Top Of The Hill
I knew Aaron Hill was having a remarkable season, but it still caught me off guard when the game I was watching displayed the American League home run leaderboard.
Carlos Pena, 37
Russ Branyan, 31
Mark Teixeira, 31
Aaron Hill, 30
Justin Morneau, 29
This is like the old third grade test – “which of these is not like the others?” You have four traditional power hitting first baseman, known for their ability to drive the ball with regularity. And then there’s Hill – a 5’11 second baseman who had 28 career home runs before the season began.
Hill has always been a good player, mainly because of his range on the infield and his ability to hold his own at the plate. He’s made his mark as a good contact, gap power guy, but there were some questions about his true offensive abilities after a miserable 2008 season that saw him .263/.324/.361 in just 55 games.
He’s put last year behind him and then some, keeping pace with the premier sluggers in the game despite no drastic changes in his skillset. His contact rate is about the same as always, though he has increased his swing rates slightly, becoming more aggressive as he gains MLB experience, especially in terms of chasing pitches out of the zone. His O-Swing% is a career high 28%, for instance.
Beyond that, his batted ball profile is still neutral, which suggests his swing plane isn’t much different than it has been in the past. However, balls that used to land on in the gap are now flying over the wall – his HR/FB rate is 16.7%, when his career average coming into the season was about 5%. For a pitcher, this would be a sign that he’s been the victim of extremely bad luck, but hitters have far more control over their HR/FB rate than pitchers do. That doesn’t mean that Hill hasn’t been the beneficiary of good fortune, but we can’t just chalk up HR/FB rate to random variation.
To better look at his home runs, we turn to HitTracker.
The first thing we notice is that he’s an extreme pull power guy, with nearly all of his home runs flying out to left field. The next thing you notice, if you scroll down to his individual HR listing, is how many are labeled “JE”, which stands for “just enough”. Hill is tied with Joe Mauer and Kevin Youkilis for the league lead in home runs that were barely home runs, as 11 of his long balls have been categorized as cutting it close.
In fact, looking at the list of average home run length on Hit Tracker’s site, Hill’s 384.6 foot average distance is one of the lowest in the league. The guys whose home runs average 380-390 feet are mostly middle infielders (and Johnny Damon). On this list, he’s no longer anywhere near guys like Pena or Branyan.
We can also see that the extra home runs are coming from balls that used to be doubles just by looking at his total rate of extra base hits. In his healthy 2007 season, 37% of Hill’s hits were of the extra base variety. This year, 36% of his hits have gone for extra bases. There’s no change in how often he’s whacking the ball – just what category of XBH those balls are being classified as. Due to whatever reason, Hill has been able to clear the fence (barely, in some cases) with more regularity this year, but it doesn’t look like he’s actually added much in the way of power.
Aaron Hill is a good player, but he’s not a 30 HR guy. Odds are he never does this again.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Hill has a 5.2 RF/9, and only 7 errors. What am I missing in terms of poor(ish) UZR at 2b? I watch him daily and while I don’t think he is the best 2b in the game, I am surprised his UZR isn’t quite a bit better than it is now.
Pedroia and Hill have played about the same amount of time at 2B. Hill has more putouts, assists, same field%, about 40 more DPs, higher RF/9. Yet Pedroia has a UZR of 11.5.
What gives? Is it the Rogers Centre turf / playing with a better SS (Scutaro) all season (for DPs)?
Anybody?
The most probable answer here is the quality of his opportunities compared to that of Pedroia’s. I can’t claim that’s exactly the case, but usually that’s the answer. One of the reasons why range factor is a dinosaur.
That could make sense, and I don’t take much stock into antiquated defensive metrics like RF/9.
But looking at the numbers, its hard to see why UZR considers him (Pedroia)that much better than Hill. Nearly 10 UZR to 1. I’d say that is a hefty advantage but Hill is getting to nearly everything in sight when I watch him!
