I Made Up a Stat, Guess Which Player I Named it After

They tell me you’re not a real Fancy Stat Man unless you make up a stat and name it after a player. PECOTA, SEAGER, VORP (OK that last one’s a joke (Also no one tells me this, it’s just me (Is this too many nested parentheticals? (What is this, an Excel formula?? (Joke’s on you, I use Sheets (Okay but don’t tell anyone they’ll take my SABR card (Hah! I don’t have a SABR card!)))))))

Zone Swing% minus Chase% is a simple Swing Decision metric we can use. There is a more advanced version named after the perennial leader in the metric, Corey Seager developed by Robert Orr and available on BaseballProspectus (edit: I originally confused SEAGER for Z-OSwing% in this article because I forgot). He also was the only player over 55%, with the league average around 37%. The idea is that swinging at strikes: Good. Swinging at balls: Bad. Pretty straightforward and intuitive, no?

As a composite stat, there are a couple of ways to get to a high Z-OSwing%. Gleyber Torres got to 5th among qualified hitters at 47.4% by only swinging at 40.8% of pitches overall. Aaron Judge, Matt Chapman, and Ben Rice were all in the top 20 while swinging below 45% of the time (League average swing rate is around 47%). The best at it while swinging more than 50% of the time in 2025 were Dansby Swanson, Brent Rooker, and Freddie Freeman. Removing qualifications, Kyle Stowers tops the list (Seager himself swung a hair under half the time). 

Swing Rates and Barrels

Barrels is a stat that tracks balls hit over 95mph at good launch angles. The league leaders in this stat are the best sluggers in baseball: Judge, Ohtani, Schwarber, Raleigh, and, of course, Kyle Stowers. If you doubt his presence among those names, the list continues: Alonso, Kurtz, Soto. 

So I made up a stat that combines Z-OSwing% for Selectiveness, Swing% for Aggression, and Barrel rate for Applied Power. SAP? SAAB? SEABASS? Nevermind I’ll just name it after the player who is the best at it. I present to you STOWER:

This is all a roundabout way to say that I believe in Kyle Stowers and want to find more hitters like him. Is it better than SEAGER, Z-OSwing% or Barrels on their own? Probably not. Have I tested it thoroughly? Also no. Should it be STOWERS? No, because that sounds like a counting stat (sorry, Kyle). But is that a list of good hitters? Yes. Yes, it is. Mission accomplished. Job’s done. Time to kick back aaaaand… OKAY, fine, I’ll show my work.

Judge, Springer (11), Tucker (17), and Acuña (21) are the only ones in the top 30 who swing at below average rates. They’re all above-average hitters, and adding Barrels has a side effect of being a soft exit velocity filter to weed out the noodle bats. Dansby Swanson at 13 is the first with an ev90 under 105mph – also the first under 100 wRC+.

What about over a larger sample? 

JD Davis is a bit suspect here, but he was a 2.2 fWAR player in his last full season in 2023 before turning into a pumpkin. Judge, Merrill, Lowe, and Buxton show there’s some stability to the stat, while Wallner, Harper, and Freeman aren’t far down the 2025 list either.

Prospecting

So how can we use this to find the next Kyle Stowers? The first thing we have to do is add a couple more filters. First is ev90, which is naturally filtered out at the big league level, but not at AAA. The next is the usual age filter, though if we’re too stringent with that, we actually miss Stowers, who was 26 in 2024. That’s generally considered old for the level. I’m also gonna put a 35% chase rate filter on because by adding overall swing rate, we’re catching some free swingers who don’t make it as big leaguers. 

So doing that, here’s 2023 AAA

Stowers is at the top of course. Wallner, Adell, and Morel still do well in this metric, and Vientos still has some kind of role on a contending Mets roster. Estevan Florial never got regular playing time despite a 131 wRC+ in AAA in 2023 and was in Korea for 2025.

Everson Pereira shows up all three years. He’s an interesting name to watch because he blew out his UCL in 2024 and just crossed the 130AB rookie threshold in 2025, so he won’t hit prospect lists again. Last winter, the concern about his profile was the Ks, which he cut down to a manageable 28.7% in 2025. He does have concerning in-zone contact rates, though – almost 80% in 2023 but under 70% in ‘25. That has to get back into the upper 70s at least. He’s changed orgs twice and now has a chance to get some run in center field with the White Sox. The competition isn’t all that stiff or sturdy, though, so he could be a regular at some point in 2025. Not a pick-up, but a name to remember if he gets that opportunity. 

All in all, not a bad list

Stowers is back at the top in his last year in the minors. It’s worth noting that he struggled mightily in his first taste of The Show, so this isn’t a profile that necessarily hits the ground running. Almost every name I’ve listed has below-average contact rates, so they have to make good decisions and do damage to survive. The point of this stat is to try to find the “Will he make enough contact?” guys who have a better chance of working out.

Aside from Orelvis Martinez, who got popped for PEDs after this run and showed how much they helped since, these guys have all gotten serious chances. Most have established themselves as regulars, if unspectacular ones. Drake Baldwin would’ve been a nice scoop. Canario struggled in an extended look in 2025 for the Pirates with a 34.2% strikeout rate, but still had 12.4% barrels and a 112 maxEV. He doesn’t currently have a team. That’s a big barrier to getting a chance to make an adjustment as Stowers did. I’m hoping a team with a better track record of hitter development picks him up. 

Everson Pereira shows up again along with Tyler Locklear, who is currently injured and out until at least mid-May. He whiffed mightily in two cups of coffee with Seattle and Arizona, but has largely unproven players ahead of him in the DBacks’ outfield, so he’s still got a chance. What doesn’t show up in Colson Montgomery’s numbers is that he took a trip to the Complex after getting off to a horrendous start. I don’t have minor league splits, but he was better than this when he returned, and we saw what he can do in the majors after the reset. It’s still a K-heavy profile, like all these guys, but it’s working so far. 

Sal Stewart and Owen Caissie are by far the most interesting names on the 2025 list. Both got a taste of big league pitching in 2025 and have a good shot at starting roles on opening day. Unlike most names on this list, Sal Stewart’s minor league career never included a strikeout rate above 20%. It did jump to 25.9% in his debut, but that’s pretty reasonable these days. He also showed a 17.5% barrel rate right away. The 209th player off the board on average in NFBC leagues, I’m definitely in. 

Caissie had the more typical strikeout struggles in his brief debut, but managed a 13.3% barrel rate and hit one 114. There’s more whiff and more power than Stewart (and more defensive value), and less competition for playing time. He is also going undrafted in a lot of NFBC leagues. I just took him in the 25th of a 12-team draft and hold. If he struggles out of the gate, I’ll be writing about him as a buy-low target in dynasty while crying over my shares. 

These profiles are still walking the line of how much whiff tolerance you (and teams) have, and if you dig in, you might find other warts. It can also be informative to look at players with similar contact concerns who chase too much or don’t actually have the barrels to rank. It also feels like there’s a bit of extra platoon risk in this bunch just from the scouting reports and presence of Brandon Lowe. That makes some sense for a profile that hinges on good swing decisions, since the platoon advantage is mostly about seeing the ball. 

Maybe next week I’ll make a counting version called STOWERS to make it extra confusing. That would be the true stat-head thing to do.

For more of the great fantasy baseball rankings and analysis you’ve come to expect from FantraxHQ, check out our full 2026 Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit! We’re here for you all the way up until Opening Day and then on into your championship run.