2024 wOBA vs. xwOBA

[Frobby]

Thought it would be good to have a thread tracking any big gaps between wOBA and xwOBA from time to time.  At this early stage, I’d say only gaps of 50 point or more are really notable.  That’s the case for:

Cowser .539/.465

Rutschman .330/.385

Mullins .370/.320

Mateo .362/.303

Hays .100/.224

Urias .172/.232

It’s worth noting that Cowser would be awesome even at .465, and Hays and Urias would be awful even at .224 and .232.

The team has a pretty typical mix of guys who’ve been hot or cold, and guys who’ve had good or bad wOBA “luck.”   Overall, the picture is pretty darned good.

[CaptainRedbeard]

Worth noting that Mullins has very consistently outperformed his xwOBA by around 25 points since his breakout year, I think as a consequence of (1) speed contributing to infield hits and (2) consistently pulling his fly balls. 

Mountcastle has also rather consistently underperformed his xwOBA, although that’s more difficult to explain. 

[Spy Fox]

4 minutes ago, CaptainRedbeard said:

Worth noting that Mullins has very consistently outperformed his xwOBA by around 25 points since his breakout year, I think as a consequence of (1) speed contributing to infield hits and (2) consistently pulling his fly balls. 

Mountcastle has also rather consistently underperformed his xwOBA, although that’s more difficult to explain. 

Mountcastle hits the ball CF a lot, resulting in less HRs than his batted balls would suggest. I think someone posted a good analysis at some point suggesting that even though the wall also hurt Mountcastle, he'd be well served to pull the ball more. 

[Warehouse]

As a team, the Orioles currently rank 4th in xwOBA at .342 (lg avg: .322).  Our wOBA is 9th at .327 (lg avg: .316).  Normalization of the team’s walk rate should provide a tailwind going forward. 

[TommyPickles]

In fairness to my boy, Urias, he's only had 24 at-bats.

He's now on a 4-game hit streak, during which he has a .780 OPS. 

Not saying it's going well, or even that he should be playing more, but I think it's a super small sample size.

[CaptainRedbeard]

58 minutes ago, Spy Fox said:

Mountcastle hits the ball CF a lot, resulting in less HRs than his batted balls would suggest. I think someone posted a good analysis at some point suggesting that even though the wall also hurt Mountcastle, he'd be well served to pull the ball more. 

That’s right, that was from a Fangraphs article last year in April: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ryan-mountcastle-is-having-a-weird-one/

However, it wasn’t exactly conclusive:

Mountcastle is hitting plenty of balls in the air, but he’s only pulled three fly balls so far this season. Two of those, incidentally, became home runs. So he should hit more of those, I guess.

Other than that, it’s hard to see much of anything Mountcastle could improve, strictly in terms of his batted ball profile. All he has to do is wait for his luck to change, and he’ll be the best hitter with a sub-3% walk rate of all time.