Launch Angle, Matt Duffy, and Potential Power Surges

We have launch angle for all batted balls last year! We’re still in the infancy of Statcast, and there have been some wiggles in the wobble so far, but with the new update to Baseball Savant, it looks like we can search all batted balls for launch angle. I’m giddy.

This should give us the chance to all sorts of great things later, but for now I’ll do something relatively simple that’s relevant to the newest big slugger in the game, Matt Duffy. We all knew he’d bust out like this, and now we know why.

Turn back to Alan Nathan’s excellent post on the long ball yesterday at The Hardball Times. It’s full of nerdy goodness, but there’s also a fun little factoid that runs through most of his analysis: the ideal launch angle for a home run is between 25 and 30 degrees. Given a certain exit velocity, that range is where distance on a batted ball peaks:

We can search for all balls that were hit between those degrees last year, now. Let’s set the exit velocity floor at 95 in that angle band first, since this chart from Nathan’s piece suggests that 95 mph and 25 degrees is when you start trotting around the bases. The list is full of the guys you would expect. People who hit the ball hard at the right angle get home runs. On the news at eleven.

95+ MPH Balls in Play in Ideal Launch Angle Leaders

Rk.	Player	Results	Total Balls in Play	% of BIP
1	J.D. Martinez	32	421	7.6%
2	Brandon Crawford	26	392	6.6%
3	Jose Bautista	28	445	6.3%
4	Paul Goldschmidt	25	422	5.9%
5	David Ortiz	26	441	5.9%
6	Bryce Harper	23	394	5.8%
7	Chris Davis	21	370	5.7%
8	Mike Trout	21	422	5.0%

SOURCE: Statcast

Minimum 20 balls in play in 2015.

It’s interesting to see J.D. Martinez do so well, maybe. He famously saw that other sluggers hit the ball in the air more and changed his swing to add more loft to it. And then after that famous case, you’ve got a bunch of sluggers and a breakout shortstop. This is how you power.

But let’s consider the guys who don’t hit it quite as hard. Let’s look at the batters last year who hit the most balls at that angle, no matter the velocity. The idea is that they — if only they added just a little more oomph, a little more velocity to their bat — they would cash in on their current ideal-for-power launch angle. This, like above, is percentage of balls in play in the ideal launch angle.

Percent of Balls in Play in Ideal Launch Angle Leaders

Rk.	Player	Results	Total Balls in Play	% of BIP
1	J.D. Martinez	48	421	11.4%
2	Brandon Belt	33	349	9.5%
3	Paul Goldschmidt	39	422	9.2%
4	Brandon Crawford	36	392	9.2%
5	Bryce Harper	35	394	8.9%
6	Jose Bautista	38	445	8.5%
7	Kyle Seager	45	529	8.5%
8	Matt Carpenter	35	427	8.2%
9	Jay Bruce	36	440	8.2%
10	Matt Duffy	39	480	8.1%
11	Chase Headley	36	448	8.0%
12	Ian Kinsler	44	549	8.0%
13	Angel Pagan	34	425	8.0%
14	Adrian Gonzalez	37	464	8.0%
15	David Ortiz	35	441	7.9%
16	Mike Trout	33	422	7.8%
17	Joey Votto	32	411	7.8%
18	Evan Longoria	37	481	7.7%
19	Josh Donaldson	38	499	7.6%
20	Logan Forsythe	33	435	7.6%
21	Ender Inciarte	35	473	7.4%
22	Brian Dozier	36	488	7.4%
23	Daniel Murphy	34	466	7.3%
24	Neil Walker	32	441	7.3%
25	Mookie Betts	38	524	7.3%
26	Curtis Granderson	31	431	7.2%
27	Albert Pujols	38	532	7.1%
28	Adrian Beltre	34	510	6.7%
29	Buster Posey	34	511	6.7%
30	Michael Brantley	32	483	6.6%

SOURCE: Statcast

Minimum 30 balls in play in 2015.

I’ve highlighted some interesting names for you. The non-highlighted names are mostly veterans and mostly power sluggers. But the highlighted ones? They’ve either recently broken out, power-wise, or are young enough that you can believe that they may break out in the future.

Hello Giants! Finding five giants among the top 40 suggests that “Bam-Bam” Hensley Meulens is doing his job as the hitting coach. But while J.D. Martinez averaged 95 mph on balls in this launch angle last season — kinda making him the ideal power hitter — and Brandon Belt (94.45) and Brandon Crawford (94.64) both hit the ball harder, Duffy lagged behind.

Duffy’s 87.56 mph average on balls in this launch angle sits better in a group with Ian Kinsler (88.3), Nick Markakis (87.83), and even Michael Brantley (89.12). At least it’s better than Angel Pagan (84.75) and Ender Inciarte (83.5). There’s a decent range of outcomes here for Duffy, and if he can even push it to Buster Posey (92.32) level, then there’s another 10 homers in that bat.

The point is, Matt Duffy doesn’t need to undergo the transformation that made J.D. Martinez who he is today. He has the swing already. What he needs is to fill out, to get yoked, to add muscle, which is directly related to bat speed. That will give him exit velocity to take better advantage of his good swing plane.

The even better news is that Duffy realized this, planning to add weight going into this season. And the tools exist — Zepp just released a new version of their bat sensor which tracks bat path, bat speed, hand speed, and time to impact. I tried the thing, and even though I had a pitiful 42 mph bat speed, I was happy to discover the training videos that used proven weighted bat protocols to help increase my bat speed.

Hey, if I had a 25-30 degree natural angle on my swing, and all day every day in order to increase bat speed, maybe I, too, could hit 20 home runs in the major leagues some day. Hah. Not bloody likely. I’m no Matt Duffy.