Collette Calls: Early Power and Speed Indicators

Collette Calls: Early Power and Speed Indicators

This article is part of our Collette Calls series.

I hope this installment finds you well and that you don't have too many shares of Spencer Strider, Trevor Story or Shane Bieber on multiple teams this season. The Story shoulder issue was a big hit to my teams because I bought in on the dip in many places, so come on down David Hamilton (in AL Tout) and Lenyn Sosa (in AL LABR) while Story returns to his home on the injured list for the rest of this season. Even as I compose this story, news broke that Framber Valdez, Nick Pivetta and Chase Silseth are heading to the examination table to see why their elbows are sore. The league's next rule change may need to be implementing pitching machines, as I'm not certain teams have enough pitching to make it through the season. 

I don't want to spend any more time on the depressing injury news which continues to impact the game, as the new version of doomscrolling is opening up the RotoWire app on my phone on a daily basis to see which of my players will be missing time due to injury. I would prefer to focus on the results on the field, so let's take an early look to see how power and speed are going as we are now roughly 10 games into the season.

Longtime readers of this column will recall I have written an article like this right about this time in previous seasons, and I even went as far

I hope this installment finds you well and that you don't have too many shares of Spencer Strider, Trevor Story or Shane Bieber on multiple teams this season. The Story shoulder issue was a big hit to my teams because I bought in on the dip in many places, so come on down David Hamilton (in AL Tout) and Lenyn Sosa (in AL LABR) while Story returns to his home on the injured list for the rest of this season. Even as I compose this story, news broke that Framber Valdez, Nick Pivetta and Chase Silseth are heading to the examination table to see why their elbows are sore. The league's next rule change may need to be implementing pitching machines, as I'm not certain teams have enough pitching to make it through the season. 

I don't want to spend any more time on the depressing injury news which continues to impact the game, as the new version of doomscrolling is opening up the RotoWire app on my phone on a daily basis to see which of my players will be missing time due to injury. I would prefer to focus on the results on the field, so let's take an early look to see how power and speed are going as we are now roughly 10 games into the season.

Longtime readers of this column will recall I have written an article like this right about this time in previous seasons, and I even went as far last year to say I thought that 2023 would be closer to 2019 than any other season in recent memory. That did not materialize, as the 5,868 homers hit last season was lower than the 5,944 hit in 2021. I can now update the table referenced in last year's piece with the final data:

Season

Early PA/HR

Final PA/HR

Delta

2016

36.2

32.9

10.0%

2017

32.5

30.4

6.9%

2018

36.1

33.1

9.1%

2019

29.3

27.5

6.6%

2020

30.2

28.9

4.5%

2021

31.6

30.6

3.3%

2022

36.9

34.9

5.7%

2023

32.7

31.4

4.0%

2023 resulted in the second lowest change from early season to final season HR/PA rate on the table above trailing only the 2021 season. The average change in HR/PA rate from 2016-2023 comes out to be 6.26 percent, which is relevant when I show where we are at through games played on April 7th, 2024 in the table below:

Season

Early PA/HR

Final PA/HR

Delta

2016

36.2

32.9

10.0%

2017

32.5

30.4

6.9%

2018

36.1

33.1

9.1%

2019

29.3

27.5

6.6%

2020

30.2

28.9

4.5%

2021

31.6

30.6

3.3%

2022

36.9

34.9

5.7%

2023

32.7

31.4

4.0%

2024

37.3

??

??

Needless to say, the league is off to a slow start in the home run department despite the attrition of top-end pitching talent. It bears repeating that this early-season performance has been a rather decent leading indicator to what we can expect for the rest of the season, especially in the post-Covid era where conditions and the production of baseballs appears to have been standardized as much as it can.

