First up we'll do Sam Antonacci, who god bless him, is looking like at worst a super utility guy, most times a rare, valuable plus bat that can play 2B and corner OF. He started his college career with Heartland Community College a D2 school, promptly racked up a POTY, transferred to Coastal Carolina, slashed a fun 367/.523/.504 and was drafted in the 5th round by the Sox in the 2024 MLB Draft. Preseason, he wasn't that highly regarded on most Sox lists, but was noted as a high floor guy by Fangraphs in their writeup, which had him 11th: Our friends at Future Sox had him 9th in the org, with a similar profile while noting his excellent stat cast data from the minors:* Ok, enough about the past: Sam comes in with .8 fWAR in 208 PA. ZIPS figured he'd be a decent bat out of spring, projected for a 99 wRC+, but so far he's exceeded that modest projection with a 119 wRC+ and perhaps has been a bit unlucky with a xwOBA of .370. ZIPS has reacted and rest of schedule they think's he's good for a 107 wRC+. Sam is the def of a "spray hitter" with a pull percent of only 33.3%, middle 40.1%, and oppo 26.5%. He does a great job avoiding popouts, at only 4.3%.** Sam destroys fastballs, he's 5.6 runs above average already. That's his bread and butter and if you can hit fastballs, you can hit anybody. Eye test wise we see this, he's a very wristy hitter and that allows him to really see the ball "deep" compared to guys that are full go big lower body load, eg Colson Montgomery. But this analysis is mostly stat focused so we'll get back to that: FG has him down for -3.8 runs in the field, which sounds bad, but is fairly benign for a rookie convert. For example Vaughn was -28 his convert year and Sam isn't going to approach that. Let's look at his statcast profile: 78th percentile spring speed is excellent: FG has him for -.1 runs below average on the bases, which makes sense given he's been picked off a bunch and done other stupid stuff. He's fast, but he needs to be a bit smarter to fully unlock the value. His rolling xwOBA has been closer to league average or slightly better the last two weeks, but 50 games into his career, he's an elite bat to ball guy -- really no two ways about it. Things can change, but usually when a guy passes the eye test and metrics test like this for even a couple months when the regression happens they will figure it out and Sam has an athletic profile that belies his relative unassuming appearance. The arm grade surprised me but makes sense and that will play at 2B. Who could you comp Sam to? I see some Ray Durham with less pop (for now). Ray had a long and productive career, I'm sure Sam and us fans would love 2/3 of that 34 career bWAR for Ray. Or if you want a white guy we'll go with rich man's Craig Grabeck. ______________________________________________________________________ *Good job guys **I'm going to make up a new stat here, it's gonna be called "BIF", which is barrels to infield flies / popups. So far Sam has 11 barrels and 8 popouts so by my math that's a BIF of 1.375. For comparison, Mune has a BIF of 1.92, Vargas has a BIF of 1, Colson has a BIF of .49, Quero has a BIF of ∞ despite only two barrels he has not popped out. Is it a useful stat? Maybe? Someone smart could run some regressions. It certainly is a good ratio for how tolerable a hitter's ABs are from a watchability standpoint Gonna try and do one of these every off day for next couple months. NORTHERN SOUL, THE INTENTIONS - DON'T FORGET THAT I LOVE YOU