Checking On WARriors, Zone-Contact% Is Overrated—and Sean Manaea is the Opposite
As a real—and utterly wasteful and ridiculous—war ends, we’re reaching the point where baseball WAR becomes relevant for awards like MVP and Cy Young.
It’s also a good excuse to celebrate FanGraphs’ new beta “heat map” feature on leaderboards. It’s a little busy but we like how this mode highlights outliers at a glance:
Yordan Alvarez is the most valuable offensive player in baseball. He’s surmounting a primary DH penalty in Ohtanian fashion, but for Alvarez it’s even worse as his 11 games in left field have further deducted from WAR’s defensive component. The idea he’d be better off never playing defense is a bit like taking zeros in your second catcher slot rather than starting Mickey Gasper.
Pretty incredible that Ben Rice and Nick Kurtz play first base almost every day but are dinged about the same for their defensive contributions as Shohei Ohtani’s DH-only debit. Rice has “slumped” the last month or so (147 wRC+)—he led the majors with a Judgian 198 wRC+ through May 15.
Meanwhile, Kurtz started slow by his standards, but the last 30 days is insane: 10 HR, .330 BA, 1.140 OPS, 203 wRC+. He’s a small mountain range in the box and I’ve seen pitchers unintentionally-intentionally walk him numerous times. The horror.
Ohtani has been even better after a slow start: 8 HR, .366, 1.188 OPS, and a majors-best 223 wRC+ in the last month. Overall he’s “only” 12th among batters but has the DH penalty dragging him down. Of course he’s also starting pitching full time and ranks 11th among SP with 2.2 fWAR. Put them together and he’s almost a win above Witt at 5.1. Ohtani’s also first on Baseball Reference’s WAR with 5.5 overall.
His Cy Young chase is probably doomed, however. Ohtani is 11th and 7th, respectively, on the FG/BRef pitcher WAR leaderboards. But he is not qualified for the ERA title; even after 6 innings Wednesday, he’s at 73.1 IP and the Dodgers have played 75 games. His innings need to match or exceed team games to be eligible for the ERA title, which isn’t impossible, but he’s already dealing with knee inflammation and LA runs a 6-man rotation, in part to give him and Yamamoto a Japanese-style schedule. As it is he’s 26 IP behind Cristopher Sanchez, and both Sanchez and Misiorowski have nearly doubled him up in pitching fWAR (3.7 and 3.9 to 2.2). Ho-hum, Shohei will have to settle for another MVP1.
Injuries stink, but Judge’s opens the door for Bobby Witt, who settled for second in MVP two years in a row despite 8 and 10.5 WAR seasons. Normally a guy averaging 9 wins would have at least one MVP. He’s on a similar pace this season by excelling at everything, even if the power (10 HR) is not quite what fantasy managers hoped. Of course now he’s got a left-handed, Judge-like figure chasing him in Kurtz.
Yours truly whiffed in drafts on two of the three mighty NL outfielder triumvirate vying for MVP-2. PCA and James Wood strike out a ton but more than overcome it, with speed and defense from PCA, and incredible power from Wood. It’s surprising to see the 6’6” Nat—hardly a gnat—match PCA in Baserunning value while being a defensive liability. If Wood could ever be a plus defender (perhaps at 1B?), he’ll be a perennial MVP candidate. He might be, anyway. Corbin Carroll has outsized power and runs the bases better than anyone but Witt, although fantasy managers wish the triples leader would swipe a few more bags (9 SB).
Speaking of guys we didn’t draft, it’s awesome to see rookies Kevin McGonigle and JJ Wetherholt in and around the top 10. Hell, bWAR has McGonigle almost equal to Witt in value (3.8 to 4.1). We doubt anyone had sophomore Dillon Dingler leading all catchers in WAR. It’s an MVP-level baseball name at minimum.
Max Muncy has been a fantastic value for the Dodgers and fantasy owners. He was the 20th 3B with a 231 ADP in March NFBC Online Championship drafts (12 teamers). His 16 HR, .266 BA and 75 runs + RBI through Wednesday put him sixth at the position on the Player Rater ($14.8)—just $.70 away from fourth. Turns out that being able to see is pretty important for a batter.2
I see a lot of Giants games and it’s true: Luis Arraez is a plus defender at second base now. The legend of Ron Washington, infield defense guru, continues.
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Stop Fetishizing Zone-Contact%
You’ve heard them. The analysts who foreground contact and especially zone contact rate in their hitter analysis. They set arbitrary limits to define good, middling, or quad-A players based on z-con%—anything below 82% or 80% isn’t a major leaguer, etc.
Making contact is clearly an important element in batter success. But it’s also obviously flawed as single factor analysis. It requires context. Players who swing faster and do more damage are liable to whiff more. This is where intent matters. Could many sluggers ditch their A-swing in two-strike counts to make more contact? Sure. Is that more valuable than ripping a homer every 15 plate appearances? No, in general and especially for fantasy.
Here are the bottom 30 qualified batters by z-con%. We’ll use the Statcast version because it further penalizes foul tips as whiffs (Sports Info Solutions classifies those as contact). We’ve included a few other plate discipline metrics as well as the best overall batter value measures, wOBA and wRC+:
Of course there are a few stinkers here, but aside from the handful of hitters who blend power with high contact rates—Yordan, Rice, Soto—this is a who’s who of the most valuable bats in the majors. Kurtz, Schwarber, Carroll. Breakouts like Walker and Wood. Murakami, who many worried would bust for this very reason, has a “quad-A” z-con% but is 55% better than league average as a batter. Judge is always near the bottom of z-con%.
