Draft season is upon us, and the format of choice in November is the draft-and-hold, which is a 50-round draft with no in-season transactions other than setting lineups each week. I’ve written plenty about draft-and-hold leagues, but after quality of players at the front end of the draft and depth throughout, one of the biggest tricks worth learning is how to find end-game draft picks who could outperform a Round 40, Round 45, or Round 50 draft pick cost. There is no shortage of approaches in this regard. You can look for players who made a late-season debut the previous season and performed in a way that may merit more playing time. You could look at James Anderson’s prospect list for top prospects expected to debut next season. I do both of those things. Heading into the 2024 season, however, I started looking at something new: rookies projected by Steamer as average or better MLB hitters by wRC+.
Steamer often overlooks prospects in terms of playing time. The algorithm just can’t predict all that well who will be called up and how much playing time they’ll get. That’s why when you look at a prospect’s Fangraphs page, Steamer will often project one plate appearance with no counting states. It’s not really a projection; rather, it’s a placeholder. Ignore the counting state projections and look at wRC+, which serves as a shorthand for skill as a hitter. Once I started doing this, the rookies projected with a wRC+ of 100 or greater started to stand out.
Here is a list of rookie-eligible hitters that Steamer projected as average or better MLB hitters (per wRC+) heading into the 2024 season, along with their Average Draft Position (ADP) cost:
Immediately apparent with the knowledge of how players performed last season is that this is a pretty good list of players. There are hits and misses, to be sure, but a lot of these players proved useful in 2024, if only for short stretches, and short stretches can matter a great deal in a draft-and-hold league.
Upon closer inspection, the variance in ADP is notable. Drafters had to pay up for Wyatt Langford and Evan Carter, and with good reason. Langford was a top prospect and Carter was coming off of a heroic playoff performance. However, Steamer also loved Spencer Horwitz, Nolan Schanuel, and Colton Cowser, all relatively inexpensive. I kept looking at Spencer Horwitz—who was not a highly touted prospect—and wondering why Steamer liked him so much more than NFBC drafters. I started taking him in the final rounds of Draft Champions drafts.
Horwitz got the call in early June, produced immediately, and earned a regular lineup spot for the rest of the season. He ended the season with 46 runs, 12 home runs, 40 runs batted in, and a .263 batting average. His actual wRC+ was 127, beating Steamer’s optimistic projection considerably.
How did the other players on the list do? Take a look:
Excluding Alan Roden and Rhylan Thomas (because neither was drafted and neither got called up to the majors), 10 of 24 players (42%) on the list produced a wRC+ of 100 or better in the major leagues.
An analysis of “usefulness,” which I arbitrarily defined as a player that was useful at least for a short stretch in a draft-and-hold, proves this process more fruitful. Of the 26 players on the list, 16 proved useful at some point in 2024, for a hit rate of 61%.
If you focus only on players projected for a 107 wRC+ or better, the hit rate is 92%. The only player keeping it from 100% is Heston Kjerstad, who despite not being a useful player for any solid stretch still produced a 116 wRC+ on the season, strongly suggesting all he lacked was a consistent opportunity.
The takeaway here is that projection systems are pretty good at identifying skilled hitters who can produce in the major leagues. If you are looking for end-game hitter darts, you could do worse than rookie-eligible hitters who project for an average or better wRC+. I call this the “Horwitz Rule.”
Who are the Horwitz Rule hitters for 2025?
It’s a pretty interesting list. So far, nobody is being drafted as high as Langford, Caminero, Carter, and Holliday were in 2024. Given current ADP, Alan Roden, Payton Eeles, and Johnathan Rodriguez are my favorite targets, but check the list out for yourself. Look at MLB experience, proximity to MLB, and your own draft day analysis.
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Thanks for reading!
- Russell
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