With the 2024 regular season over, it’s a great time to take look at reports on 10 draftees from the 2024 draft class who had standout professional debuts.
With this exercise, it’s always worth mentioning a small sample size caveat, as well as the fact that many players have just played more baseball this year than at any other point in their careers previously. That said, we now have more detailed, process-oriented stats that could perhaps illuminate interesting elements of a player’s profile.
Specifically, we are looking at five statistics to gauge contact skills, swing decisions and power: miss rate, zone miss rate, chase rate, 90th-percentile exit velocity and max exit velocity. We have data for 158 debut players in these categories. Here is that player pool’s average in each category for added context:
- Miss%: 25.64%
- zMiss%: 17.83%
- Chase%: 24.02%
- 90th EV: 100.7 mph
- Max EV: 106.1 mph
There were 12 players with at least 50 plate appearances who were above-average in each category. They are included in the table below, which is sorted by 90th-percentile exit velocity:
| pick | player | org. | xw0bacon | miss% | zmiss% | chase% | 90th ev | max ev |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Nick Kurtz | OAK | 0.507 | 22.50% | 14.30% | 20.50% | 109.4 | 113.4 |
| 14 | Cam Smith | CHC | 0.397 | 22.90% | 15.70% | 23.00% | 106 | 111.4 |
| 7 | JJ Wetherholt | STL | 0.285 | 19.20% | 17.60% | 13.00% | 105.3 | 109.2 |
| 223 | Joseph Sullivan | HOU | 0.293 | 14.10% | 8.00% | 13.10% | 105.1 | 109.7 |
| 178 | Robert Hipwell | SFG | 0.463 | 22.80% | 16.90% | 11.30% | 103 | 107.4 |
| 31 | Ryan Waldschmidt | ARI | 0.321 | 15.00% | 6.80% | 15.50% | 102.8 | 108.8 |
| 351 | Ian Petrutz | STL | 0.325 | 18.40% | 12.60% | 21.60% | 101.8 | 110.1 |
| 61 | Ethan Anderson | BAL | 0.265 | 22.50% | 16.70% | 16.30% | 101.6 | 107.8 |
| 241 | Tyler Wilson | NYY | 0.248 | 19.00% | 12.20% | 21.00% | 101.6 | 109.2 |
| 159 | Caden Kendle | MIN | 0.235 | 18.60% | 8.50% | 17.70% | 101.2 | 109.9 |
| 58 | Émilien Pitre | TBR | 0.285 | 20.90% | 14.90% | 21.40% | 101.1 | 107.5 |
| 463 | Drew Vogel | HOU | 0.202 | 20.70% | 13.80% | 13.80% | 101.1 | 106.6 |
Top 10 Hitter Debuts For 2024
Cam Smith, 3B, Cubs
Age: 21
Highest Level: Double-A
Smith led all debut hitters with 36 hits, seven home runs and a 1.005 OPS that was tops among all batters with at least 100 plate appearances. The 14th overall pick began his pro season with Low-A Myrtle Beach but quickly jumped to High-A South Bend and then finally Double-A Tennessee.
Across all three levels, Smith slashed .313/.396/.609 to go with 16 extra-base hits and terrific batted ball data alongside surface-level stats. His 106 mph 90th-percentile exit velocity was good for ninth-best among the 158-debut player pool. Among players with at least 100 plate appearances, that mark was fourth-best behind…