Explainer

Top Overall

We combine key Statcast metrics with traditional hard stats to determine each player’s Overall Rating. We believe in blending the two because the ability to stay on the field and produce matters, but underlying metrics are valuable for predicting what a player will do going forward and for judging the legitimacy of what he’s done so far.

Broadly, the rating draws on four types of input:

• Expected-outcome (like expected batting average)
• Quality-of-contact metrics (like barrel rate)
• Traditional production (like home runs and stolen bases)
• Plate discipline (like walks and strikeouts)

Because these inputs update as the season progresses, Overall Ratings are always changing — a player’s rating today reflects his most current form, not a preseason projection.

Top Gainers

This measures a player’s contribution to his own Overall Rating gain over the past two weeks, with the most recent games weighted more heavily than games from earlier in that window.

This is deliberately not a simple “hottest hitters” list. A player who’s been performing well all season may not show much movement here, even though he’s great — because he was already rated highly. We think this is more useful for fantasy purposes; those established performers are almost certainly already rostered in your league, while the players climbing fastest right now are the ones worth checking your waiver wire for.

Top Overlooked

This measures players who are rated highly relative to where they’re being drafted, using National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) Average Draft Position (ADP) data.

NFBC ADP updates throughout the year based on fresh data from active drafters, so this isn’t just a snapshot of preseason draft position — it reflects a more current read on how the market values a player. The higher a player’s Overlooked score, the more likely you are to find him available in your league.

Player Grades

Each player’s detail card also shows four letter grades — Batting Skills, Slugging, Plate Discipline, and Baserunning — using the same process as that for Top Overall mentioned above.

A Note on Our Methodology

The stats above are all publicly available. What we don’t publish is the exact formula behind them. That’s the part of Fantasy Baseball Edge that’s ours, and it’s what lets us keep refining and improving the model over time without you needing to re-learn how to read it.

If you have questions about a specific rating or grade, or think we’re missing something, we’d love to hear from you — reach out on the Contact page.