One of the most common questions asked during the baseball season in “Twitter-verse” is whether or not fantasy owners should pick up a player that is about to be, or is already called up from the minor leagues. Adding these players is an exhilarating experience and can pay huge dividends. You won’t hit on every call up but what you can do is increase your chances of hitting on each one by using the proper tools. Here, we’ll fine tune our approach when it comes to adding minor league call-ups and put ourselves in the best position possible to be successful at it.

Cody Bellinger of the Los Angeles Dodgers is the perfect example of what an early-to-mid season call-up can do for your roster. Bellinger, who was 21 years old at the time of his promotion to the big leagues, hit 39 home runs and nearly eclipsed the 100 RBI mark in just 132 games played in his first season with the Dodgers. Situations like this arise every season and while Bellinger was the epitome of a game-changer in leagues everywhere, most of these call-up’s don’t have nearly the same level of impact. So where do we go from here? What separates the studs from the duds when evaluating a potential call-up? Where do we look to better understand how a player might translate heading to the big leagues? Let’s find out!

Don’t buy the hype

Amed Rosario is the complete opposite of a Cody Bellinger in terms of his hitter profile. Rosario typically hits a ton of ground balls and with little power. Still, the New York Mets short stop absolutely tore through Triple-A pitching in 2017 creating a ton of hype in fantasy circles. Rosario only hit seven home runs, but with 58 RBI’s and nineteen steals in just 94 games, his stock trended upward. His minor league statistics looked great on paper and has been listed as a top prospect for a while, so making the decision to add him to your fantasy team when the Mets announced he was going to be called up was understandable. What was concerning about adding this particular player were his surroundings and peripherals. Rosario played for the Las Vegas 51’s at Triple-A in the Pacific Coast League (PCL). The PCL is considered to be wildly hitter friendly and consists of many hitter’s parks, sometimes making the hitters look more mature and the pitchers look subpar. Las Vegas’ home ballpark is also just over 2,000 feet above sea level, giving hitters a boost with that elevation. So in this situation we have to pinpoint what his abilities are in a less than ideal situation to better understand what he will bring to the table in a Mets uniform.

It is never a good idea to just live and die by ball park factors so let’s throw some of those “peripheral” or advanced metric numbers around. The Mets prospect had a 21.5% strikeout rate in Double-A and improved it to 15.8% in Triple-A, seemingly a product of taking more pitches and not swinging at pitches out of the zone. That sounds great, however, the walks weren’t there for Rosario either. Rosario went from an underwhelming 8.0% walk rate at Double-A to an even worse 5.4% walk rate at Triple-A. What this suggests is that pitchers attacked him in the zone and he wasn’t afraid to swing. Most of us love aggressive hitters but a 5.4% walk rate is unacceptable.

So what can we conclude here? Well, there is a cause and effect for all rates and picking this case study apart shows one thing: pitchers were simply not afraid of Amed Rosario. His BABIP (batting average on balls in play) at Triple-A was an unsustainably high .377, due to his high 51.7% ground ball rate, and never had an ISO (slugging percentage minus batting average) over .140 at any level in his pro career. With almost no power, a subpar K:BB ratio and a seemingly unsustainable BABIP, Amed Rosario and his minor league numbers didn’t look to translate so well for fantasy purposes. He struggled mightily in the major leagues in 2017 and continued to show his lack of power and lack of plate discipline with his .145 ISO and 49:3 K/BB ratio. He may end up being a very solid shortstop, especially defensively, but just not in the ways his fantasy owners would want. These are the types of situations we have to debunk when seeing these call-ups throughout the season. Now let’s look at a few other scenarios that will require you to dig deeper into a player and find out if he’ll be the real deal or if he’s just another guy.

Solving Hitter Call-Ups

As we did with Rosario and Bellinger, we have to decide what type of player is being called up. Is he a speed/contact player that thrives on line drives, ground balls and steals? If so, we have to find out if he has the eye and the patience at the plate in order to sustain success in those categories because if he can’t get on base, he’s not stealing anything except a roster spot. Are we looking at a home run threat type of player? Then we need to find out if he’s a guy that’s just swinging for the fence every at bat and is striking out a ton or if he is a hitter that can hit for power while working the count. If a power hitter shows a healthy K:BB ratio it will bode well for his chances at sustaining home run totals without sacrificing average. Plate discipline and plate vision, as described by a players K:BB ratio, are extremely vital in translation of a minor league talent.

The K:BB ratio pieced together with a players surrounding statistics is an integral part of analysis. As fantasy players, we want to see growth from a player. A player who is constantly improving this ratio is often noticed as someone who is showing progression as a whole. On the flip side of things, a player who is excelling in the counting stats categories but is showing a below average K:BB ratio or is regressing in that category may be viewed as a player that is producing at an unsustainable rate. While this may be one of the most, if not the most important tool to use, there are some other metrics used in determining what a player is or could be. ISO for example, can show you the power of a player if it is a sustained level in his minor league career. If a player produces a sub .140 ISO for three straight years, he’s not a power hitter. If a player has a .250 ISO in Double-A and matches that in Triple-A, he’s likely a guy that can sustain power numbers in his career. That doesn’t mean said player will be successful, as we still have to account for his other rates but the power is likely real. This is proven by Joey Gallo and his .255, .290 ISO in consecutive seasons at Triple-A. He’s a power threat and maintained it last season when he posted a .327 ISO. Now that we know who Gallo is, we have to look at these advanced metrics to find out if he has the ability to progress. That’s the whole process!

