Has the Fly-Ball Revolution Begun?
Last month, I explored whether more MLB hitters will get off the ground to improve their offensive numbers. As background for that piece, I asked private hitting instructor Doug Latta, who believes in lifting the ball, why there has been resistance to the the uppercut swing. Latta’s philosophy helped two of his clients, Justin Turner and Marlon Byrd, become dramatically better hitters.
We know fly balls are much more valuable than ground balls. In 2016, batters hit .241 with a .715 slugging mark and a wRC+ of 139 on fly balls versus a .238 average, .258 slugging mark and of wRC+ of 27 on ground balls.
“You see a (Josh) Donaldson, you see a Turner, you hear people talking a little more. Now you can quantify [quality of contact]… But it’s still a small movement,” Latta told me. “The results speak for themselves, but you are taking on 100 years of thought.”
Latta noted how slow the game is to move from conventional thought, and there appears to be little change in GB/FB tendencies league wide.
But following that piece, Jeff Sullivan drilled deeper and found that, between the last two years, there were 53 qualifying hitters who lowered their ground-ball rate by five percentage points or more, the greatest change in his study. And perhaps that speaks to the beginning of a trend. Wrote Sullivan:
There does appear to be something of a present-day shift, as hitters fight back against the information advantage so many pitchers have been provided. Pitchers these days know what their pitches do, and they know where all the hitters struggle. So more hitters appear to be preparing themselves to hit the crap out of every mistake.
An important story line to follow in 2017 and beyond could be whether more hitters buy in — and whether the shift identified by Sullivan turns out to mark a more widespread a change in philosophy. Will subtle changes become dramatic ones?
The early years of baseball’s information age have favored pitchers who employed PITCHf/x and Trackman to investigate the quality and movement of their offerings, who could investigate hot zones of opposing hitters. Now, with optimum launch angles being quantified and better understood, perhaps hitters are beginning to better understand their craft and how to fight back.
Earlier today, Latta forwarded me an MLB.com story by Adam Berry on the Pirates’ growing belief in the the uppercut swing.
@BenLindbergh @MJ_Baumann @Travis_Sawchik The shift has started….
— Doug Latta (@LattaDoug) March 2, 2017
Has the revolution begun?
The Pirates are of interest because, as Berry notes, they have been one of the more ground-ball-oriented lineups in the game, posting an average launch angle of 10.3 degrees last season, according to Statcast, which was the 27th-lowest angle in the majors.
In my four seasons covering the Pirates, I had never heard an OPS-in-the-air philosophy articulated by Hurdle or a Pirates coach. But here’s Hurdle elaborating on the fly-ball concept from the MLB.com story:
“I do think it’s a transition lane in which the game is going,” Hurdle said. “You’ve seen some very good hitters have very good success with it. More conversations are being had analytically about it. … We’re definitely having conversations.”
So if one of last season’s most ground-ball-prone teams is buying in this spring, if perhaps 53 hitters bought in last season (as Sullivan found), we could be on the verge of a tipping point where the uppercut swing becomes more accepted and practiced. What if the sport suddenly has dozens of more players like Donaldson and Turner?
Just say NO…. to ground balls. #MLB #striveforexcellence pic.twitter.com/6YANrOZHQE
— Josh Donaldson (@BringerOfRain20) March 1, 2017
At least one team has previously tried, and benefited, from a fly-ball approach.
The 2013 Oakland A’s won 96 games in part due to a fly-ball approach, posting the top fly-ball rate on record since GB/FB metrics have been tracked. A fly-ball swing plane is especially effective against two-seam, sinking fastballs, as noted in The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, which is important in an era when ground-ball pitchers have become more prized.
The A’s proved a team-wide concept can be effective. That club finished fourth in baseball in slugging (.419) in 2013, fourth in wRC+ (108), and fourth in runs scored (767).
So what happens if the entirety of MLB adopts the uppercut? Then perhaps last year’s offensive outburst will not mark something of an outlier but, rather, a catalyst for ushering in a new era when hitters struck back.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
I’m not sure where the equilibrium is here, though. Data indicate that fly-ball hitters do best against ground-ball pitchers, and vice-versa – iirc, launch angle effects from hitters and pitchers are slightly sub-additive, but only slightly, and there’s a reasonably narrow range of launch angles that yield good results.
A league-wide shift towards a fly-ball-based hitter approach could yield more offense in a league where many pitchers attempt to induce grounders, but it could also create an opportunity for some pitchers to see more success by, accordingly, abandoning the sinking pitches and trying to induce fly balls.
This seems like it could result in a cyclic pattern, or perhaps there’s an equilibrium to be reached somewhere. I’m not sure.
