Kris Bryant Has a New Swing
The nice thing about being a baseball writer — specifically, one who analyzes the sport — in the year 2016 is that sometimes players just come right out and start talking about their launch angle. Free topic! A player coming out and talking about his launch angle is the same thing as a player calling my direct line and telling me to please write a post about him. Kris Bryant called my direct line the other day and told me to please write a post about him. Not really. But he did come out and start talking about his launch angle, and I took the hint.
Kris Bryant was fantastic last year. He was fantastic for any type of player, but he was especially fantastic for a rookie. For that, he won an award. He can’t win that same award anymore, on account of no longer being a rookie, but he presumably wants to win more awards and so he’d like to get even better. Bryant was great, but he was great in this weird way, in that he succeeded while making contact on barely two-thirds of his swings. He wasn’t the first to do it, but the company he kept wasn’t particularly inspiring. Look for qualified seasons and sort by contact rate and you’ll find Bryant’s name around the likes of Jack Cust, Pedro Alvarez, Russell Branyan, Dan Uggla, and Ryan Howard. Bryant figured he could succeed and keep better company, so he entered this season with a new plan in mind.
Bryant actually first brought this up in the spring, and The Chicago Tribune’s Mark Gonzales was on it:
“I feel (my swing is) a little flatter, and that’s what I wanted to be,” Bryant said. “It was at too steep of an angle at times. That was my downfall last year, but I think it can only get better from here.
And it’s true. When Rob Arthur wrote about the new science of hitting for FiveThirtyEight last month, he noted Bryant had one of baseball’s highest average launch angles in 2015. While a high launch angle, combined with Bryant’s strength, can lead to those majestic, towering home runs that are so fun to watch, Bryant and the Cubs were worried that his extreme swing plane also contributed to many of his whiffs, the whiffs that left him without much margin for error.
So they worked on a flatter swing. They don’t want Bryant hitting ground balls, they just wanted to correct course a bit. Ideally, they want Bryant’s launch angle between 25 and 30 degrees as often as possible, which makes perfect sense upon considering this graphic from that same Arthur piece:
A launch angle between 25 and 30 degrees is where the home runs live, and it’s where the line drives live. Bryant’s got the strength to hit line drives for homers — he doesn’t need the extreme launch angle — and when Bryant hit the ball on a line last year, he was the second-best hitter in baseball. Bryant slugged 1.107 on line drives in 2015. The Cubs wanted more of that. And more contact, so as to take better advantage of the hopefully newfound line drives.
Well, Bryant’s contact rate is up seven percentage points, and that’s the fifth-largest increase in baseball. His line-drive rate is up six percentage points, and presently sits among the highest 20 such rates in baseball. Last year, 6% of Bryant’s batted balls were in that ideal 25- to 30-degree band. This year, one of every 10 batted balls has left that bat at his desired launch angle.
It’s worth pointing out that Bryant’s production is no better, but it’s no worse, either. To me, this is more about raising the floor — or, to think of it another way, limiting risk. Now, Bryant’s got some margin for error. He’s still got the freakish power, he’s still got the elite eye, but he’s got some wiggle room with how much contact he’s making. Bryant is no longer awing us with how he’s succeeding and making us wonder whether it’s sustainable; he’s just awing us.
You’re probably interested in what this all looks like. I know I was, so I found two home runs on near-identical pitches: 95-mph fastballs, low-and-inside, one from last year and one from this year. When Bryant hit that pitch for a homer last year, he did so with a launch angle of 36 degrees. When he did it this year, he hit it with the perfect launch angle — 27 degrees. Both equally positive results, but this more recent homer is the kind Bryant wants to hit, because it was hit with a swing that he feels is more sustainable. He’ll take the moon shots, of course, but he’d rather they come on a line.
The homer swing from last year, the type Bryant would like to get rid of:
The homer swing from this year, the type Bryant would like to see more of:
It’s simple to spot the difference. Just like Bryant said back in the spring, the swing is flatter. The genesis of the change is in the hands. The fix was as simple as altering the load. Let’s break these swings down even further. Just watch the hands.
