No young player has polarized the Yankees fanbase more than Clint Frazier. In the aftermath of the Andrew Miller trade, some felt the return proved too light. They wanted Miller back and poked holes in Frazier’s game. During the early parts of the 2017 season, a vocal contingent of fans believed Dustin Fowler to be the superior prospect.

Then Frazier made his major league debut and took the Yankees universe by storm. He put the legendary bat speed, as famously described by Brian Cashman, on full display. Across 142 plate appearances, he authored a .231/.268/.448 batting line with four home runs. An oblique injury shortened his campaign, but Frazier whet the fans’ appetites. A large number of observers expressed displeasure at the prospect of trading Red Thunder for Gerrit Cole. A few went so far as to name him a future MVP.

So, who is the real Clint Frazier? Is he a league average batter with a funky swing? Or is he something more, a rare talent ready to break out? To answer this, it makes sense to find a comparable player in the league. Finding the perfect comp for Frazier could help shed light on his offensive identity.

In order to generate a list of potential comps, I turned to last season’s underlying hitting numbers. Examining batting lines only gives you so much information, especially in a limited sample size. To get a read on the type of bat Frazier has, I pulled his average exit velocity (89.2 mph) and launch angle (13.7). From there, I generated a list of players with an average exit velocity between 88 mph and 90 mph, holding for a minimum of 50 batted ball events.

That list was predictably large, 129 batters to be exact. To further narrow the group, I eliminated every batter with an average launch angle below 13 and above 15.7. That trimming made a more manageable list, but it needed more refining. Part of Frazier’s game is his plate discipline; he managed to swing at just 27.20% of pitches out of the zone. That’s better than the league average mark of 30%. Anyone on the list with worse than league average plate discipline was then removed.