Launch Angle Isn’t for Everyone
You could almost be convinced that hitting is easy. Or, at least, you could almost be convinced that getting better at hitting is easy. What can a hitter do to improve in this day and age? Aim up. Try to hit the ball in the air. Elevate and celebrate, and everything. So much contemporary analysis is built around identifying a player or players who are hitting more fly balls than they used to. And, without question, for some players, this has been the key. For some players, aiming up has unlocked potential that could never get out. Especially in the era of aggressive infield shifts, a ball in the air is more valuable than a ball on the ground.
But the important equation isn’t so simple. We went through the opposite of this 10 or 15 years ago. There was a time when we all fell in love with ground-ball pitchers, because, after all, grounders can’t be homers. But there are processes that lead to someone getting grounders, and there are processes that lead to someone getting flies, and fly-ball pitchers have their own upsides. Moving to the present, with hitters, it’s not about whether a fly is better than a grounder. It’s about the swing. What specific kind of swing can allow a hitter to become his best self, overall?
The answer isn’t the same for everyone. The answer could never be the same for everyone. Some hitters, for sure, have gotten better by steepening their swing paths. Kyle Schwarber and Joc Pederson are two hitters attempting the opposite.
Neither Schwarber nor Pederson has been bad, by any means. Last season, Schwarber produced a 102 wRC+, while Pederson clocked in at an even 100. Previously, both hitters had been even better, so the skill levels have been obvious. Yet a certain amount of frustration has mounted. Schwarber only scraped a far higher ceiling. Pederson, too. Both of these guys have been considered works in progress. They are both still just in their mid-20s.
I’ve been playing with launch-angle data lately. Instead of just looking at the overall average, I’ve taken to looking at the average launch angle for balls hit at least 95 miles per hour. This eliminates the bad contact, which is sort of “accidental” contact. What’s left is the good contact, the square contact. By looking at the good-contact launch angles, I think you can get an idea of any given player’s swing path. The best contact should reflect the path. I know that selecting 95 is arbitrary — I could’ve gone with 90 or 100 — but I don’t think it should make that big a difference.
As per usual, I like to compare this year to last year. I’m in the business of hunting for changes. There’s a strong relationship, overall, between 2017 good-contact launch angles and 2018 good-contact launch angles. We’ve got an R2 value of 0.5. There are some notable big increases — Charlie Blackmon is up ten degrees. Gregory Polanco and Mitch Haniger are up more than eight degrees. Mookie Betts is up more than seven degrees. This could reflect more aggressive swinging for flies and liners. That’s the theory, at least.
At the other end, Pederson is down more than ten degrees. Schwarber is down more than nine degrees. They have two of baseball’s three biggest decreases. Compared to the past, Joc Pederson and Kyle Schwarber are trying to hit the ball on more of a level plane. That might seem somewhat counter-intuitive, given how strong the both of them are, but baseball principles don’t apply to everyone the same. Schwarber and Pederson are trying to find their most effective, consistent swings. Schwarber’s wRC+ is way up, and his strikeouts are down. Pederson, too, has improved his wRC+, while eliminating strikeouts. It remains very, very early, but it’s hard to argue with what they’ve accomplished.
Tom Verducci actually touched on Schwarber the other day. An excerpt:
Schwarber made a key change this year, a change prompted in part by the emphasis from manager Joe Maddon in spring training to his hitters to worry less about launch angle and more about a level path and using the whole field.
Here’s a screenshot of Schwarber from 2017:
And here’s a screenshot of Schwarber from 2018:
We don’t really have a good way of examining bat paths with the regular TV feeds. Swings just move too quickly, and we don’t have the necessary cameras or resolution. That’s where batted-ball stats and Statcast metrics come in handy. But even here, you can see how Schwarber has adjusted. It’s subtle, but in 2018, Schwarber has raised his hands. He’s trying to start his swing from a higher point, so he doesn’t end up swinging up so much. The idea, as Verducci writes, is so that Schwarber can’t be so easily exploited up in the zone. Coincidentally, Pederson has done something similar. Here’s 2017:
And here’s 2018:
Pederson’s hands are now higher, and not so tucked in to his chest. Additionally, Pederson is less upright, dropping lower on his back leg to get more compact. It’s worth noting that Pederson has also dramatically cut his swing rate — there’s a lot here going on, for a player whose playing time has been threatened. But Corey Seager’s injury has re-opened the door, with Chris Taylor moving to short, and in the early going the Dodgers have liked what they’ve seen from Pederson’s swing.
It’s not that Schwarber and Pederson are definitely better. We don’t know that yet. There’s a whole season to play. It’s also not that Schwarber and Pederson want to hit more ground balls. If they had their way, they’d hit everything at an angle around 25 degrees. But, previously, both Schwarber and Pederson had their weak spots. Their swings could get too big, and out of control. Now they’re looking to be more level, not because they want the extra grounders, but because the benefits could outweigh the costs. It’s possible that, with more level swings, Schwarber and Pederson will both achieve a greater amount of zone coverage. Maybe it won’t work in the end, but it should at least be acknowledged. In this time and place when more and more hitters are thinking about lifting their angles, there are some players who might benefit from doing the opposite. All this is is a game of trial and error.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Schwarber hasn’t really changed the position of his hands, he’s stopped crouching forward and is now standing straight up.
Pederson has raised his hands.
I disagree, even with his more upright position, relative to his own body, his hands are positioned higher. The posture makes it seem more significant than it truly is, but his hands are higher.
Both have changed their lower half, back leg weight distribution as well, IMO.
Nelson Cruz is the poster boy for keeping the hands high, to handle the high fastball. Used to be more guys doing that. The low fastball was killing people, so the trend switched to uppercut more, to get those low strikes. That leaves the top of the zone vulnerable, hence all the K’s; hitters traded weak ground balls for K’s.
