Document : NPB Rates & Ranks Report #.5
Level : Professional - International
Source : https://www.fangraphs.com/
Offensive Date Data pulled : March 2025
Pitchers Date Data pulled: March 2025
Overview : From an offensive perspective, I rated and ranked 261 NPB position players from 2024 season. Players were assessed using a neutralized Run Value system to measure their overall offensive production, broken down into two core components:
“The Run Tool”— Captures the value generated from non-hit plate appearances (walks, stolen bases, etc.)
“The Hit Tool”— Measures a player’s offensive impact via hitting
“Overall” — A sum of the Run Tool and the Hit Tool, representing overall offensive contribution
Each player is ranked in these three categories: Run Tool, Hit Tool , and Overall .
This week, I’m releasing a rates & rankings from 2024 as a bit of a warm up for the first real blog of the NPB season on 4/21/25. I personally believe you need about a months worth of data or 100 at bats before you can have anything really tangible to say. I.e. I wouldn’t bench players using 2 weeks worth of performance data to start a season. There’s not enough of a sample size and lots of growth can happen over an offseason.
Anyways… what makes this blog cooler than the rest is that I am including the rates for position players. So you can see how much that player is worth each time they step to the plate. I will not include this in my blogs moving forward, but I wanted to show everyone the method I am using to rank players.
This is my first time covering the NPB and I’m stoked for the first blog. Each blog will include :
A top 10 position player in-depth breakdown, as well as full rankings of the entire league
Schedule for the top 10 players for the upcoming 2 weeks
Position Players Ranked by Run Value then Grouped by Age
Full Ranking of all Pitchers
Pitchers Ranked by Run Value then Grouped by Age
Blogging Schedule :
Does this mean I get to pick a NPB team to root for?!? Who should I pick as my team?
Stay Tuned!!!
-Chris James
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