Lefty/righty splits are useful numbers as well and are a little underrated as it can show you how a player looks to fare, at least in the immediate future, against left and right-handed pitching. This also can help measure how much time a player will cede to another player in the event that the player in question is, for example, much worse against lefties than he is righties. This will likely force a platoon role, something no fantasy owner wants to hear involving a player they own. There isn’t a single stat or metric that definitively proves if a hitter will be successful at the major league level. Our job is to piece together enough of these metrics to create a profile. The profile, if used correctly, will put you in a great position when trying to figure out who a player is and if he is likely to continue to be what he was at the minor league level. We won’t ever know absolutely what will happen. What we can do is come up with a profile to find out “what is most likely to happen?”

Solving Pitcher Call-Ups

Projecting pitchers at the major league level is a much simpler task than projecting hitters. Pitchers are forcing the issue and the hitters are reacting, putting hitters at a severe disadvantage. A pitcher knows the weaknesses of hitters. He also knows what pitch is about to be thrown. You get the point. Pitchers also have metrics that make it easier to project them going forward. We’re going to keep it simple with the pitching portion of the article and look at the effects of K% and BB%. This is just as important to pitchers as K:BB ratios are to hitters. A pitcher with a high K% and low BB% is simply striking out more hitters than he is walking them. These types of pitchers are ideal for obvious reasons. The strikeout and walk rates are also great indicators of how successful a pitcher is.

Take Jose Berrios for example. The Minnesota Twins hurler had a K% over 25% in three straight seasons at Triple-A and had a BB% at 8.3 or below in all three of those seasons, putting him in the upper tier in those categories. In comparison, Yankees ace Luis Severino posted a 20.9% and a 24.2% K% in two seasons at Triple-A and posted similar walk rates with a 7.1% and a 5.4% in those respective seasons. All indications are that Severino is elite at the major league level and these numbers look to be very indicative of why he is so successful. Limiting your free passes and striking guys out at a high rate isn’t all you need to look at to determine if a pitcher can be successful but it is absolutely a great place to start.

Another set of telling rates to look at when evaluating pitchers are the ground ball (GB%), fly ball (FB%) and line drive (LD%) percentages. These rates indicate what percentage of plate appearances that end up ground balls, fly balls or line drives. A pitcher with a high GB% and low LD% is a pitcher who induces weak contact consistently, also increasing double play percentages. A pitcher with a higher LD% and a higher FB% is likely a guy that gives up quite a few home runs. It is a set of rates that simplifies our “profiling” of a given pitcher. Patrick Corbin for the Arizona Diamondbacks had a 50.4 GB% and a 21.6 K% in 2017, leading to a solid 20.0 LD%. This is a profile we want to see from our fantasy pitchers.

Another profile you can find from using these rates is the fly ball pitcher. If a pitcher has a high FB%, that doesn’t necessarily spell disaster as long as it’s weak contact and the strikeouts are plentiful. Max Scherzer had a very high 46.6 FB% in 2017 and if it weren’t for his fairly low 16.9 LD% and through the roof 34.4 K% he likely would not have been successful. To prove that let’s veer off and look at Matt Moore in 2017 when he was a member of the San Francisco Giants. Moore had a similarly high 41.9 FB% but didn’t have the K%(18.7%) to cause weak contact forcing a 20.4 LD% which is too high and dangerous, for a fly ball pitcher. This caused severely different outcomes for the two pitchers who have similar fly ball inducing profiles.

Last but certainly not least, we must use FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching). FIP takes in consideration all non-defense related pitching outcomes. It uses strikeouts, walks, hit batters and home runs in its formula and takes the defense, good or bad, completely out of it. For this reason, ERA should be thrown out of the window. We have a stat that takes luck entirely out of the equation and represents a true performance level of a pitcher, what more could we ask for?

If a player has a high ERA and a much lower FIP, we can conclude that he has battled with unfortunate luck and should expect his future ERA to settle a bit. On the other hand, if a player has a low ERA and a much higher FIP, we can conclude that he’s been rather lucky and may not look as good as his ERA shows in the near future. FIP shows true performance and when compared to ERA, it tells the real story. A sample of this is Luke Weaver and Kyle Freeland.

Luke Weaver has a consistently low FIP at around 3.00 and even some in the 2.00 range in the minor leagues showing that he possesses elite talent and is simply getting the job done . With minimal fluctuation, he quickly translated that into success at the pro level with a 3.17 FIP in 2017. Kyle Freeland on the other hand, had a lower ERA than FIP at every level in the minor leagues and most of them coming in at well above 4.00. This shows that Freeland was on the lucky side of the spectrum and benefited from that considerably. He continued this trend at the major league level by posting a 4.10 ERA and a worse 4.57 FIP. This is a metric that tells a very beneficial story about a pitcher and should definitely be considered when evaluating a pitching prospect.

Trust your research

All of these samples show you that, with these rates, you can find out what kind of player any given call-up is showing himself to be. Outside of the Mike Trout and Bryce Harper caliber of call-ups, it’s almost impossible to know for a fact if a player is going to translate at the next level. What we are tasked with doing is finding out how likely a player is to sustain his minor league success. Your due diligence is required in order to find the next star. That or you can just wing it and end up with a Lucas Giolito. Consider multiple metrics, find correlation, and trust your research!