Replacing Ryan Ludwick with Power Scores

Yesterday, it was confirmed that Ryan Ludwick would be out for approximately 3 months. Chris Heisey should take over for him full-time, and he is worth grabbing in both NL-only and mixed leagues. According to Yahoo Sports, Ludwick was owned in less than 50% of leagues, but we'll assume because you are reading this, you smartly owned him.

Ludwick (with health) was a lock for 20+ homeruns and 75+ RBI's. One of the rare righty hitter/lefty throwers, Ludwick was a fly ball hitter (consistently under .75 GB/FB ratio) batting clean-up in an impressive Reds lineup with homerun weighted park factors.

Chances are you drafted him relatively late for HR and RBI's so let us take a look in how to replace him by associating power scores/HR potential to available options.

Sticking with Yahoo Sports, the following outfielders are still available in more than 50%, 25% and 15% of leagues respectively:

Naturally, if you are in keeper or dynasty leagues and guys like Oscar Taveras are somehow still available, then jump, but focusing on re-draft leagues, I will tunnel in on these relevant options ranked by my ‘power score' along with their 2012 Homerun and Fly Ball Average Distance according to Jeff Zimmerman's Batted Ball Leaderboard for reference as well as their Rotochamp's OF Projections:

How did I come up with the power score? I simply accounted for the three most important HR-related variables which correlate well year to year (outside of plate appearances and the quantity of balls they put in play): Fly Ball Percentage (FB%); Homerun Per Fly Ball ratio (HR/FB); and Contact Percentage (Ct%). I subtracted out Infield Fly Balls (IFFB%) because naturally those cannot possibly fall for home runs unless we're talking Angels In the Outfield here. The formula in short is ((FB%-IFFB%)*Ct%)*HR/FB*100. It's an arbitrary value for distinguishing the above list, but again, these three factors correlate relatively well year to year (especially Ct%) so we have a logical base. Keep in mind these are not homerun values.

Recommendation:

I am all for you picking up Lorenzo Cain and Starling Marte if they are available for one, and two you can use the supplemental speed/looking for potential - or Matt Carpenter if you like the positional flexibility and Gerardo Parra who is full time until at least Adam Eaton returns, but from a homerun and RBI perspective, if you can stomach the batting average, we would have to recommend Brandon Moss and Justin Maxwell while Garret Jones may be Ludwick's closest replacement. Dayan Viciedo and Carlos Quentin are also good options that can provide similar counting stats. All of these options (other than Viciedo) had an average home run and fly ball distance well farther than Ludwick which should offset the park factors.

Daniel Schwartz is the owner and contributor for Rotobanter - a site dedicated to hosting visitor requests and live discussion (rotobanter.com). You can follow him on Twitter at @rotobanter.