Expected wOBA is the Statcast version of wOBA. While regular wOBA is based on actual outcomes (did the ball become a hit, a double, a homer?), xwOBA is based on the quality of contact — how hard the ball was hit and at what angle. It predicts what the offensive production should have been.

xwOBA is arguably the single most important Statcast metric for evaluating hitters. It captures the full picture of offensive quality in one number, and it’s scaled to look like wOBA, so you read it the same way. This is exactly why Baseball Nut uses xwOBA to calculate xNUT.

The NUT vs xNUT gap on Baseball Nut player pages tells you everything: if NUT is much higher than xNUT, the hitter’s production is inflated by batted-ball luck. If xNUT is higher, the player’s true talent is better than their results show. This is the foundation of the buy-low/sell-high strategy in fantasy baseball.

What is a good xwOBA?

xwOBA is THE key input for xNUT. Baseball Nut calculates xNUT by feeding xwOBA through the same formula as regular NUT, giving you an expected version of player value that strips out batted-ball luck.

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