Short answer: No.

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The following nerd talk can be blamed on Ozzie Albies. Currently, he’s on the IL after needing surgery on his broken foot but plans on an August return. While digging through his stats, I was not sold on him being an early-round difference maker. Over the past two seasons, he just had a .255 AVG after it was at .279 in his first four seasons. One obvious change was that he has really started going for flyballs with his Flyball Rate (and Launch Angle (LA)) heading up.

What I wanted to know if Albies has changed his swing for more power and a lower batting average should be expected going forward.

To find the values, I had to do some manipulation of the public StatCast data. I don’t like how it’s currently being provided, so I needed to make a few adjustments.

First, instead of the 95 mph cutoff for the Hard Hit rate (used by BaseballSavant.com), I prefer 102 mph based on this Twitter thread I had with Jon Anderson.

Okay minimum exit velo at 26-30 degrees to reach .500 AVG and 1.500 SLG

2019: 98 mph
2020: 98 mph
2021: 100 mph
2022: 102 mph

— Jon Anderson (@JonPgh) May 20, 2022

A batter’s swing path is the point where they create the hardest contact. The theory behind this concept can be found in these two articles. The value is a by-product of the Hard Hit query. Both of the values can be found in this BaseballSavant search.

The key with this information is to find the sweet spot of getting enough air under the ball for line drives and home runs while at the same time not popping up for some easy outs. Here are six graphs that will get us to a simple rule. If you don’t want to be overwhelmed by the graphs and numbers, feel free to jump down to the Conclusions section.

Graph and Math Stuff

For this step, I going to compare the average hitters’ Isolated Power (ISO) and BABIP using the Hard Hit% and Bat Path. I studied all non-pitchers from 2015 to the present who had 50 batted ball events in a season. I’ll start with ISO since the results are cleaner.

ISO vs HardHit% and Bat Path

First, here is a simple table of average ISO and for certain Hard Hit% and Bat Path. I tried to limit the number of empty values here.

To no one’s surprise, the higher and hard a ball is hit, the hitter’s ISO get higher

The deal is that on the right side of the table a change is starting to occur. For the weak hitters, their ISO has peaked and is heading down.

The change isn’t 100% clear, looks to start around 22 degrees.

Looking at the information another way, here is the average ISO grouped just by the Swing Path.

The ISO values peak around 20 degrees and then start declining. The key swing path for power seems to be around 20 degrees

BABIP vs HardHit% and Bat Path

Power isn’t the only factor to take into account So to start out again, here are the average BABIPs for a certain HardHit% and Bat Path.

The image is not as clean as the ISO one, but there is a range of high BABIP under 15-degrees Bat Path and over 15% Hard Hit%

Again, here is a look at the limited results from an upper cut bat path.

Again, not the prettiest image, but all the extremely low BABIP values fall in this range.

And finally, one last graph to show the average BABIP at different bat paths

While there is some curvature to the BABIP graph, it’s flatter from -5 to 20 degrees.

Conclusions

From the graphs and tables, the key to being productive is to hit the ball as hard as possible (duh) with a swing plane of 20 degrees. To get to elite levels, the Hard Hit% needs to be over 20%

Going back to Albies, here are his Hard Hit% rates and Swing Paths over the years.

The change in Swing Path obviously occurred between the 2019 and 2020 seasons. The change wasn’t as obvious since his Hard Hit% was in the low teens. When that rate dropped to 6% this season, all his results tanked. Albies swing path is fine as long as he’s hitting the ball hard.

Besides Albies, here are some other hitters with a Swing Path over 22 degrees but a sub-15% Hard Hit%.

The NL West Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Derek Van Riper

All-Star Game Thoughts

Strategy Section

• What are you doing from a fantasy standpoint with your time at the all-star break?
• Using Rest of Season Projections
  • ATC Rest of Season Projections
  • Auction Calculator
  • When do you stop using pre-season projections?
• Looking at recent performance
  • What is the proper time frame to use for a recent player snapshot?
• How to tell the difference between underperformance and injury?

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We are going to need those TPS reports turned in by COB yesterday. That’s when the All-Star break officially ends. Did you think it was time to rest? Did you think it was time to relax with a nice piece of fictional literature by the pool? Wrong. Now is the time to assess how your team is performing.

Here are three easy steps you can put into practice to keep your foot on the gas and prepare yourself for success in the second half:

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The AL Central Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Jeff Zimmerman

Strategy Section / Mailbag

• What to look at / reasoning for setting weekly pitching lineups.
• How to accumulate “risk” & other strategies if behind in the standings and trying to catch up.
• How many points behind first place is it not too late to catch up to first?
• Sell high on Julio Rodriguez?

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The AL East Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Jason Collette

Strategy Section

• Is it time yet to think about punting categories in roto leagues?
  • Punt speed? Punt saves?
  • Punt ERA?
• How do you know when to use the waiver wire vs. resorting to a trade?

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

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The Frustration Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Howard Bender

TGFBI Update

Strategy Section

• When do you look at where you are in the individual category standings?
• When do you look at where you are in the overall standings?
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Unorthodox Strategies
• Is it too early now to punt categories?
• Trading desperation
• The risk of Byron Buxton
• Frustrating fantasy baseball situations
  • Injured players
  • Overbidding / underbidding on FAAB
  • Sitting a player who has a good week
    • Shohei Ohtani’s excellent pitching performances in weekly leagues
  • Starting a player who has a bad week
• Balancing being a fantasy expert and succeeding in fantasy leagues

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The Waiver Wire Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Vlad Sedler

Strategy Section

• When to sit cold players, and when to cut them?
  • Does it differ for Hitters vs. Pitchers?
• Cutting injured players in non-IL slot leagues
  • Eloy Jimenez
  • How much FAAB should one spend on an injury stash?
• FAAB
  • Going with your gut.
  • When should you overspend on FAAB?
  • Being in tune with how the rest of the league is spending FAAB dollars.
  • FAAB from a Return on Investment perspective.
  • FAAB pricing also depends on the avaialble player pool.
  • Looking at other team’s positional and categorical needs before setting FAAB bids.
    • Adalberto Mondesi
      • Profile Risk
• General FAAB bidding guidelines
  • Streaming options
  • Hot players
    • Taylor Ward
    • Uniqueness of profile
  • Speed
  • Closers and speculative closers

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The Early Season Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Ian Kahn

Strategy Section

• How to know when to be interested in players with hot starts.
  • Garrett Whitlock
  • Nestor Cortes
• How to know when to sit or drop players with cold starts.
  • Joey Votto
  • Charlie Blackmon
  • Joey Gallo
• How much to bid on FAAB in the early part of the season.
• Trading in the early season
  • Do you / how to trade struggling superstars?
    • Gerrit Cole
    • Mookie Betts
  • Do you / how to trade surging players?
    • Cody Bellinger

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The Predictions Episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Scott Pianowski

Strategy Section

• 2022 Draft Season Wrap-Up
  • Younger players over boring vets
  • Reliable pitching
  • It’s less about the player information advantages, and more about the game play.
• What do you look for / watch closely for early in the season?
  • Roles
  • Manegerial tendencies
    • Lineup
    • Bullpen
    • Stolen base attempts
    • Platoon splits
  • Pitchers
    • Velocity
    • Walk and strikeout rates
    • Don’t look at pitch count
  • Which baseball is the MLB using?
• How quickly can you trust the hot/cold player starts?
  • Regression – Underperforming players vs overperforming players in terms of correction time
    • Kyle Hendricks
    • Noah Syndergaard
    • Yu Darvish
    • Nick Martinez

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