Where Did Yonder Alonso’s Fly Balls Go?
Yonder Alonso is now a Mariner, and for a player that just added a ton of fly balls to his repertoire (and the power that comes with it), hopefully that change of scenery will be a salve. Because Alonso has lost those fly balls momentarily. He thinks he knows why.
It’s been a big and worrisome drop in fly balls in July and August, especially given that his career fly ball rate is 34%.
Alonso’s not worried. “Just a little bit of timing issue right now,” he said last week. “Pitches I was hitting right I’m just missing — Late, early, just missed the ball.” Before he trailed off, he added something interesting: “I’ve been hitting a lot more foul balls.”
Turns out, that’s a big part of the story about where the fly balls went. Take a look at his foul percentage next to his fly ball percentage, and July stands out.
| Month | Fly Ball % | Foul% |
|---|---|---|
| April | 32.9% | 12.8% |
| May | 35.6% | 16.5% |
| June | 29.4% | 16.7% |
| July | 19.5% | 19.0% |
| August | 22.2% | 16.7% |
It’s clear from the updated fly ball numbers — here shown by plate appearance vs balls in play — that the foul ball thing doesn’t explain it all. But the foul balls could still be an indicator of the underlying problem: timing.
Alonso says that he has a plan to fix the issue: “I’m working, doing the net drill. I feel like it’s about to come back.”
The net drill, most famously part of Robinson Cano’s arsenal, helps players avoid casting, or drifting over the plate, by putting a constraint on how far out they can swing. “Stay behind the ball, not diving at it,” Alonso added. “Thats the reason I was rolling over, I haven’t done that in a while.” Here’s Sean Casey breaking down the benefits of using the net:
The drill is not without its detractors, but hitting coach Ryan Parker pointed out the mindset that can make that practice work for a power hitter. “I like it as long as hitter is driving the ball to big part of field and not just filleting balls to the opposite field,” he said. With Alonso’s big adjustment coming largely from just this sort of adoption of a power-friendly mindset in the offseason, he might be the right player doing the right practice at the right time.
Hopefully with a little more work, Alonso can right the ship and help the Mariners reach the playoffs. The team has a 22% chance according to our playoff odds, and are currently behind the Royals and Rays for the second playoff spot. With their new first baseman, they’re in the middle of the pack on the depth charts at the position instead of being in the bottom third.
A little quirk of timing may help the player and the team, even if monthly splits haven’t been proven to be predictive across baseball. “My career says that I’m at my best in August and September,” pointed out Alonso. He’s been 12 percentage points better in the second half over his career, relative to league average.
“The swing’s still the same, I’m still doing the same thing,” Alonso said. “I feel good.”
[This post was updated to put the fly and foul ball numbers over the same denominator.]
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
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I like the Mariners/Paxton if they make it to the one game playoff.
Everybody does! But what starters will the M’s trot out after that? Felix is hurt and not for the first time.
Over Sox/Sale or Yankees/whichever starter + that bullpen? I’m certainly not betting on Seattle.
They can’t play the Red Sox in the Wild Card play-in because the Red Sox are winning the division… they could play the Yankees though.
I’m not quite sold that the 2.3% increase month over month is where all of the fly balls are going. What do his launch angles say?
Um, his launch angles say that fewer of his batted balls are fly balls?
Or, he could turn back into a pumkin (rooted into the ground). #6org
“Gone for strikeouts, every one …”
Well, no, but his K% this year is up almost 10 points from his prior career rate. And it’s gone up especially since his 10-HR May — which is looking more and more like the fluke we’d all have thought it was before anyone discovered things like launch angle and exit velocity.
Well we always knew about ground ball and fly ball rates…
We did. But Alonso’s power surge this year is also due to the specific returns per fly ball, perhaps even more than the increased FB rate.
Alonso’s fly ball results:
— Through 2016, .150 BA, .366 SLG
— This year, .292 BA, .917 SLG
His fly ball rates:
— Through 2016, 29%
— This year, 42%
The results were always likely to regress, and so they have:
— In April and May he got 12 HRs from 50 flies+pops, with a 1.400 OPS.
— Since June he has 7 HRs from 46 flies+pops, with a 1.000 OPS.
Even if he gets back to his early-season fly ball rate, they won’t produce a 1.400 OPS again.
He overhauled his mechanics, added a large leg kick to add power. You are assuming his mechanics and power are the same year over year, they are not.
No, I’m not assuming that. I’m saying that a great many guys have overhauled their swing, in the long history of baseball, and I highly doubt that more than a handful were able to sustain the sort of flyball-slugging gain that Alonso has so far this year.
FWIW, I took the top 200 guys in total fly balls from 2010-16 (Alonso’s prior career), and compared their prior flyball SLG to this year. Out of the 90 with at least 70 fly balls this year, Alonso’s SLG increase is 2nd-biggest, after Charlie Blackmon.
I’m not saying it’s impossible that Alonso sustains this. I’m aware of J.D. Martinez. But it’s still very unlikely.
Eno, this is interesting, and I love when you get players to talk about stuff like this. I especially like when what the players say lines up with data.
That said, should we be more concerned about quality of contact here? He’s hitting fewer FBs, yes, but he’s also hitting them with less authority. Consider:
FB+LD EV April-June: 93.9mph
FB+LD EV July-Present: 90.5mph
Remove June from that first group and the first two months of the season standout even more …
FB+LD EV April-May: 94.3mph
Alonso talked about missing the ball more (his K% did spike in July and has been climbing throughout the season) and fouling the ball off more, and how he’s making adjustments. And it stands to reason that fixing that timing would allow him to solve several of those problems at once (contact, contact quality, batted ball type), but there’s a lot wrong right, it seems. I’m rooting for him, but I don’t know how optimistic I am.
Sorry. Should have said above that his SwStr% has been climbing since the beginning of the season (as that’s the graph I linked), though it is also true about his K%.
Yeah to me the most interesting part was that foul balls could be tracked as a ‘miss-hit’ statistic, and that there would be an interaction between them and fly balls. My denominator is off in the table but I’m not sure how to fix it. But foul balls would generally have lower exit velos, too…
All i know is i could use a final 50 games of about .285+ AVG from him for my AL ONLY LEAGUE — so let’s get her done ex-RED
“If you gave him back those three to seven percentage points of foul balls as fly balls — and most of them are fly balls — then the dip in fly balls doesn’t seem as stark or upsetting. ”
What???
He hit 16.5% and 16.7% foul balls in May/June with 57.1% and 46.9% fly balls… he hit 19.0% foul (2.5-2.7 difference) in July with 32.8% fly balls (14.1-24.3 difference)… how the heck can you tell us that’s a large part of it with a straight face?
The denominators are different, i really should’ve figured that out. Fouls are a percentage of plate appearances and fly balls of balls in play. Fouls aren’t considered balls in play so I should’ve converted fly balls to per PA, in which case the fly ball drop would also look much smaller.
Thanks for pushing me to actually put them over the same denominator! He’s also missing the ball more like people pointed out, and that made the fly drop worse when put over PA. I still think the foul ball thing is interesting as an indicator of the timing problem.
he’s had a sub-800 OPS every month since May. i hope he figures it out, but i’m not confident he does.