Which Hitters Could Benefit From Lift?
Literally just an hour or two ago, Travis published this article, titled “Has the Fly-Ball Revolution Begun?” It was his latest piece in what’s unofficially a series, but I can’t help myself but piggyback, because it’s a fascinating subject.
A few years back, for the Hardball Times Annual, I wrote about how the information age had handed the advantage to the side of run prevention. Pitchers could better hone in on hitter weaknesses, and defenses could better prepare themselves for expected batted balls. Back then, I wasn’t sure how hitters could fight back. It seemed like theirs would be a losing battle, since their very job is to respond to whatever the pitcher is wanting to do.
Now we have Statcast. Even before Statcast, there was HITf/x, but there’s more and more accessible information than ever about exit velocities and launch angles. So the collective hitter response seems to be trying to hit more balls in the air. This is the developing push-back. This is how hitters are making up ground.
We’ve been over so many of the guys who’ve changed their swings. Right now, Daniel Murphy is trying to help Ryan Zimmerman put the ball in the air more often. As Travis linked to, here’s an article by Adam Berry from Wednesday. The headline, and the subheader:
Hurdle to Bucs’ bats: ‘Your OPS is in the air’
Pirates players trying to improve launch angles to hit more line drives
There’s nothing vague about that. The Pirates want their hitters to knock more liners and flies. Hitters, increasingly, are open to making these changes, because they’re increasingly aware of the supporting evidence. Not that it’s easy to turn grounders into air-balls, of course, but it’s doable for many of these elite-level players. Just so we all know what we’re talking about, here’s a useful table of information from 2016. This shows slugging percentage on batted balls hit at least 90 miles per hour, broken down by launch angle.
| Launch Angles | SLG |
|---|---|
| -10 to -1 | 0.364 |
| 0 to 9 | 0.643 |
| 10 to 19 | 1.069 |
| 20 to 29 | 1.804 |
| 30 to 39 | 1.334 |
| 40 to 49 | 0.196 |
It’s pretty easy to see the sweet spot. Every single hitter in the major leagues is capable of hitting the baseball 90 – 95mph. When the contact is that good, you want the baseball elevated.
Yesterday, I wrote about how Christian Yelich could have Joey Votto upside. Everything is there, except for the lift. Yelich makes consistent and fantastic contact, but too often he’s put the ball on the dirt. Yelich is one hitter who could clearly benefit from hitting more liners and flies, because he’s killed the liners and flies he’s recorded. Thinking about Yelich got me thinking about other possible players. Which other hitters could benefit from putting the ball in the air? Here now is a very simple plot, with Yelich’s data point highlighted. Here you see 2016 launch angles and corrected exit velocities, the latter coming courtesy of Jeff Zimmerman’s research.
The Yelich point is certainly out there. In order to put all these points on a scale, I went to tried-and-true z-scores. I calculated exit-velocity z-scores, and then launch-angle z-scores, and I subtracted the latter from the former to generate what we might consider a form of a “leaderboard.” As good proof of concept, the first name to show up is Yelich’s. His exit velocity last year was two standard deviations better than average, but his launch angle was 2.2 standard deviations below average, yielding a difference of 4.2. By this method, more than anyone else, Yelich could benefit from more flies.
Next up, at 3.9, we have David Freese. Conveniently, this is the Pirates’ David Freese! From the earlier-linked Adam Berry article:
Freese, who has found success as a ground-ball hitter, said he’d probably delve deeper into contact points and launch angles if he was just starting his career. Along those lines, Hurdle said the Pirates have talked about teaching the concept early on to young hitters.
It’s suggested in there that Freese might not want to change anything; he’s established as he is. Perhaps veterans are less likely to alter their approaches. But then, we’ve seen Marlon Byrd and Justin Turner, so you can never really know. We’ll see if Freese attempts to do anything. There is some evidence there.
Moving on down, there are four players at 3.2:
Then there are three more players at 3.1:
A few of these players, like Mauer and Kendrick, probably aren’t about to make changes. LeMahieu already started. It’s part of what drove his breakout. Pham improved his own launch angle from the season before. Wendle was more of a fly-ball hitter in the minors than in the majors. The same can’t be said of Maxwell, whose thump might be underrated.
I can’t just tick off every name near the top of the list, but I’ll note that Domingo Santana shows up. So do Carlos Correa and Gary Sanchez, and as a different sort of player, Billy Butler is up there, too. Butler might’ve had a different career if he ever learned to aim the ball skyward — he’s been more powerful than his career slugging, and it might’ve kept him from having to run so much. Butler represents a possible future for the similar Eric Hosmer if he can’t make his own adjustment. He’s up there, right above Matt Holliday.
Just for fun, a name at the far end is Jett Bandy. Bandy was successful last year in terms of putting the ball in the air, but he didn’t actually hit the ball very hard. The same is true of Jose Reyes. Neither player was bad, suggesting maybe even the weaker players should aim up. If you have more power than Billy Burns, there are extra-base hits out there waiting to be collected.
This is a very simple and therefore incomplete analysis. It’s more of a starting point, I guess, and it’s important to point out average exit velocity isn’t always correlated to peak exit velocity. Additionally, players can sometimes change their own baseline exit velocities by making certain tweaks. Rougned Odor, for example, just started hitting the ball harder. So did players like Ryon Healy, Sandy Leon, and Sean Rodriguez. You can’t base everything on what’s in the past, and you can’t assume players will make similar contact if they try to do something different. Perhaps some players just can’t handle changing how they’ve hit for so long.
