Check Out My Huge Pick (Part 1)

We’re getting to that time of year where award talks are going to be coming up. I’m not the biggest fan of the end of season awards. They’re fun, but ultimately, a popularity contest, and as a result I always put a big fat asterisk next to the results in my head.

However, there is one award that tickle’s my fancy just a little more than the rest: The Pedro Cerrano Award. And as rosters are essentially locked now that the waiver deadline has passed, we can start to safely look at the player population eligible for this prestigious nomination.

I’m not entirely sure why I enjoy this award so much. Perhaps it’s something about that ability to find the shiniest turd on the trash heap, gaining value from a commodity that no one previously thought was worth it, that gives me that special feeling in my genitals.

Enough foreplay. I’m not posting this for a potential dozen men to gain some insight into my kinks. I’m posting this to spread knowledge and perhaps perspective on what it means to have picked up the most valuable free agent. This will be broken into three parts: Hitters, Pitchers and Prospects. And maybe an updated leaders board in the final week of the season. All data is as of 08/15/2023 unless stated otherwise.

Enjoy.

Hitters

Let’s wax some philosophy. Is the best free agent pickup the player who contributed the most in the CPL, performed the best in the CPL or performed the best in the MLB, or some arbitrary combination of the three?

All probably have reasonable arguments, but I’m not here to make any of them. I’m just going to spoon feed the info and allow you, the precious reader, to come to your own conclusion.

CPL Contributions and Performances

The underlying data for these two pieces is the same. That is, the category stats generated in head-to-head matchups in the CPL.

I’ve listed the category stats of every hitter who ranks top 10 in one of these two stats. The table above has them listed by Contribution, that is, actual Wins generated in the CPL. The likes of Zach McKinstry, Willi Castro and Zack Short all put up numbers that should have been in the top 10, but because of the context with which they were used, generated significantly less wins than there stats suggest they should have.

The above table takes the actual Contribution (Wins) and averages out with accumulated performance (xWins or expected Wins) as a means of illustrating both sides of this coin.

MLB Performances

We see some familiar names when we just look at MLB accumulated stats, but some new names as well in Luke Raley, Mauricio Dubon, Mike Tauchman, Connor Joe and Travis Jankowski.

Alright, that’s all the “analysis” and info I’m going to dump on your lap for today. Keep an eye out over the next days and weeks for Pitchers and Prospects.

And of course, any questions or corrections, please let me know.