AL in a much harder hitting division and if their going from the AL to the NL expect an improvement to their stats. Now stat changes from going from one league to the other should be taken with a grain of salt and thats because it is doubtful that if an ace level pitcher like Felix Hernandez, Yu Darvish, Matt Harvey or Clayton Kershaw were to change leagues they wouldn't have that sharp of a decrease or increase as they have proven what they are as pitchers. The inverse can be said about crappy pitchers because you wouldn't expect say John Danks of the White Sox to move to the NL and get a huge boost in ability, and thats because he's a bad pitcher, so these things really only apply to those who are saddled in the middle of pitcher ratings and show potential in one way of another.
Now minor league call ups are another thing entirely, first off you should note which level of the minors they are coming from (low-A, high-A, AA, AAA, etc.) and then find out what league in the minors they were in, this is because certain leagues like the Pacific Coast League is a BIG TIME hitters league so hitters stats will obviously be skewed and inversely good pitching stats will look even better from this league. So again be thorough when looking at minor league records. As well as this standard research make sure you remember, and this is often forgotten by fans out there, that minor league players generally won't immediately start hitting/pitching what they were hitting/pitching like in the minors when they get called up and thats obviously because the pitching or hitting they will experience with their new major league team is FAR better than anything they faced in the minors.
Check Their Base Stats
After this you should look at their standard statistics, through sites like Baseball Reference, Fan Graphs or ESPN, those statistics being Runs, RBI, HR, SB and AVG for hitters or Wins, K, Saves, ERA and WHIP for pitchers, though saves only apply for relievers, but remember to focus on their previous numbers, those being years past in the majors or equivalent minors and career averages. These numbers should give you a brief idea of what they put on the board in a regular season and from there you can adjust based on the situations I went over above. So basically you should be slightly adjusting these stats given the situation.
Check The Averages
Ok so for this we should be looking at OBP, SLG, OPS, BB% and K% for hitters and then K/9, BB/9, K/BB, HR/9, K% and BB% for pitchers. Now I'll talk about these stats separated by hitters and pitchers. So the hitting averages are as follows, OBP and BB% will give you an idea or how much the batter walks as OBP (on base percentage) is their batting average plus inclusion of their walks and then BB% is the walk rate separated from OBP so if a hitter has a high walk rate it either means they are a big time hitter that pitchers are afraid of or they are patient at the plate and have a good approach, either way this is desirable in hitters. Then we have SLG and OPS, which represent power hitting and SLG plus OBP respectively, now these numbers give you a relatively brief look at what kind of power the hitter provides. Then finally for hitters there is the K%, which is obviously the % of times they strike out, and then tells us the opposite of the OBP and BB% of whether they have a bad approach at the plate or if they can't make consistent contact with the ball when they swing. On the pitchers side we first look at K/9 and K%, now these will tell us first what type of pitcher the 'subject' is because your typical 'ACE' level pitchers have K/9 ratios of about 9.0 or higher, the low end pitchers generally have 3.0-4.0 or sometimes lower than that so obviously the higher the strikeout % the more effective the pitcher is. Now this is not 100% true as there are also fly ball and ground ball pitchers so if a pitcher has a low K/9 and K% but you think their good look at their ERA and WHIP and if it's in the 3.00-4.00 and 1.00-1.50 marks then they are most likely are a contact pitcher, they will be talked about a little later too. Next up look at BB/9, BB% and K/BB, this will tell you how many batters the pitcher walks and overall is a good indicator of how much control a pitcher has over his pitches. The last of these averages in the HR/9 ratio, which gives us an idea of how susceptible the pitcher is to home runs, which may have to do with the park they are pitching in. After looking at these numbers you should have a better picture of how effective the hitter or pitcher is overall and usually these numbers tend to regress or increase to match or become close to the player's career average so you can tell whether they are expected to go up or down, but again consider the situation as you can't really make those assumptions about call ups or players who don't have a decent amount of experience in the majors, and thus a biased career average.
The Extra Shit:
Ok so the next set of stats are those to better look at a hitters power, speed and a pitchers performance, taking out defence and home runs, thats right we're going to ISO (isolated power) SPD (speed), FIP and xFIP. Now ISO is similar but slightly more accurate that SLG in terms of determining a players raw power at the plate and well thats because it uses SLG in it's calculation (SLG-AVG) so again treat this just like the other averages, expect it to turn to the players career average. Next up is SPD, pretty much the only indication of a players speed on the base path, now there are different versions of this stat as some websites or evaluators take different things into account when calculating it hence why there aren't really any other base stealing oriented stats available out there, but again treat it like other averages. Then we have FIP and xFIP, these 2 stats are nearly the same as both indicate where the pitcher's ERA should be if you took team defence out of the question, except xFIP removes home runs as well so if they are pitching in a homer prone park xFIP is the thing to look at. These stats generally are a better indicator of where the pitcher SHOULD be, so if the defence is in a slump expect the pitcher's ERA to improve over to his FIP or xFIP, however remember a shitty defence is still a shitty defence and thus if a pitcher say for the Astros has a FIP of 2.50 but an ERA of 4.30 it's not likely going to change as the Astros are just a bad and unexperienced team to begin with.
Types of Hits:
Ok so this area is important to both pitchers, so we're looking primarily at HR/FB and GB/FB for both hitters and pitchers. For hitters the HR/FB ratio is important a it indicates how many balls hit actually go out of the ball park, and just like everything sometimes it can seem a bit lopsided so expect it to move toward the career average, but also recognize when they have an excessively high ratio that is likely not sustainable, like if they have the same HR/FB ratio but have moved to a serious pitchers park. Now for pitchers it means something slightly different as this show how effective a pitcher is at getting fly balls because contact pitchers rely heavily on their ability to get fly balls that are easy for the outfielders to pick off, overall the same evaluation rules apply as to the HR/FB comparison of hitters. GB/FB ratio is in essence the same as the HR/FB for hitters but for pitchers it will show you what type of contact pitcher a player is and if it turns out they have a high GB/FB ratio, meaning their a ground ball pitcher, you should look at their LD% or line drive ratio to determine their overall effectiveness, as it is similar to the HR/FB ratio.
The All In One Stat:
Ok so there is ONE stat that is the mother of all stats as it was put together to take everything into account and that stat is WAR or Wins Above Replacement, basically the people who put this together basically said that this stat indicates how many games a team will win by having this player on their team instead of a player of average ability in all categories. In addition to standard WAR there are more specific break downs in oWAR (offensive WAR), dWAR (defensive WAR), etc. These act the same but are more accurate for the side they are looking at and overall WAR can be looked at similarly to the averages we went over previously.
All in all once you've looked at all of these stats your probably wondering,'What the hell do I do with these numbers?'. Well from here you need to think about what things can or have effected the numbers as compared to previous years or career averages and whether said change is legitimate or likely to change back to normal. Some situations would be reduced SPD/SB in a player that just got back from a hamstring injury, in that case of course those stats will be hampered but gradually they will come back to the norm but one shouldn't expect it to completely right itself considering the time lost and the fact that they WILL have a period of lacklustre performance in that category. So just remember when your going over all of this stuff be thorough because the more information you have on a player the more likely your predictions are to being correct.
-Eric
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