Here’s Your Periodic Update on the Fly-Ball Revolution
This author spent a fair amount of his 2017 documenting the Fly-Ball Revolution. Of the 330 posts this author published from January through the end of last season, 49 included the term “launch angle.” I looked it up. Overkill? Perhaps. But as a devout believer and documenter, I thought it would be irresponsible not to follow up early this season.
In a piece for The Hardball Times Annual this winter, I wondered aloud if the fly-ball revolution would follow the trajectory of shifts. Shifts were a relative curiosity in 2011 and then enjoyed growth rates of 94.8%, 50.4%, 92.2%, 34.8%, and 57.8% from 2012 to -17, jumping from 2,350 shifts in 2011 to 28,130 in 2016. Shifts fell in total volume for the first time last year, to 26,705. The idea and practice of shifting spread dramatically and rapidly. Just about everyone bought in.
Of course, it’s easier to create a defensive shift than to hit a baseball where desired. What each has in common, though, is they challenge convention.
Hitters have changed to a degree. Thanks to Statcast, it’s possible to monitor these changes quite precisely. Major-league batters produced an average launch angle of 10.1 degrees in 2015, of 10.8 degrees in 2016, and of 11.1 degrees this most recent season. In the 2017 postseason, launch angle continued to inch up — to 12.1 degrees, in this case. This spring, Jeff found hitters were lifting even more batted balls in Florida and Arizona.
Early this season, overall launch angle is slightly up (to 11.6 degrees) from last season. And ground-ball rates are down, too — by six-tenths of a percentage point from last season. Ground-ball rates had declined in three straight seasons entering 2018.
So maybe we will not see a shift-like acceleration in adoption at a league-wide level, but it’s probably also much more difficult to implement to such a dramatic degree. Maybe it won’t happen. Pitchers play a part in this, too. What we do know, however, is a lot more players are experimenting and thinking about changing their batted-ball profiles.
I was also curious to see what new adopters might be enjoying some of the intended results to date.
About a year ago to the day, on April 18, 2017, we provided a periodic batted-ball update. In that post, we learned 51 batters had increased their fly-ball rate by two percentage points or more. To date this season, FanGraphs colleague Sean Dolinar found 43.
What we really want to learn as batted-ball totals inch nearer to stabilization rates — 80 balls in play is a benchmark for fly-ball and ground-ball stabilization — is this: who is reducing their ground-ball rates?
The following are the top-50 ground-ball reducers amongst qualified hitters through Thursday:
One of the more interesting fly-ball revolutionaries last year was Lindor, who appears 30th here. While a prospect, Lindor was never thought to have more than 15-homer potential at the major-league level, but he began to make dramatic changes to his batted-ball profile last year and launched 33 homers. Perhaps he was too fly-ball heavy, as his overall offensive efficiency did not spike. (Lindor recorded wRC+ marks of 128, 111, 118, respectively, in 2015, -16, and -17.) Lindor is on the list again.
Jeff has already written about one of the more notable swing-changers in Betts. It’s interesting that the already extreme Trevor Story seems intent on becoming more extreme.
https://gfycat.com/DesertedFittingCollie
Another interesting name on the list is Baez, ranking as the No. 2 ground-ball changer to date. Cubs manager Joe Maddon said recently that, if Baez could stop chasing breaking balls, he could become Manny Ramirez. That’s really saying something. It also seems pretty unlikely, though Baez has another level to reach with improved discipline. Baez has always had plus-plus power. But Baez needed to do something else to unlock his potential and that was to get more balls into the air to allow his power to play more often. He entered the season with a 1.2 GB/FB ratio for his career and a 1.35 mark last season. Baez is worth keeping an eye on.
Joe Maddon, possibly workshopping new T-shirt ideas after #Cubs get 14 hits and beat #Cardinals: "Keep your launch angles. Keep your exit velocities. Give me a good at-bat."
— Patrick Mooney (@PJ_Mooney) April 19, 2018
Sorry, Joe, but Javier needs to launch.
Span might be up to something, too. Dee Gordon seems like one of the outliers who ought to be trying to get more balls on the ground. I cannot imagine Gordon is intending to hit more balls in the air.
Missing? Eric Hosmer, who has actually increased his ground-ball rate by 4.8 percentage points.
It’s still early. We might need some more time, some more batted balls, to feel confident about rate stats stabilizing at individual and league-wide levels, but the guys on the list are worth keeping an eye upon. They might be up to something.
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.
“Overkill?”
Yes. Definitely overkill.
God bless, just had to sneak that Hos dig in at the end
I’m here for the indications that Dansby Swanson’s improvement could be real
That homerun gif is beautiful. I have a thing for hitters that golf pitches out.
I will always remember a Manny blast on a Fox national broadcast where he golfed a ball off his shoetops over the monster where it bounced off a car on the top of the parking structure across the street and then disappeared, presumably headed for the Mass turnpike.
Looks like a cricket swing.
I clicked looking for Christian Villanueva, but he misses the cut on having qualified at bats both last year and this year. Using his minors numbers, he would have ended up somewhere in the top 15 though.
The list last year was not everyone with more than a two percent spike in FB rate, it was just the top 50 (plus Springer) and it started at 2.7%. Not a big deal, but if you used the same criteria, I assume that the drop in the raisers would be more than the eight you have it listed as.
It would also be interesting to just look at how real that early look ended up at the end of the season. For example, the top guy on the list last year, Rougned Odor, 22.7%, ended 2017 with the exact same FB% as he ended 2016 (and with a slightly higher GB%).
Last April’s post employed FB% change this above chart was GB% change. But I also looked at FB% and that’s where the 43 number came from.
My point was that last year wasn’t 2 percent or more (my understanding is that was the cutoff you used to find the 43 number, maybe I’m wrong). Last year’s article cut it off at 2.7 percent. So if you go back a year, it would likely be more than 51 that were over 2 percent. Which would give more of an indication of a slowdown on the fly ball revolution (it can’t very well increase forever, obviously). That’s all I was saying. It’s a minor nit pick, I know.
Can we can get an update on the ridiculous xwOBA increase? Currently sitting at .332 from .321 last season(2016 was .316). It appears we might see the biggest year over year run increase in MLB history and there’s silence on this everywhere. It is timely as the last week and a half the runs are finally catching up. HR/FB rate in the past 10 days is >13%(Last 7 days 13.4%) and last April it was sitting at 12.8%.
Why is no one writing about this?
So, addressing the cyclical nature of things… assuming pitchers respond to this hitters’ adjustment by pounding more fastballs at (and above) the top of the strike zone, that would also help account for the reduction in ground balls, right?
And teams looking to employ more pitchers that can stem the tide.
Highly recommend you look at distributions rather than averages. Maybe the average is down but the distribution is tighter around ideal (fewer ground pounders AND schimpf-esque guys)
Editor’s note: launch angle is actually slightly up this year, not down. Post has been updated to reflect that.
Btw I think the Fb revolution is real but in the early to mid 00s air ball percentage was actually higher than it is now and that was without players thinking about launch angle.
Why was it higher than and what caused the drop in the early 2010s?
Better hitters?