Week 2 WAR Snapshot: Hitters
Which players have been the most productive through the first two weeks of the season?
We’ve seen some incredible individual performances across the conference in the first two weeks of the season. From Ethan Calder’s opening-day 13 strikeout outing to Nu’u Contrades’ two home run game against Oral Roberts to Noah Franco’s two home run inning, the league has been entertaining and (mostly) competitive across the board.
While our sample size is still small, I wanted to take a first run at calculating WAR in-season to take a look at what the numbers say about who is off to a really strong start.
If you need a refresher on how I’m calculating WAR for the Big 12, check out this quick explainer. I’ve continued tweaking the fielding positional adjustments slightly, and at some point will probably forego those in favor of actual fielding data.
The full list of players, sorted by WAR, is at the bottom of this piece, but let’s dive in to some of the results. An important note: the data being used includes all game stats through Monday, February 24.
The Top 5 Returning Players
Prior to the season I took a look at the most productive returning players based on 2024 numbers, and we got some good insight into which teams were bringing back a healthy amount of veteran talent.
Early in 2025 some of those vets are performing as expected, while other returners have taken a step forward.
Tyriq Kemp, SS, Baylor - 0.827 (1st OVR)
TJ Pompey, 2B, Texas Tech - 0.642 (3rd OVR)
Skylar King, CF, West Virginia - 0.618 (6th OVR)
Cooper Vest, 1B, BYU - 0.575 (9th OVR)
Mason White, SS, Arizona - 0.574 (10th OVR)
Mason White appeared in the preseason Top 5 and finds himself in the current returning Top 5 as well. White is flashing the same power that made him an impact player the past two seasons, but he’s also getting on base (.433 OB%) at a career-high pace.
Kemp (preseason No. 62) and King (92) have both taken some of the biggest leaps from 2024 to start 2025, with the obvious question being sustainability. Both have positive walk-to-strikeout ratios and neither are relying too much on power, which is a signal that the progression is legitimate.
Pompey and Vest were both preseason Top 30 players who have taken nice steps forward as well.
The Top 5 Transfers
One of my offseason projects is going to take a look at overall transfer impact, but for now I wanted to start calling out transfer players that have had good starts with their new clubs.
Brady Ballinger, Kansas (College of Southern Nevada) - 0.706
Seth Dardar, Kansas State (Columbia) - 0.642
Dariel Osoria, Kansas (Western Oklahoma State College) - 0.642
Maximus Martin, Kansas State (Georgia State) - 0.628
Sawyer Smith, Kansas (St. Cloud State) - 0.583
Well, hello to the Sunflower State. Kansas and Kansas State have gotten the biggest early returns on transfer players at the plate, with all five of these guys checking in inside the overall Top 10.
That Ballinger tops this group isn’t terribly surprising, considering he checked in as the No. 10 incoming transfer in our preseason rankings. Ballinger has logged an OPS of 1.428 over Kansas’ first seven games of the season.
Smith checked in at No. 22 on the preseason list while Dardar (35), Osoria (36) and Martin (37) were all in a nice row in the mid 30s.
Top 5 Freshmen
Freshmen are some of the biggest wildcards in the bunch. The step up in competition from high school is arguably one of the biggest jumps a player can make in their career.
Nolan Traeger, C, TCU - 0.458 (22nd OVR)
Garrett Shull, OF, Oklahoma State - 0.388 (32nd OVR)
Pearson Riebock, INF, Baylor - 0.366 (37th OVR)
AJ Evasco, INF, Kansas - 0.363 (38th OVR)
Tu'alau Wolfgramm, C, BYU - 0.326 (52nd OVR)
Fun fact, if you sort by class in the table you’ll see Derek Smith, Utah’s junior catcher, is listed as a freshman. Just a fun reminder to double check your data sets before you run with them.
We’ll keep an eye on the *actual* freshmen in the Big 12 to see if and when the freshmen wall hits certain players, but out of the gate this group has been very impressive.
Traeger is splitting time with Karson Bowen at catcher for TCU, and has already flashed the power that made him an MLB Draft risk for the Horned Frogs last summer. He’s TCU’s third highest-rated player by WAR so far this season, behind Isaac Cadena and Bowen.
Wrestling with the DH Positional Adjustment
My biggest issues with this current set is that I think designated hitters are still being dinged too much for not playing in the field. The MLB positional adjustment is -12.5, I’ve toned that down to -5 to offset the difference in length of season, but it still feels too harsh when looking at the actual list.
Guys like UCF’s Eidan Espinal (54), TCU’s Noah Franco (77) and Arizona State’s Brandon Compton (194) have provided immense value to their respective lineups early in the year, but their ranking doesn’t necessarily reflect that. Compton’s ranking feels particularly egregious, considering he’s leading the Sun Devils in batting average and has five extra base hits in seven games (according to the data set we’re using…he had another double on Tuesday vs. UCLA).
We’ll deal with the ranking for now and continue to look at a better way to address DH moving forward.
The Full List
(if you’re on mobile, click the link below the image to see the full table)