Ohtani is also normally around bottom 20 in z-con%. It’s perhaps notable he has his highest mark (85.2%) this season but also his worst power, wOBA, and wRC+ values since 2022.
These low zone-contact bats also comprise many of the best walkers in the sport. Indeed, the other thing we notice is that generally this cohort has low chase rates (O-Swing%). The really good power hitters know the zone and work counts to get pitches they want to hit.
Again, context matters which is why we like to fold in other metrics like SEAGER and pitch selection skill. Let’s look at Robert Orr’s Damage Rate leaders (similar to Barrels but with spray angle accounted), by league percentile rank:
That’s a lot of overlap with the low z-con% leaders! Most of this group scores well at overall SEAGER and especially pitch selection. The other element of SEAGER is hittable pitch taken%, and admittedly some of these bats strike out because they are too patient.
Let’s compare the top 20 in zone-contact rate:
There are a few good hitters here, but also a ton of punchless types, and very few we’d consider elite (Soto and Yandy Diaz are in the next 10). There’s plenty of blue in the wOBA and wRC+ columns. They also chase more and walk less often.
Put simply, contact and z-contact do not correlate well with wOBA and wRC+.
This isn’t to say zone-contact is useless. Clearly we want to know whether a minor league call-up or potential waiver add gets regularly beaten in the zone. But we must ground the analysis more holistically, especially for fantasy. Does this bat have power? Patience? Speed?
Call it the Joshua Baez Rule. Baez has 23 HR, 12 SB, 20.5 barrel%—and a measly 74.8 z-con% in 63 AAA games. He strikes out too much. But he’s also rocking a .405 wOBA and .344 ISO. He may not pan out, but when he’s called up we shouldn’t avoid a big FAAB bid based on his contact rate metrics.
Remember, too, in standard Roto we’re figuring out a puzzle. Do I want every player on my teams to rank bottom-20 in zone-contact? No. We need an occasional Ernie Clement3 or Jung Hoo Lee mixed in to offset Jazz Chisholm’s .229 average, just as we need Jazz’s 10 HR and 20 SB to balance the hit tool guys’ lack of power/speed juice.
We even need some of this guy. I have a few shares of Jacob Wilson, who doesn’t show on the leaderboard because he missed time to injury. But if he did, his 91.9 z-con% would rank top 30.
But here are the real-world perils of the profile. On Tuesday it’s 6-5 Pirates, two on, two out, 0-2 count in the bottom of the ninth.
You want a contact guy up, right? Put it in play, they say.
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Sean Manaea is… back? Of course there have been multiple iterations of Manaea but the version we’re chasing for fantasy appeared in 2024, when he put together a 3.67 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, and 24.9 K% as a starter over 181.2 IP.
Back then Manaea lowered his arm angle and featured five pitches. But last year he shaved the repertoire down to four seamer, sweeper, and changeup; the K% went up but so did the homers (1.93 per 9). While battling injuries, he was not relevant for fantasy (5.64 ERA).
Now Manaea has risen from bullpen purgatory and he is back throwing five pitches. He’s dialed down the sweeper and especially the four seam fastball, compensating with more sinkers and cutters. The new mix—four seam, sweeper, change, sinker, cutter—is almost identical to his ‘24 arsenal.
It didn’t start that way: early this season, Manaea was leaning on the three pitches he featured last year, which led to a 6.55 ERA and 5.41 xERA. He’s gradually pushed up the cutter and sinker, and while both have allowed a .300+ BAA, they also induce weak contact (86.6 EV on sinker, 83.7 on cutter).
Finally, even as his workload increased, so too has Manaea’s velocity. Never a hard thrower, he was sitting 89.7 through April. It’s up to 91.1 since then. The stuff and command models approve.
Manaea has sparkled since the beginning of May: 3.33 ERA, 3.15 xERA, 1.11 WHIP, 25.2 K%, and 6.3 BB%.4 His average exit velocity against is down to 86.1 mph. He’s technically only started twice, his last outings, but he functioned as the bulk arm five other times in that period. With the Mets bevy of injuries, he’s now firmly in the rotation, and worthy of a waiver add even in 12-team leagues.
He hasn’t been a workhorse due to the dual role, but Ohtani leads all starters with a 2.44 ERA since 2022 (including players who pitched in ‘22). Next is Tarik Skubal (2.63) and then… Drew Rasmussen (2.74). Ras was a draft miss for me; I assumed his workload would be limited by the Rays. Well, he just went 7 IP of one-run ball this week vs the Dodgers. That’s three straight starts of seven innings and four of his last five. We targeted his teammate, Ryan Pepiot, in that range. Remember him?
From 2023-25, Muncy batted .216 with a 25.8 K% and .780 OPS. He was diagnosed with a right eye astigmatism and got glasses in April of last year. Across the last 1 1/3 seasons he’s batting .252 with 22.3 K% and .865 OPS.
An Occasional Ernie Clement sounds like a Dickensian novel title. Or fantasy team name!
Entering Thursday, when Manaea went 5.1 IP of 2 ER vs the Phillies. He added 5 K and 16 whiffs on 95 pitches.