SPECULATOR: Searching for the next Javier Baez

One of our favorite preseason exercises in this space is to take a breakout performance from the previous season, construct a pre-breakout profile of that player, and look for candidates who might pull off the same leap forward this year.

Our subject this year is Javier Báez (IF, CHC), who posted an amazing 2018 (34-111-.290-21 SB), fulfilling the broad-skilled upside he had teased us with for so long.

If we want to identify some candidates who look today like Baez did a year ago, we could use the following filters:

• age <= 27 (Baez broke out in his age-25 season, but we'll leave some wiggle room here)
• previous high R$ earned < $20
• projected PX 100 and projected Spd 100 (Baez was 129/105 in 2017, then 163/146 in 2018)
• to capture Baez' free-swinging ways, we'll slip a ct% < 76% filter in here as well.

Eyeballing that set of filters, you may not...

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