From 2015:
The first movement of the hands is down. Notice how early that back shoulder dips. With the hands going straight down and the back shoulder dipping like that, Bryant is immediately committing to a location. Even though he committed to the right location on this particular swing, this is one way to end up with all those whiffs and foul balls.
Now, from 2016:
The first movement of the hands is in, and the bat spends more time in the zone. It’s a more adaptable swing, yet still a powerful swing, thanks to Bryant’s elite bat speed.
Just looking at the surface numbers — the average, the on-base, the power — Bryant looks no different from last year. But he’s got a new swing, and this is an adjustment that’s encouraging on many levels. It’s encouraging because, as long as the production doesn’t suffer, you’d always rather have fewer strikeouts than more strikeouts. It’s encouraging because the Cubs found meaningful data and were able to communicate it to their player in a way that was both understandable and convincing. And it’s encouraging because that 24-year-old player not only bought into the data, but vocalized in spring training what he wanted fix and has already fixed it with a new swing.
August used to cover the Indians for MLB and ohio.com, but now he's here and thinks writing these in the third person is weird. So you can reach me on Twitter @AugustFG_ or e-mail at august.fagerstrom@fangraphs.com.
I watched his swing gif for roughly 5 minutes straight, just staring, jaw hanging.
Looks like a super-athletic kangaroo doing a great impression of Miguel Cabrera. And I mean that in a seriously complimentary way.
Just neighing.
The first clip you use is on a pitch down in the zone (from 2015), the second clip from 2016 is on a pitch in middle of zone…I feel like his swing path hasn’t actually changed that much if you were to take an image of his swing on a low pitch from this year
This is false. As I said in the post, both pitches were four-seam fastballs between 94-95 mph, located down-and-in. Their locations, per PITCHf/x and BaseballSavant, can be found here: http://cdn.fangraphs.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Screen-Shot-2016-05-11-at-10.38.00-AM.png from this search.
I get that they’re both lower than the middle of the zone and inside. But according to your plot there is a 3-1/2″ elevation difference, and 2-3/4″ horizontal difference. Not exactly the same pitch, and definitely more than enough difference for KingKyle to question it. Honestly a better pitch to verify would be one in the middle of the plate. If he has made a change this year he would be driving linedrives on those pitches, last year he’d be trying to hit moonshot homeruns.
My favorite part of the full swing GIF is that at the very end Kris’ body comes off the ground, like he swung so hard that it counter-acted gravity for a split second.
Awesome stuff, August. One thing though… swing plane really isn’t what determines launch angle. The offset of the ball and bat at contact will mostly dictate the angle the ball is hit on. In theory, leveling out an uppercut should trade off power for contact.
It determines the launch angle of the player’s best-struck balls, hit square on.
If we know the distribution of bat-ball vertical error, we could model the curve of exit speed versus launch angle, weight by frequency, overlay that curve on Rob Arthur’s sex diagram, and sum up total run value.
You’re right that the ball-to-bat angle is a big determinant of launch angle off the bat, but every batter is always trying to hit that angle perfectly when they swing (as Jetsy says, “square on”), and obviously no one can every time. Leveling your swing path increases the likelihood that you square the ball up more often. A flatter swing path eliminates some of the timing margin of error caused by your bat moving on the vertical plane as it comes through the zone.
That graph from five thirty eight looks like a smiling Devil Ray. Or is it Devil Bay Ray?
The “flatter” Bryant is talking about is getting the barrel moving more behind toward the 3B dugout. To see this, some clips from the pitcher’s perspective would give more insight.
A flatter swing from the side view would increase launch angle, not decrease it. If anything the 2016 swing his hands remain cocked a bit longer, causing the bat to come in a less steep path.
Honestly I don’t see much change, but my moniker is somewhat of a misnomer. As Brad suggested, he simply may be getting a better feel for a better offset. If Bryant thinks that is the result of flatter swing, good for him.