Some, though, can. Some have. Christian Yelich is one guy who could clearly stand to continue last year’s progress. He’s not alone, in terms of the potentially helpful adjustment he could make.
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.
I could sure use a lift right now. Too long to walk to the pre-game spread in spring training.
Maybe Jeff’s next article should be titled “Which Hitters Could Benefit From Lyft?”
Clearly Jung Ho Kang takes the cake there
Jeff, I’m doing a lot of similar analysis lately. Maikel Franco and George Springer would hit superstar status with more FB and limited dip in HR/FB.
Wrote about this regarding Nick Castellanos last spring. Similar to Yelich, he has huge LD rates, good power to all fields and no IFFB’s. Showed some development in that regard in 2016. Yelich has way better control of the zone. If he can manage this he could be really outstanding.
Interesting you bring up Castellanos, I just submitted an article to community research about him. He’s shown more than some improvement, he’s in rare company entering this season.
Low pop ups is a good point. Pop ups are often a side effect of trying to hit fly balls if you don’t have the best barrel control.
If you have great power that consequence does not matter (bautista, dozier pop up a lot and while it lowers their babip they are still great) but for some fringe exit velo guys then pop ups and general barrel control can be a deciding factor that tips the scale.
If a below average EV guy pop ups a lot that can be quite a price to pay because of the babip and thus obp dip. But on contrary jose altuve is a below average EV guy who has great barrel control and low pop ups, so he could raise his launch angle without paying a babip cost.
What I’m really curious about is what changes pitchers should make to counter this hitting strategy. Still try to get groundballs or maybe give hitters what they want and try to get them to pop up? I’m thinking the Marco Estrada’s out there are in for a treat.
I think the counter is pitching up in the zone (high pitches are harder to square up with an uppercut and tend to cause more pop ups, the uppercut works best against low pitches) and of course also missing more bats. If pitchers miss more bats that lowers their obp allowed and can offset a little higher ISO allowed.
We already see that hr are up but runs are not up that much because the obp is so low. There are tons of 300 obp hitters with lots of homers out there (bruce, frazier, tomas …).
We already see a comeback of the high heater and the increased breaking ball use (sometimes extreme like miller or hill) is probably also a consequence out of it.
Pitchers basically say I can’t prevent the homer but I can limit opb with causing pop ups and whiffs with high 4 seamers and breaking balls.
I think accepting the homer is part of it. Pitchers are less nibbling around and going after hitters so they turn three true outcome hitters into two true outcome hitters (strikeouts and homers instead of strikeouts, walks and homers).
Basically hitters and pitchers don’t really have counter strategies anymore. Pitchers miss more bats and batters accept the Ks in order to hit more extra base hits . And vice versa pitchers accept the bomb and try to strike out even more and lower obp.
That causes am equilibrium I’m which the raise of power and raise of Ks cancel each other out. Not great to watch but it is the way it is.
Only way to change it would be a smaller zone which would cause pitchers to nibble more and make it three true outcomes again which would increase the score. A smaller zone would raise contact a little too but mostly because batters would not need to chase as much, they would still swing big and miss a lot.
I dont see any change that would make the game more contact oriented again now matter how much old school guys would love that.
Pitches higher in the zone or even out of the zone up and pitches with a greater z movement like a curveball or changeup would seem to present less of a chance for squaring up the ball in a slightly uppercut swing. The difference that these guys are making is that their swing plane is directly into the descent of the pitch. Their uppercut matches the descent of the incoming pitch so they have a longer contact area and “hit the ball head on” instead of at an angle as you would in a flat swing plane that is typically taught.
I think a good start is am at least average or slightly better exit velo. If you are billy hamilton going up from 3 to 8 homers is probably not worth a ton more fly outs. But even if your exit velo is just slightly above average you can benefit from hitting it in the air more.
The park probably also plays a role, at least for the fringy exit velo guy, a guy like yelich probably could hit it out everywhere.
A guy that also could benefit a little is sox Tim Anderson. Doesn’t have great power but about average. He hits a lot on the ground but also whiffs quite a bit. That is also an important point, whiffs and grounders don’t mix all that well because you need to do your damage with fewer BIP and that is done best with extra base hits.
Anderson won’t become a slugger but he could hit like 20 a year which would help offset his low obp a little. He is fast but ground and run only really works for high contact guys. He won’t get on base much anyway so if he could get up to an average iso that would help him to at least become an average hitter (technically he was last year but he won’t maintain a 380 babip or so).
It also matter how much you lift.peak batting average is a little over 10 degrees so extreme gb guys could still benefit to get it up a little bit even if they don’t really benefit from 35 degree fly balls.
It’s not just about exit velo and homeruns. It’s about getting the ball off the infield. Hamilton could definitely benefit from that.
Hamilton actually isn’t an extreme gb hitter, he just doesnt hit it hard and also strikes out too much for his power.
Apologies if this was posted elsewhere, but Yelich was asked recently about lift, and his answer disappointed me. Maybe he will keep improving naturally, but he doesn’t seem to be actively seeking it out. Shame.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/miami-marlins/fl-sp-marlins-christian-yelich-20170302-story.html
I think that it would be interesting to see your methodology combined with the players in zone contact %. If one guy is making contact 85% of the time and changes to create a higher launch angle, will he benefit more from the change than a guy that makes contact only 75% of the time?