There has been so much talk recently about batters increasing their launch angle. You have probably seen dozens of articles from sources all around the internet, some focusing on a reduction in ground ball rates, others on increased home run rates.  Some focus on specific average launch angle ranges, claiming this or that average launch angle may be more useful for this or that reason. It is getting confusing, I’m confused.  I’m sure you’re confused.  Or maybe you’re burned out from all this launch angle talk.  Bear with me, I’m going to try to demystify what is going on, and hopefully you can use it to your advantage in the coming weeks while others still struggle.

First, exit velocity, generally speaking, means more than launch angle in terms of predicting success.  In fact, you can predict batted ball outcomes using exit velocity alone. I have done so in the past, and I could predict how many runs would be scored in any given game with a good deal of accuracy. That’s another topic, though. The key takeaway is this: Exit Velocity trumps angle.

Second, exit velocity peaks between -10 and 10 degrees of vertical launch angle for pretty much every batter.  I would say every batter, but there is probably an exception. This comes down to physics, mostly. It is determined by the angle of attack on the pitched baseball.  Imagine the curve the ball follows between the release point in the pitcher’s hand all the way to the point at which it crosses the plate.  As I understand it, on average, that angle is somewhere between 0 and 10 degrees. For breaking balls the angle is steeper, on fastballs it is more shallow, but give or take, averaging everything out, it is between 0 and 10 degrees. Read the rest of this entry »

I would be honored if you would join me… in a conversation about three players.  Okay, that’s probably the last Star Wars reference. No promises, though.

Each of these players have a few things in common.  First, their on field performance has been a bit of a surprise. Second, they may have been a bit unlucky. Third, public perception of their value has been rocky.  Two of them are being sold off.  One of them is getting bought. Let’s get into it. Read the rest of this entry »

Statcast has given us many new ways to evaluate quality of contact.  You can look at exit velocity and launch angle (although I wouldn’t recommend it). You can look at my xOBA, or MLB’s xwOBA (cough). You can look at Value Hits, or MLB’s Barreled Balls. Each of these focus primarily on great contact, or frequency of good contact with respect to plate appearances.  However, bad contact is important too, right?

In the past I have written about Poorly Hit balls, which you may find interesting to read. These combined with Value Hits paint a picture of the upper and lowest levels of contact a batter creates or a pitcher surrenders. Well, there is a different way of looking at these figures, and with my notoriously bad ability for naming things (the title of my senior thesis in college was “Introduction”), I have come to call this “Wasted At Bats.”  Others have told me that’s a terrible, misleading name.  To which I have no response other than “I’m sorry.” But let me explain.

This stat, which I will call henceforth “Wasted”, represents the ratio between plate appearances that end in a near automatic out to at bats that end with a near automatic extra base hit.  The formula is simple:

(PH% + K%) / VH%

You know strikeouts are almost always outs. Very, very rarely can a batter reach first base, although it *can* happen.  Well, PH% (Poorly Hit) are somewhat similar, although not *quite* as automatic. Poorly Hit balls are outs about 98% of the time. Not automatic, but as close as you’re going to get.

To put this in perspective, Bartolo Colon has 309 plate appearances in his career to date. He has five extra base hits. Base hits on Poorly Hit balls are about as common as Bartolo Colon extra base hits.  It happens, but don’t count on it. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago, Alan Nathan wrote an article for The Hardball Times about the humidor’s potential impact on exit velocity in Chase Field.  He referenced a physics model that estimates a 3.8 mile per hour drop in exit velocity. He also showed that over the past two seasons the Diamondbacks Exit Velocity is 2 miles per hour higher in home games when compared to away games. I encourage you to read the whole article prior to reading what I have produced here today, as I will be building upon what he wrote. Read the rest of this entry »

There have been a lot of questions and comments this season about the change in pitch velocity readings. I am not going to go into depth why these changes were made, but I have seen a lot of people questioning these velocity readings, and how they might compare to past seasons.

I am sure you have seen articles about how velocities this season are roughly 0.6 mph faster than last season, so maybe you have been subtracting a mile per hour from each number you see as a back of the envelope estimate.  Maybe you’re happy with that, maybe not.  Tom Tango mentioned a manner for calculating the traditional pitch velocities in the comment section of his blog post about the change to Start Speed. After seeing this, I immediately implemented it on my personal pitch database, and I am here to share those results with you today. Read the rest of this entry »

Fans instinctively know there are many types of batted balls. We’ve even given them names over the years: bloops, worm killers, Baltimore Chops, fly balls, rockets, frozen ropes, etc. Some of these names have been adapted to standardized stats, fly balls, ground balls, line drives, and pop ups, while the others have been been relegated to flowery language used broadcasters and personalities.

