Author: Peter Lim (Weinberg ’21)
In the past two years, the MLB has become a home run league.
In 2017, major league hitters hit a total of 6105 home runs, a single season record. 5610 home runs hit in the year 2016 is good for third most in a single season.
This is completely opposite to the trend we have seen for several years before, in which the league was low-scoring and lacking home runs. This sudden twist in the game sparked a controversy that the league has juiced the balls so that more runs are scored and the games become more “interesting.” However, in this article, I would like to bring up the point that more home runs are hit and more runs are scored because hitters are adjusting to the new strike zone by changing their swinging mechanics. I believe that what led this change is Statcast, the league’s newest technological innovation.
Statcast accurately tracks pitches and batted balls using cameras and radars. New data from Statcast brought about new analysis, and therefore a revolution in the game. Statcast suggested what hitters should look for in the batter’s box: “exit velocity” and “launch angle”.
It is a traditional way of looking at baseball statistics to judge a player based on the results he produced. For instance, OPS (on-base percentage + slugging percentage) suggests that Mike Trout is the league’s best hitter. Although Trout is undoubtedly one of, if not the, MLB’s best, just looking at his OPS does not tell us what makes him a good hitter. These traditional statistics did not tell players and coaches what methods need to be taken in order to achieve better results.
Starting in the mid-2000s, we got a glimpse of what could be an answer to this question. Starting at this time, batted balls were divided into three categories: ground balls, line drives, and fly balls. Analytics showed that line drives and fly balls were more effective than ground balls. In addition, the harder the ball was hit, the better the results were.
Herein lies the first conclusion: to become a good hitter, one has to hit more line drives and fly balls than ground balls, and hit the ball harder. Coaches now often refer to BABIP (batting average for balls in play) when judging a player’s ability to make good contact, and ask their batters to hit harder.
Batted ball analytics took on a new level when Statcast was implemented in the league in 2015. With Statcast, we now have access to the exact exit velocity and launch angle values for every single batted ball. Analysts came up with two conclusions: there is an “optimal” launch angle, and “high exit velocity” is important for good hitting results.
Statcast has provided us with a new statistic called “barrels”. A barrel is any batted ball that led to a .500 batting average and a 1.500 slugging percentage. To qualify as a barrel, a batted ball must have an exit velocity of at least 98 mph and a launch angle between 26-30 degrees. For every mph increase from 98, the range of qualified launch angle expands.
In the 2017 season, Aaron Judge led the league in number of barrels with 87, while Giancarlo Stanton trailed with 76. The list continues with names like Khris Davis, Nelson Cruz, and J.D. Martinez, and all of them paced the league with 39 or more home runs last season.
As a matter of fact, hitters knew the importance of hard hit balls even before Statcast. Hitters have always lifted weights in order to hit the ball harder. However, the discovery of an optimal launch angle revolutionized the long-held theory of swinging that dominated the league for several generations.
Ted Williams, the last .400 hitter, thought of the uppercut swing as perfect. However, many hitting coaches thought that swinging up was less than ideal, and for a long time have emphasized swinging down. But Statcast brings up a counterargument to this theory: the level swing can produce line drives, but cannot produce fly balls that result in home runs. No matter how hard you hit, a ground ball cannot be a home run.
New data and their subsequent analysis revolutionized the playing field. Prior to 2013, Justin Turner of the LA Dodgers was an extreme groundball hitter who had a single-season high of 4 home runs. In the summer of 2013, Marlon Byrd, Turner’s then-Mets teammate, introduced Turner to an independent hitting coach named Doug Latta. Under his tutelage, Turner became a middle-of-the-lineup threat with the Dodgers. In the next four years, he hit a total of 71 home runs. Below is Turner’s yearly average stats before and after he met Coach Latta.
Latta is a coach with a hitting philosophy of swinging up instead of swinging down. Moreover, Josh Donaldson, Toronto’s star third baseman, and Clint Hurdle, manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, are just some of the people in the league that believe in the uppercut swing and line drives.
However, simply swinging more up is less than ideal. Of course, an extreme upper cut swing, the so-called golf swing, is still something hitters avoid doing (2018 Hall of Fame inductee Vladimir Guerrero is a rare phenom who succeeded with such swing). Proponents of the uppercut swing are emphasizing a “slightly uppercut swing”. The ideal launch angle is, as mentioned before, not over 30 degrees. An extreme uppercut makes the hitters prone to swinging-and-missing, and requires faster reaction time.
That is why hitters who previously had extreme uppercut swings are adjusting their mechanics to lower their launch angle. 2016 NL MVP Kris Bryant is one of these players. Bryant hit 26 home runs in his 2015 rookie season and won Rookie of the Year honors, but struck out a league-high 199 times. Bryant also led the league with a 19.2º average launch angle, and his team believed that this extreme uppercut swing was the reason for his high strikeout rate. Prior to the 2016 season, Kris, with the help of the Cubs coaches, front office analytics, and his father Mike, adjusted his swinging mechanics to make his uppercut less extreme. That resulted in an increase in home runs from 26 to 39, and OPS from .858 to .939, along with MVP honors. But more importantly, his strikeout total decreased from 199 to 154. This was because Bryant was able to decrease his average launch angle by adjusting his swing to be less uppercut, but all the while maintained his exit velocity. He was the perfect example of the “slightly uppercut swing” in the 2016 season. The reason behind his success is by maintaining an uppercut swing and an optimal launch angle while making his uppercut less extreme to avoid swings-and-misses. He is a true success case of taking advantage of the innovative Statcast, data analytics, and an open mind to change for improvement.
In 2017, he hit 29 home runs and his strikeout total decreased even further, to 128. His OPS rose once again, to .946. However, he saw a dip in power production because while he maintained his launch angle, he saw a decrease in exit velocity.
However, starting in 2016, the strike zone started to become higher. Hence the two-seamers, sinkers, and cutters that used to be low strikes now were called balls. To this end, hitters started to elevate these low pitches using the uppercut swing. This perfectly coincides with the time in which the league home run and runs scored totals started to increase dramatically.
Pitchers now look at Statcast as well. Many major league organizations now ask their pitchers to throw more high fastballs to counteract the uppercut swing. Just as the ecosystem continues to adjust and evolve, baseball also continues to revolutionize, generation by generation.
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