Maybe it’s not a bad idea for these two to zig when everybody else seems to be zagging. Pitchers will have to adjust their gameplan to pitch these guys low in the zone. Which to do effectively – like adjusting launch angle – probably sounds easier than it actually is.
As the revered Joey Votto once said, you have to find your own ideal swing. Everyone’s bodies and physical skills are different. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/mlb/reds/2017/04/27/joey-votto-want-unpitchable/100991956/
“Where I get concerned is the guys that make this attempt and burn out too much of their time and don’t get a chance to be their best selves, and either don’t make it to the big leagues or don’t perform their best in the big leagues because they’re always attempting this new style of hitting,” Votto said. “I see it with a lot of guys. Everyone tells the good stories, but there’s a lot of s—ty stories of guys who are wasting their time trying things.”
I am pretty sure the “fly-ball revolution” is partially an exercise in confirmation bias. Players are absolutely making swing changes, all the time, and there is some limited evidence that a few players are trying to launch the ball in the air…but a lot of the “evidence” for this is reporters asking questions like: “Are you trying to lift the ball in the air more?”
While I like the Votto quote and agree with your sentiment, there isn’t only “limited evidence that a few players are trying to launch the ball.” There’s a mountain of evidence that many players are trying to launch the ball. All you have to do is look at launch angles and GB/FB%. It’s not like changes in these stats are happening by accident.
Can you provide us the actual numbers? Makes a big difference what your starting point is. Most mlb top hitters average around 11-18 degrees. Above that it can eat into babip (schimpf, gallo, story)and below you often don’t use your power potential.
If someone goes from 5 to 15 consider it usually encouraging but if it is 13 to 23 something might be off.
Looked it up, grounder rate is 53% for kyle, that is single digits which is certainly is nothing anyone should strive for and it will probably regress.
If someone is under 35% grounders (like 18 degrees or so) he might benefit from lowering it a little to get a better babip (babip and grounder rate are positively correlated) but single digits is definitely too low for a power hitter.
Joc sucks.
It is these insightful and thoughtful comments that make this site great. You are doing the lord’s work sir.
I reached the same conclusion last year using advanced metrics.
Pederson is another graduate from the “Kyle Gibson school of yearly adjustments”.
There’s just a list of guys I’ve heard “They’ve finally figured it out!” from a few too many times to get too excited about. I read an interview from Pederson himself last year where he basically said “I can work on my swing all I want but then I get into games and I just go back to swinging as hard as I can”. Not that it’s impossible that this is the time, but my Dubious Threshold on the guy is quite high.
Yeah I think for guys who are “fixed” every year like Joc or Hayward this can make it worse. Working on your swing is good but with too many changes muscle memory and the brain can be confused
I’d like to see the data because I wonder if small sample sizes might make comparisons less meaningful, especially at this early stage. According to baseballsavant, Schwarber only has 12 barrels/solid contact, while Pederson has 7. Regardless, whether more or less launch angle is better is likely relative to from where a hitter is starting. Presumably, there is an ideal launch angle, so some players will need to increase, while others will benefit from a decrease.
Yeah, I think this is roughly where I’m at. There’s probably an “ideal launch angle per player/bucket of players”, where your natural power tool + that ideal angle brings the best results. If you’re somebody like Schwarber, who already has a ton of power, it makes intuitive sense that you wouldn’t need as high of a launch angle to still get plenty of air, whereas somebody like Betts, who doesn’t have quite as much natural power but does have excellent plate coverage, really benefits from a higher launch angle.
Also, Hosmer has a top 20 wRC+ over the past seven months slash 800 PA.
Now that Dave Cameron is gone, maybe there can be some positive articles about Hosmer – miss you Dave.
And as I look at Hosmer, I don’t quite know what he’s doing. Walks and strikeouts are way up, but he’s hitting fewer fly balls than ever. It seems like he could be swinging harder, and since he hits a lot of liners it’s working for him.
In my game, golf, it has always been said that there are two types of players who never reach their best level. “Those that shouldn’t change but do and those who should change but don’t.” We are talking about good players here, not hackers who couldn’t play at all. Some of those that are always trying something different, the tinkerers, make a fatal mistake and never get their game back. Chip Beck, Ian Baker-Finch and Curtis Strange easily come to mind. Could that have been Jason Heyward? Ted Williams, in discussing the other side said the same thing, in a slightly different way, when he was managing the Washington Senators around 1969. He had some weak hitters and tried to change them but most refused. Williams was shocked that players who had a history of hitting .215 would be reluctant to try something different, anything, instead of continuing to use the same technique that was getting them nowhere. It is reasonable to say that Schwarber and Peterson have not yet performed at the levels that were predicted and they are trying something new. Whether it works or not is not yet known but they seem to making a sensible choice to try.
Ryan Flaherty’s gotta be the poster boy for this trend, right? He’s in the midst of a mini-breakout while posting a 17.2 FB% – about half his career FB% – and looking like Nick Markakis only with useful infield defense; and that might make him a roughly average player, even allowing for some regression.
You’re almost there. It’s a good strategy to be in a position to cover the highest probable location of a pitch . For a looooooooong time MLB has not called the top of the zone so why cover it. Tough for pitchers to exploit it if they can’t get it called. MLB wants more offense then wonders why games are 4 hours. Want more action and quicker games?? Call strikes. Want an added bonus? If pitchers can be effective without trying to throw 120 they will quit destroying their elbows. I really can fix everything #Aaronforcommish
Jake Marisnick is a great example of what happens when trying to hit more fly balls goes wrong. He looks soo bad at the plate.
He couldn’t hit in the first place so it was worth a try, but one look at his line in 2018 is enough to scare anybody. I haven’t seen many 36/1 K to BB ratios.