We have stats for fly balls, pop ups, ground balls, and line drives here on fangraphs, and occasionally users break these down a little more into infield fly balls, fliners, and outfield fly balls to narrow in on specific traits that may be interesting at the moment. But, personally, and you may feel the same way, I’ve never been quite happy with this system. It is too narrow, the categories are too broad and generic.

I created my versions of xOBA, xBABIP, and xStats on the premise of eliminating ‘types’ of batted ball from the analysis. Instead, it focuses entirely on balls with similar launch angles and exit velocities. It works pretty well, I think, but sometimes you want to sort and filter batters by specific traits. Batted ball types are one way to do this.

There are two ways to measure batted ball type with Statcast. First, you can go strictly by launch angle. Second, you can combine launch angle and exit velocity. In a sense, I already do the latter, which I call Value Hits and Poor Hits. These balls characterize the most and least valuable batted balls, combining launch angle and exit velocity. So you can sort and filter players this way.

The former option, launch angles alone, is what I will be focusing on here. I have three goals for this exercise:

• First, each category to have a unique set of features. If they are too similar, you may as well lump them together.
• Second, each category should have a relatively large number of results. I don’t want one batted ball type to represent, for example, merely 1% of batted balls.
• Third, the categories should have good year to year correlations, and hopefully quickly stabilize during the course of a season.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago I rolled out a large update to my 2017 estimated stats page. You could call it a projection, but that word sounds too official for me. These stats take all of the Statcast data available for each player, weights it by season, and regresses to the mean with respect to plate appearances. So, a guy with more plate appearances will have less regression than a guy with fewer plate appearances, and plate appearances in 2016 weigh more than those in 2015.

These numbers, theoretically, represent the quality of contact generated by each player. There are some caveats, of course. There are players who have large amounts of missing Statcast data, which I will try to skip over for the purposes of this piece. There are some who have relatively small sample sizes.  Some played through injury which may have cast a large shadow on their numbers the past two years. Try to keep these issues in mind.

I’m going to be comparing these 2017 xStats estimations/projections to Steamer projections, and I’ll be displaying the difference. The difference is calculated using xStat – Steamer. So positive numbers show xStats are more optimistic, and negative numbers show Steamer is more optimistic.

With all that said, I’m focusing on mid to late round picks, ADP between 100 and 400. These are the sorts of guys I personally find easier to trade after a draft, assuming your drafts have already concluded (and at this point that seems like a fair assumption). Read the rest of this entry »

This is the first bold predictions I’ve ever made public! Which is scary, for you, and I get all ten right. Just kidding. I’m a Mets fan, so I’ll get my Mets homer related ones out of the way first:

1: Steven Matz will be a top 10 starting pitcher

I believe from a combination of his velocity (94-95), his stuff (very nasty), competitive drive (off the charts), and cheat codes (he’s left handed) he can sustain some of the weakest batted ball contact in the game. Now tack on his command (6% walk rate) and strikeout rate (23%) and you have a guy with legitimate ace potential.

I’m using xStats to judge his batted ball value. He kept batters to an expected .231/.278/.363 slash line in 2016, with an xOBA of .268.

Amongst pitchers with at least 100 IP last season, Matz ranked 12th according to xOBA behind Clayton Kershaw, Jose Fernandez, Rich Hill, Noah Syndergaard, Kyle Hendricks, Jameson Taillon, Madison Bumgarner, Corey Kluber, Justin Verlander, Jon Lester, and Max Scherzer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I wrote about using pitcher launch angle as tie breaker during a draft. This was an effort to tie the changing home run environment into pitcher value. The correlations are very weak, but it might be valuable on the margins. For example, if you consider two pitchers roughly interchangeable, perhaps you would want to use launch angle to nudge you in one direction or another.

I got feedback asking whether or not launch angle is sticky from year to year, and when it might stabilize. Well, let’s take a look.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some time ago I went through my database searching for batted balls that produce the greatest offensive benefit. I settled on a range of vertical launch angles between 21 and 36 degrees. This range of angles accounts for the majority of home runs and extra base hits, and are generally among the most valuable batted balls.

These are the most valuable balls, and this is, generally speaking you want to see batters maxing out balls on these angles and pitchers minimizing them. In the traditional sense, this range encompasses “fly balls”, as you would see reported on Fangraphs (FB%), but some sources consider balls hit between 20 and 25 degrees to be line drives. Either way, this is an important range. This isn’t ground breaking material, but you may not be familiar with it being described in terms of angles.

We know home run rate went up dramatically in 2016, at least in part due to an increased average exit velocity. However, this home run surge took place almost entirely for balls with a launch angle between 25 and 36 degrees. Balls hit above and below this launch window saw little to no increase. Alan Nathan wrote a relevant article which I encourage you to read. Read the rest of this entry »