Great stuff, August. Just great.
Commenting on Brad’s comment, with reference to my THT article: http://www.hardballtimes.com/optimizing-the-swing-part-deux-paying-homage-to-teddy-ballgame/: While it is true that the launch angle is primarily determined by offset rather than swing plane, there’s more to the story. If the goal is to hit the ball as hard as possible (largest exit speed), that is achieved when the attack angle (or swing plane) is about equal to the centerline plane (see 1st figure in my article). For essentially any attack angle, it is possible to find an offset that will maximize the exit speed. Under such circumstances (i.e., maximum exit speed), the launch angle will increase with attack angle. I tweeted out a plot yesterday showing how launch angle depends on attack angle, assuming maximum exit speed: https://twitter.com/pobguy/status/730055358845083648.
One of the primary points I made in my article, and the point that Kris Bryant seems to buy into, is that a steep attack angle will result in more mis-hits or swings-and-misses if the timing is off. A “level” swing (i.e., a swing with the attack angle equal the descent angle of the ball) is far more forgiving on mistiming.
August: Before ending this, let me say that this is a very interesting article, one that has stimulated my thinking.
This post is fantastic.
Entering today, Bryant’s average was up around 20 points with a BABIP down 20 points from last year and he’s dropped his swinging strike rate down by 3.5% and his strikeout rate down by around 9%. The effects of the new swing are observable on the surface too.
Hand path is indeed the measuring stick of a swing change, but in this case the change in hand path is a reflection of other swing changes. I think it’ll be easier for me to reference a golf swing at first to prove my point since more people are likely to have obsessed over their golf mechanics than they are to have played baseball at such a level as to obsess about baseball swing mechanics.
In golf, almost all players who do not “come over the top” end up falling victim to a second swing flaw: kicking the front hip forward. The sequence of events involves kicking the front hip forward, increasing lean away from the target, dropping the back shoulder, and swinging in-to-out. This results either in a push-fade or for those with quick hands, a duck hook that becomes tough to manage. Since Bryant is looking to put the ball in the air and not pull a grounder, he tries for the push fade.
Returning now to baseball, you can see in the first sequence the hallmarks of the push fade. While in baseball the stride means that your front leg/hip will always move forward, you can see that Bryant’s hips stop rotating while his bat is still a couple feet away from impact. In the second swing you can see a greater degree of rotation around that front leg that continues to the point of impact.
When the hips gets “stuck” two other things happen. The first is that in order to even be able to “reach” the ball without prematurely extending one’s arms, one must dip one’s right shoulder down and forward towards the area of impact. This then changes the arms/hands at impact in a manner that has a more dramatic impact in golf than in baseball—observe Bryant’s right forearm in both swings from the moment of impact on. When one hits a “push-fade” the arms do not rotate over one another, rather the back arm (in this case, right arm) remains supinated (think “open clubface” in golf). When one has properly rotated one’s hips, trunk, etc. one no longer has to reach with the back shoulder and keep one’s hands moving in to out by maintaining supination/flexion in the back arm, instead naturally releasing the bat/golf club with the arms rotating through and past the moment of impact.
The reasons why many golfers (and baseball players) struggle to kick the habit of “dropping the back shoulder” is because kicking the hip, etc. allows one to feel balanced throughout the entire swing; better rotational mechanics feel odd at first as you feel as if your balance is shifting strongly to very specific areas of your feet that you wouldn’t normally associate with good balance and the place where you feel most of your weight contacting the ground changes throughout the swing and doesn’t stay in one place. If one can learn to override one’s natural desire for balance one can level up like Kris Bryant!
Happy hitting the in cages/on the links!
Did Bryant improve against pitches up in the Zone? a big Uppercut is actually good against low pitches because it matches the plane well but against high heat a flatter path is better because those pitches are flatter and an Uppercut tends to cross under the path.
any showing in stats that his high ball hitting improved?