I’m skeptical- UZR is a great stat, but it does seem to be the outlier here. Going back to the previous generation of fielding stats, THT’s RZR reflects a great fielding season by Hill- a RZR 5th overall in the majors, and leading the majors in OOZ by a large margin. From those numbers, he looks like the best second baseman in baseball.
Anyone know what his +/- numbers are?
This is only one example (that I have investigated) of a questionable UZR rating, but would this put a bit of chink in WARs armour if UZR mistakenly deflated the ‘defensive’ portion of a players WAR rating?
In the Pedroia vs Hill example. I don’t see how Dustin can be rated THAT much higher defensively. I am sorry.
Pedroia currently sits a 4.4 WAR largely helped by 11.1 defensive rating. Hill is at 3.2 WAR with 0.0 defensive rating.
I am not questioning the value of Pedroia, I think every team in the league would love to clone him and throw him out there at 2B day in and day out.
Unfortunately I think I would actually take Aaron Hill this season based on all factors / stats both on defense AND offense (besides Hill’s lousy OBP).
Clearly WAR does not support this notion.
If MGL was reading this he’d shit himself.
Warning, off topic:
Does anyone track ‘Almost Enough’ fly balls? Or something that would tell you how many ballparks a fly ball would be a HR in?
Why do all this analysis when you can just accuse him of using steroids and move on?
For the record, Hill hit 17 HRs in 2007, and that year had 3 taken away from him. Joey Gathright went over the wall and brought back two Hill HRs in the same game, and there was a 3rd I can’t recall at the moment. Jays fans were expecting a healthy Hill could hit 20 HRs, and 20-25 should be his benchmark.
Steroids!
On a serious note, this reminds me a lot of Pedroia’s season last year. Most home runs were just enough with few big ones (400, 450+). Looking at Pedroia’s numbers, a drop in HR’s looks to be the biggest change between his production last year and this year (also higher BB% but lower BABIP to offset that). I’d expect a similar trend out of Hill next year.
pedroia’s drop probably has to do with pitchers learning that he can turn on that shoulder high inside fastball that you usually use to strike out young players.
But according to that MLB The Show commercial, Pedroia can’t hit the high-and-inside fastball!
Still, even if 10 of those HRs turn back into doubles next year, that production is nothing to sneeze at.
True and not that fangraphs disagrees but a 2B with 20 jacks and a glove is a very nice asset to have.
Be fair, Dave…the questions after 2008 weren’t about his offensive capabilities, they were about whether he’d be able to recover from a serious concussion. Which had an effect on his hitting, hence why he was shut down that year.
The concussion had no effect on his hitting because he played 0 games after he suffered it. The usual theory is that Gary Denbo screwed up his bat.
Just from watching him over the years, it’s fairly obvious that he loads much better at the beginning of his swing this year than in prior seasons. He’s actually getting his weight back (“winding up” as it were) before his swing now, whereas in previous years he simply strode forwards and used his arms a lot more. It might be responsible for the marginal increase in hitting power that has turned hits that used to be doubles into homers.
So I wouldn’t say this is entirely a fluke just based on my completely amateur scouting abilities. I still don’t think he’ll reach 30 homers in a season again, though.
At the start of the season Aaron Hill began using Vernon Well’s bat, a bat that was slightly heavier and longer that what he had used in the past. The new bat along with his extreme pull swing are major factors that have attributed to AHill’s breakout season. Good for him especially after missing most of last year with a concussion.
that explains it, Vernon Wells has been going to the plate without a bat!!
QFT
I should mention that the one outiler Hr came at, you guessed it, Yankee Stadium.
._.
Clint Barmes is another guy who’s started pulling the ball to good effect…not as good as an effect as Hill, but his HR/FB is up from his career mark of 4.5% to 10.5% this season.
Correction: 31 HRs.
Dave is right. Hill’s season has Davey Johnson 1973 written all over it.
35. I do not know what to make of this guy.