Does Petey Halpin Deserve To Be The Most Hated Prospect In Dynastyland? (61 BBE+)

At 22 years old, in AAA, on the 40-man, and ros­tered in just 1% of Fantrax leagues, Petey Halpin is the most hat­ed prospect in the dynasty world. If my coun­t’s cor­rect, he is cur­rent­ly the least ros­tered non-catcher/non-pitch­er on a 40-man. Kenedy Coro­na is ros­tered in 2% of leagues. Ben Cowles is 2%. Shoot, Warm­ing Bern­abel got boot­ed off a 40-man and he’s ros­tered in 3% of leagues. The hate feels real. Is it jus­ti­fied? Halpin was a tout­ed prep who went in the third round of the 2020 draft and signed for over 1.5 mil­lion. He isn’t a noth­ing-guy, he’s just steadi­ly moved up the lad­der with­out guady-look­ing offen­sive pro­duc­tion. Here’s what he’s done as a pro head­ing into Sun­day:

Here are his first 61 BBEs of 2025, some stolen bases, and defen­sive looks, includ­ing one of the rarest OFAs you’ll see:

Halpin looks the part in CF. Hav­ing watched a decent chunk of Bren­ton Doyle com­ing up (under­ap­pre­ci­at­ing his defense), Halpin feels sim­i­lar, in that he’s prob­a­bly bet­ter than I think. Not sure the arm is of the same qual­i­ty as Doyle’s 95th per­centile MLB arm, but as we saw, Halpin seems capa­ble of patrolling things just fine. I’m not say­ing Halpin is a future gold-glover, but I’m not say­ing he isn’t, either. Halpin seems faster to me than Doyle, but maybe good jumps on the base paths are deceiv­ing here. Doyle was tabbed a 60 run, Halpin 55/60 by pub­lic pun­dits. Doyle’s best MiLB stolen base pro­duc­tion was 23, 12 for Halpin. I find myself in an unin­ten­tion­al com­par­i­son, but for fun, let’s look at Doyle vs Halpin in AAA:

Doy­al has always hit the ball hard­er, and hard­er than the aver­age MLBer, but his fly­ball EVs have sat at or slight­ly below MLB aver­age. I was sur­prised by Halpin’s 90th per­centile EV sam­ple here. Evi­dent­ly, EV is some­thing that, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, sta­bi­lizes quick­ly, just 50ish events. We’re well past that, and Halpin’s 90th EV is a tick above MLB aver­age at 105. Even bet­ter is that only one of these six events were a ground­ball:

Halpin’s aver­age EV in our sam­ple was below the 88.7 MLB aver­age, at 85.1. His fly­ball EV was also below aver­age at 87.9, while MLB is 90. This is a long way of say­ing Halpin isn’t going to mash you homers, but might not be as slap­py as his rep­u­ta­tion. We saw him launch a 108 MPH HR, and his hard­est hit balls point to HR out­comes to be had. But Halpin’s swing is geared toward all-fields, line dri­ve hit­ting. His line dri­ve EV in our sam­ple was 96.3 mph. MLB aver­age line dri­ve EV sits 93–95. Whether or not you want to say Petey hits the ball hard or not is a mat­ter of how you want to look at it. He does­n’t, and he does. This sam­ple boasts a 20.7 aver­age LA, which is well above MLB’s 12.9 aver­age and would be top 25 in MLB.

Strike­outs might be a big­ger prob­lem than hard hits and angles. Adjust for his last game, and Halpin sits at 29.5 K%. They say K% sta­bi­lizes at 100 PA, so it’s safe to say Halpin will hov­er around 30% this year in AAA. Not ide­al. But are we sure we can say that about hit­ters, young for the lev­el, dur­ing the first taste of said lev­el, fac­ing the best pitch­ing they’ve ever seen? Of course, super small sam­ples here, but Halpin’s first 17 games haven’t been like his last 9. He took a few days off after a rough patch and came back hot:

That’s a 34 K% and then 22.5 K%. Is there any lee­way for let­ting a guy get accus­tomed to new com­pe­ti­tion?

Enough of this num­ber-wang­ing. My head hurts, and we can cut up num­bers in lots of ways to talk us in or out of things. Let’s get back to the video. Halpin is aggres­sive, yet one to take his walks. Aggres­sive, yet dis­ci­plined? I saw an aes­thet­i­cal­ly goofy/“stiff” swing, akin to a golfer swing­ing a bat. An abbre­vi­at­ed fol­low-through added to a less whip­py bat paints a dif­fer­ent-look­ing pic­ture, but I think it all works well for him. Ear­ly in the sam­ple, you see him bend­ing down to one knee mid-pitch at times. Less so or not at all lat­er. (Iron­i­cal­ly, a very Doyle char­ac­ter­is­tic too.) My take­away here is that he was see­ing it bet­ter lat­er, and that we’re not talk­ing about a future bat­ting title champ.

I think we see an under­sold ath­lete. I think we see a skill set appeal­ing to real teams. Poten­tial plus CF defend­er who can wreak hav­oc on the base paths and is capa­ble of doing dam­age with the bat. I saw a hit­ter mak­ing good con­tact on all types of speeds, pitch­es, and loca­tions. Petey is not all D. He can swing it a lit­tle, too…vs right­ies. Halpin’s out­come is very strong-side pla­toony, as he’s nev­er hit left­ies well. So, back to our orig­i­nal question…does he deserve the hate?

There’s an MLB reg­u­lar out­come here with the defense as the call­ing card. Sure, fourth out­field­er and all that. Offen­sive­ly, an aver­age MLB bat out­come could be on the table, with swing and miss/strikeouts of most con­cern. I won­der if the base-steal­ing poten­tial is under­sold by what he’s done in the minors thus far. Halpin might be fix­ing to set a new career high in SBs this sea­son. Not­ing, even when repeat­ing AA, the old­est he’s ever been for his league is 1.7 years younger than aver­age. He’s the age a lot of July col­lege draftees will be when they hit full-sea­son. So an aver­age MLB bat with maybe plus SB poten­tial, strong-side pla­toon­ing?

In a format/league size where an aver­age MLBer is a plus asset, like a 30 or only league, Halpin does not deserve the hate. Oth­er­wise, I can get the lack of dynasty desire. Where Halpin gets a boost, and should be loved, is in larg­er for­mats that spec­i­fy CF posi­tion with an added inter­est in dai­ly line­up for­mats.

Final ver­dict: The hate is and it isn’t jus­ti­fied. I mean, this A‑baller is ros­tered in twice as many leagues as Halpin, and that’s just hard to wrap a head around.

(Javier Mogol­lon)

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