A full major league season has averaged 184,214 plate appearances since 2016. If we apply that average to the aforementioned 6.26 percent average change from an early season HR/PA rate to the final HR/PA rate, that calculates out to 5,269 home runs, which would be approximately 600 fewer homers than we saw just last season. That would put the league-wide run environment closer to the 2022 season, where the league finished with 5,215 homers:

Season

HR

2016

5610

2017

6105

2018

5585

2019

6776

2021

5944

2022

5215

2023

5868

2024

292

We can also see this playing out by looking at home runs per contact. Using the formula ((HR/(AB-K), we can look at this rate and how it has played out over previous March/April timeframes:

Season

AB

HR

SO

HR/Contact

2016

23,888

740

5,710

4.1%

2017

25,054

863

6,047

4.5%

2018

28,680

912

7,335

4.3%

2019

29,500

1144

7,748

5.3%

2021

25,221

875

6,944

4.8%

2022

20,866

574

5,392

3.7%

2023

28,598

960

7,403

4.5%

2024

9,647

292

2,470

4.1%

Once again, the early results are tilting toward a down year for power, as the 4.1 percent March-April HR/Contact rate is tied for the second lowest rate since 2016. Simply put, unless wind patterns change and we have 20+ MPH winds blowing out as we did here in Charlotte when the Norfolk Tides blasted the Charlotte Knights 26-11, 2024 is going to be a lower run environment unless the league compensates by running more.

I took a look last month at how the league was running in Spring Training and found the league was attempting more steals per contest than any season dating back to 2010 with 2.24 attempted steals per contest with 1017 attempted steals in 454 contests. Through games played on April 7, the league has attempted 245 stolen bases in 147 contests, which computes to a 1.67 attempted steals per contest. Cincinnati leads the league with 22 attempted steals, converting 18 of them successfully. Meanwhile, San Francisco has as many steals as Daniel Vogelbach does for his entire career: zero. The league-wide success rate has dipped to 76 percent early on, with teams successfully stealing second base 77.7 percent of the time and swiping third base 80.0 percent of the time. 

Team Baserunning/Misc* Table
Tm SBO SB
CS SB% SB2 CS2 SB3 CS3
Cincinnati Reds11618482%12450
Milwaukee Brewers11416289%14121
Washington Nationals13016194%15110
Tampa Bay Rays15114288%11131
Philadelphia Phillies11811665%10411
Boston Red Sox13810471%10400
Kansas City Royals10810377%9310
Cleveland Guardians1399469%7420
San Diego Padres1678189%8100
Arizona Diamondbacks1556460%6202
Los Angeles Angels1136460%5410
League Average1356276%5210
Detroit Tigers13150100%4010
Los Angeles Dodgers1915183%5100
New York Mets1295183%5100
New York Yankees1495183%4110
Texas Rangers14850100%5000
Baltimore Orioles10440100%3010
Houston Astros1394357%3210
Miami Marlins13640100%4000
Pittsburgh Pirates18140100%4000
Colorado Rockies1283175%3100
Oakland Athletics1413260%3200
Seattle Mariners1423175%3100
Atlanta Braves1232167%2100
Chicago Cubs1432167%2100
Chicago White Sox1002433%2400
Minnesota Twins1102167%2100
St. Louis Cardinals1312340%2300
Toronto Blue Jays13310100%1000
San Francisco Giants135020%0200
40431855776%16450205
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 4/8/2024.

The 1.67 attempted steals rate would be a decline from the 1.80 rate we saw just last season but still better than most of the rates we saw from 2013-2022. The more notable story is the 25 percent decline in frequency from the spring thus far and how pitcher and catcher batteries appear to have improved since last season in deterring the running game by lowering the league-wide success rate here in the early stage of the season. If we look at how frequently teams are attempting steals when the opportunities are there, we also see a decline:

Season

SBO

SBA

SBA%

2021

66049

2924

4.4%

2022

66366

3297

5.0%

2023

67215

4369

6.5%

2024

4417

267

6.0%

Too long didn't read? Homer and steals are down and are unlikely to reach the 2023 levels, which means we should be looking to hoard power wherever we can find it and that ERAs should be better for whichever pitchers can remain healthy and upright this season. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Collette
Jason has been helping fantasy owners since 1999, and here at Rotowire since 2011. You can hear Jason weekly on many of the Sirius/XM Fantasy channel offerings throughout the season as well as on the Sleeper and the Bust podcast every Sunday. A ten-time FSWA finalist, Jason won the FSWA's Fantasy Baseball Writer of the Year award in 2013 and the Baseball Series of the Year award in 2018 for Collette Calls,and was the 2023 AL LABR champion. Jason manages his social media presence at https://linktr.ee/jasoncollette
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