Baseballs to the Moon!

I won’t claim to know as much about Bitcoin as some of my peers, but I know enough to determine that winning $100K of it would be great. For the more crypto-skeptical baseball fans out there, MLB and their new contest sponsor, FTX, are offering cold, hard cash as an alternative reward for their new promo contest. The challenge? Guess who will hit the longest home run of the rest of the season, the distance in feet of that home run, and the type of home run (solo, 2-run, etc.,). Let’s take a look at the details of the Moon Blast contest and see if our more enlightened way of thinking can help make a prediction.

For starters, let’s look at all the home runs that have been hit so far this season (as of 7/26/21 when I downloaded the data from BaseballSavant) and the distribution of distances: 

Here are the top 10 longest hit home runs:

In this year’s home run derby, Trevor Story recorded the longest home run, a 518-foot blast! While Story’s derby bomb is unique, it and this list give us an expectation of what is possible and a list of players who can be potential pick candidates.

What about park factors? Both Colorado and Atlanta have hosted two top 10 home runs each. If we open up the data to analyze the top 100 longest home runs of the season thus far, we see patterns in where these longs balls of long balls were hit:

You’re already thinking it, aren’t you? Why not just pick a player who will play most often in Colorado? 20 of the top 100, or one in five, of the longest hit home runs, have been hit in Colorado. While that’s certainly not a bad idea, there could be more to it. Let’s look at (bear with me here) players with more than two top 100 home runs, their average metrics on those home runs and where they hit their longest:

Out of these eight players who have hit more than two top 100 home runs, 6 have hit their longest shot in their home stadium. All five of C.J. Cron’s have been in Colorado. All five of Salvador Perez’s have been hit in Kansas City. Whether there’s anything to that might be beyond the scope of this article, but it’s still an interesting observation.

The last thing to do is to look at what a mathematical model would tell us is important. I built a simple linear regression model from all home runs hit in 2021 and targeted hit distance with a list of statcast metrics as features. Here are the rankings of these features based on the linear coefficients in the model:

1. Exit Velocity, 2. Park Factor, 3. Launch Angle, 4. Right Handed Batter, 5. Pitch Speed

This list might not set off any light bulbs in your head, but hopefully, it does help you notice what is important when making your pick.

1. Hitting the ball hard will make it go far. Check. Average exit velocity of Top 100 longest hit HRs: 111 MPH.
2. Certain parks make for longer home runs. Weknowdis. More on this below.
3. The right launch angle makes the ball go over the wall. Right-oonnn! Average launch angle of Top 100 longest hit HRs: 28.
4. Right-handed batters? This is most likely just the result of a larger population of righties with home runs in the data. However, certain parks are more suitable to righties and others are more suitable to lefties. That’s useful.
5. Pitch Speed. The average pitch speed of the top 100 longest hit home runs was under 90 mph, signifying that breaking balls have been hit farther.

While you don’t have to choose which stadium the longest hit home run (rest of season) will occur in, it’s important to look at who is playing where the rest of the year. For example, Colorado’s home games in August and September look like this:

Cubs 3 games
Marlins 3 games
Padres 3 games
Dbacks 3 games
Braves 4 games
Giants 9 games
Dodgers 6 games
Nationals 3 games

The same can be done for other parks, but if you were simply looking to maximize your chances, the Giants playing nine games at Coors with Austin Slater showing up in the top 100 list four separate times is interesting. Though, Slater’s .218 batting average on the year could directly contradict the whole ‘maximize your chances’ idea.

Games are fun to play and at this point in the season, this new little game offering up Bitcoin rewards and an excuse to analyze massive home runs is refreshing. The take-aways seem to be that you should be mindful of which players are playing in advantageous parks the most often, which players have demonstrated a high max exit velocity this year, which players consistently have an optimal launch angle and finally, whether you want crypto or cash. Good luck!