Giancarlo “Create-a-Player” Stanton

David Price summed it up best:

There is no doubt that Giancarlo Stanton possesses Herculean power at the plate. What we want to know is when he is ready to unleash that strength. You already know how important home runs are in DFS and there are not many players who hit more than Stanton.

Let’s start with the basics. Stanton has a career .407 wOBA vs. lefties, compared to a .376 wOBA vs. righties. He has a career .300 ISO vs. lefties, compared to a .261 ISO vs. righties. While Stanton has better numbers vs. lefties, he still has a slightly higher AB/HR rate vs. righties: 14.85 vs. 14.28. We can dig a little deeper and pull up his spray chart:

 

Looks like a majority of Stanton’s home runs are to left field, which makes sense as he bats right-handed. If we look at this year’s stats, when facing lefties, Stanton’s Pull % is 33.3% and his Center % is 46.7%. When facing righties, Stanton’s Pull % is 53.4% and his Center % is 27.3%. To help illustrate the significance of these numbers, here is an example from this year where Gio Gonzalez (a lefty) served one up to Stanton:

(via MLB.TV)

That’s a 424-foot triple. While a triple is still great for DFS, it is frustrating to see a 424-foot shot not be a home run. After all, when playing Stanton, we want the home run. Looking back to the spray chart, we can see how many more of his home runs went to left field than to center field. While Marlins Park was able to keep this one out of the seats, he has historically fared well at home: .397 wOBA and .277 ISO vs. .369 wOBA and .264 ISO on the road. Even though Marlins Park has only been open since 2012, I don’t think there is anything to read into the park difference – at least not yet.

We know stadiums can have an effect on players – especially when trying to identify when a player will hit one out. Of course, we will always play Stanton at Coors Field. Fading Stanton at Coors Field is like fading guac at Chipotle. Since we know that a high percentage of Stanton’s home runs are to left field, let’s look at a stadium with a short left field. We don’t want to play Stanton when he hits another 424-foot triple. Citizen’s Bank Park is only 329′ to left, with a six-foot high wall. Here is an example of Stanton at Citizen’s Bank Park from this season:

(via MLB.TV)

I know – you probably couldn’t see much because the ball cleared the fence in the time it takes your dog to eat that last slice of pizza you turned your back on for a millisecond. But if you look closely, you will see that Stanton actually killed an empty seat. This would have been a single at Fenway, although there is a chance that the ball would have lodged itself in the Green Monster. Would that be a ground rule double, even though it never hit the ground? By using our Trends Tool, we can see how Stanton has performed at Citizen’s Bank Park:

When Stanton has played at Citizen’s Bank Park, he has a Plus/Minus of 4.44, which means he performs 4.44 points higher than his expected points, on average. That is significant.

But wait, don’t leave – we aren’t finished yet. No, this is not an infomercial. We can advance this even further. Looking back at everything, we have learned that Stanton pulls the ball quite often, hits majority of his home runs to left, and excels at stadiums with short left field fences. What if we examine one more factor? What else could possibly help us in examining when Stanton is at his best?

Wind. Specifically, wind to left field.

Fortunately, we can go back to our Trends Tool and see how Stanton has performed when the wind is blowing to left.

Wow. This means that Stanton has exceeded his average expected points by 4.00 points every time the wind blows to left. If we look through the sample size, we can see how he has had some absolutely monster scores:

 

After all of the information we have gathered, this shouldn’t even be very surprising.

David Price customized players to look like and have the same attributes as Stanton. We are using our tools at FantasyLabs to customize the maximum expected performance of Stanton. Looks like he really is Giancarlo “Create a Player” Stanton.