This is why baseball is the best. Its always a cat and mouse game. Pitchers starting to dominate? Hitters find a way to adjust. Now it’ll be interesting how pitchers will fight hitters who swing for the fences. More sinker ballers? Premium on OF defense? (Rays look to be headed that way). Baseball!!
Not sinkers, though, since this swing is good against them. I’d bet on things like high fastballs. In fact, this might be part of why the Royals were so good in the playoffs. The best teams in baseball were the ones with lots of upper cut swings that crushed balls low in the zone. If those were the teams in the playoffs, who’s going to beat them? Teams built to not throw lots of sinking fastballs.
The Royals, conversely, threw a lot of high fastballs, generating FIP-beating performances from Danny Duffy, Jason Vargas, and Chris Young, among others. They got a ton of IFFBs by keeping the ball higher than batters expected, and their outfield defense was outstanding to go along with it. The same skill that got teams to the playoffs made them vulnerable to a team like that.
I’m not sure what the counter to this is, but it’s probably something like that. And then the batter response is going to be something a more even plane focused on taking what the pitcher gives you, pulling sharply when it’s in and swinging inside-out when it’s way. The aim might be to take the outfield defense out of the equation, hoping for extra bases down the line. Who knows, really. We’ll find out in five years.
If hitters buy in to this fly ball philosophy, at what point does it make sense to make defensive adjustments. Instead of shifting in the infielder, why not shift one infielder into a 4th outfielder for some players? Has their been any research into what the optimal defense would be against fly ball hitters?
You raise an interesting point about optimal defensive alignments, but it seems the fly ball% (hard hit fly balls specifically) would have to increase quite drastically to make a 3 man IF/ 4 man OF make sense. I do wonder how this would change the value the front offices put on defense at each positions.
The Rays were the best example of selling out for the HR last year. Longoria, Dickerson, Kiermeier, Brad Miller, all had FB rates way up from ’15. They ended up 24th in runs (672) regardless, I’m not sure how much it helped.
A’s really sold out in the 2nd half of the 2012 season, I’d say when this FB phenomenon really began. 39.9% FB, 38.3% GB, genius move by that organization at that time to get into the playoffs.
I think the FB revolution will properly express itself when when the right players can be targeted and buy in, a player like Brandon Moss, rather than a player like Corey Dickerson.
Nit-picking comment: If the Pirates have been a GB-oriented team, their average launch angle last year was the 27th highest, not lowest. IOW, 26 teams had a higher launch angle, not a lower angle.
In my capacity as a professional golfer allow me to make a few comments. Both sports obviously involve a ball being struck by a stick with an ensuing flight. There are also equally obvious differences but laws of motion and the physics of lift and spin are rules not choices. I began playing golf in 1948. Back then the optimum shot was thought to be a shot that left the club with a low launch angle and a high spin rate that created quite a bit of lift. The shots would look majestic, as the ball lost velocity the spin would create a beautiful, to the eye, rising arc, much like a plane taking off, before falling back to the earth. There were zero physicists involved in the game until about 1970 when Karsten Solheim started PING and brought his revolutionary scientific approach to the game. Immediately the earth shook under his feet, both in club design, not applicable here, and the aerodynamics of the golf ball, definitely applicable to the flight of a ball. Immediately the archaic dimple design that had been in use forever was experimented with and various new ideas came forth. Wind tunnel tests and other scientific approaches continued and the entire concept of maximizing distance changed. Trackman showed that the optimum technique was one in which the spin rate was much lower and the launch angle much higher. Driver lofts increased dramatically and the swing mechanics were changed to hit the ball slightly on the upswing with the driver. Today’s ball flight has no long run before lifting but is launched at a substantial angle at impact and the game has been change dramatically. How does this relate to baseball? Almost directly because the idea that while spin does creates lift it is inefficient because to accomplish that the planes of the two objects are not properly aligned for the most efficient transfer of energy. Simply stated, glancing blows are not the same as head on collisions. For every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction has stood the test of time. Logic alone should be adequate to make us recognize that a pitch on a downward plane should be met by a swing on an upward plane. Why are pitchers constantly trying to “Keep the Ball Down”? Because they want the hitters to hit ground balls. Why should the hitter help the pitcher make it easier for him to succeed? It makes no sense to me. Whether in golf or baseball, hitting the ball well requires a genius that cannot be readily quantified. It is why stylish technique, while desirable, is not that important, talent is. What is the best way to teach a hitter that it is advantageous for him to stop killing worms? Assuming he believes that, then put the thought in his mind, let the talent manifest itself, and assist if necessary. One last comment, could the breakout in home runs last year be related to the explosion in 350 yard drives being seen on the PGA Tour because more baseball players are using an upswing approach and not a juiced ball?