Fangraphs: Hard Contact Rates, Identifying Breakout Candidates.

[weams]

http://www.fangraphs.com/community/hard-contact-rate-and-identifying-breakout-candidates/

But, we can still use the averages for those young players to identify truly exceptional talent. By filtering 2015 data to find players under the age of 23 whose hard contact rate is above average for a 23-year-old, we find the following list:

Harper, Machado, Sano, Correa, Schwarber, Bird, Conforto, Betts, and Odor.

Clearly, the system works to some degree.

I am particularly fond of the Odor pick. Whil