Potential Second Half Power Surgers
As we continue into the second half of the season, it’s time to check back into the batted ball distance leaderboard. As usual, I am identifying potential HR/FB rate improvers by comparing a hitter’s mark to his distance. However, distance alone doesn’t tell the complete story, so this isn’t a perfect analysis. I found that batted ball angle and the standard deviation of fly balls were also quite important. But since this data isn’t publicly available yet, we have to do the best with what we have. So without further ado, here are your power surgers.
| Name | Distance | HR/FB |
|---|---|---|
| Miguel Cabrera | 304.91 | 12.5% |
| Anthony Rendon | 296.65 | 10.3% |
| Starling Marte | 296.32 | 9.6% |
| Russell Martin | 294.51 | 10.9% |
| Jayson Werth | 292.66 | 10.1% |
Miguel Cabrera is having a down season by his standards, but of course nearly every hitter would kill to post a .386 wOBA and be considered disappointing. There have been questions about whether or not his groin injury is still affecting him, but if it has, it seems to have barely made a dent in how far he is hitting the ball. His distance is down a mere four feet from last year and still ranks 10th in baseball. Aside from the fact that you just assume the man with a career HR/FB rate near 20% should be expected to improve from a current 12.5% mark, his distance suggests that he should be sitting near his career average. While you can never buy low on Cabrera, perhaps you could acquire him at less than the 2nd best fantasy player in baseball prices.
I still haven’t heard the end of it from Anthony Rendon fans after I included him as a bearish Pod’s Pick and then foolishly boldly predicted that Marcus Semien outearns him. Of course, my bearishness was based on his mediocre 277 foot distance of last year. He has upped that by a whopping 20 feet this year, yet his HR/FB rate still sits in league average territory. He has a chance to make me look even sillier over the final months of the season.
Starling Marte appeared on my last surger list as well, and his distance has predictably declined, but his HR/FB rate has nudged up slightly. I still believe a Carlos Gomez like power breakout is in his future. It will be interesting to see if he could cut down on the swings and misses, while maintaining or boosting his power.
Russell Martin’s distance is sitting at a career high, though barely, but his HR/FB rate it at its lowest mark since 2010. His doubles have dried up as well, which has led his ISO to tumble down to just .116. This is also very strange coming from a guy averaging over 290 feet on his homers and flies. Since his BABIP is sitting at a career high, meaning that his batting average could crater, he should be a rare all-around contributor at catcher the rest of the way. In a deeper league, he’s a good target if you need a catcher.
Jayson Werth also made my prior surgers list and like Marte, has seen a slight decline in distance, but a small increase in HR/FB rate. After hitting just two homers over May and June, Werth has finally found his home run strike in July, swatting six long balls during the month. He’s already hit just two fewer doubles than he did all of last year, so it seems that early on, his fly balls are falling just short of going over the fence. It could be a sign of a true loss in home run power, or just a missing gust of wind that will carry some extra balls over the rest of the way.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
This sentence from the Martin blurb is confusing: “Since his BABIP is sitting at a career high, meaning that his batting average could crater, he should be a rare all-around contributor at catcher the rest of the way.”
Agreed. What does this mean?
(I’m debating between Russel Martin and Derek Norris in an OBP-league ROS.)
I think Martin’s issue is likely PNC Park, which has the second lowest park factor for HR at 90. He has hit 6 HR in 380 PAs at home the past 2 years (none in 2014) versus 14 HR in 372 PAs everywhere else. His ISOs at home in 2013/2014 are .108 and .061 versus .162 and .168 away as well. This is despite the excellent 294.51 FB distance this year (cited above) and 292.96 FB distance last year. His angle is more or less dead center, which is not a friendly place for homers at PNC either. The doubles to date are low, but it’s not like he has ever been a doubles guy, with low career LD and FB numbers, has failed to top 20 four times in eight years, and only made managed 21 last year. I think the Steamer projections of 4 HR and 6 2B are about right (3 HR sounds better), but expecting more than that with his history in PNC would be wishful thinking.
BABIP usually hangs around career levels so he’s saying that Martin is currently lucky and his average will decrease when his BABIP returns to normal.
Yes, I think we all get that — it’s the next part that is confusing: if his average will likely decrease, why should we be confident he will be a good “all around” roto performer?
Reminds me of a line my constitutional law professor liked to use: “I understood everything you just said except the word therefore.”
Wow that was a terribly worded sentence! I’ll fix when I’m back home, but I was trying to say that aside from batting average, he should contribute everywhere else.
A little help for the uneducated, please.
Looking at the BBDL, I see angles that have negative numbers and positive numbers. It’s reasonable to assume that a small angle number indicates a tendency to hit the ball to center.
Does a relatively high minus number indicate a strong tendency to pull fly balls and high positive number indicate a tendency to hit fly balls to the opposite field? Knowing that Josh Willingham has had a tendency to pull fly balls should help here, as well as having seen many of J.D. Martinez’ home runs end up in the right field seats.
What I don’t understand is this: what about a guy who hits to all fields, like Miggy? His angle numbers should be misleading, right?
It’s not quite pull/oppo. Positive is to right, negative to left, so you have to take the batter’s handedness into account when you are determining pull/oppo flyball tendency. The bottom of this page explains: http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/battedballdist.php
When looking at flyball data (I use http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/distanceleader.php), the angle represents the field which the player hits the ball to. Looking at the field as a 90 degree quadrant, a ball pulled directly down the left field line = -45 degrees, a ball hit directly down the right light = 45 degrees, and one hit to dead center = 0 degrees. This matters.
As you said about Miggy, when it comes to elite guys, who can hit for power to all fields (Miggy, Trout, Goldy, etc) this angle isn’t necessarily as important. But when considering basic physics, most hitters demonstrate greater power to the pull side. Also, hitting the ball down the line requires the ball to travel a shorter distance to reach the seats. So when I see that Brian Dozier only has a distance of ~274 feet, but has hit 93 balls at an angle of -3.85 (a relatively strong pull tendency), his 18 HRs are not a fluke.
I’m sure that there are obvious exceptions to the logic that ‘the more you pull the ball the better chance you have to hit a home run,’ as some players (like Cutch) primarily demonstrate their power going to the opposite field (which is indicated by his 10.57 angle).
Based on this commentary, I think Pod’s comparison of Marte to Gomez is flawed. Here is their flyball data:
Marte – 39 @ 296.32 Feet @ 6.96 Degrees (strong oppo tendency)
Gomez – 73 @ 288.24 Feet @ 0.49 Degrees (basically center)
Though Marte hits it further, he hits a lot fewer FBs than Gomez, more to the opposite field. Though he hits the ball in the air primarily to right field, he’s only got 1 HR to that side. Gomez on the other hand, hits most of his HRs to Center and Left.
Basically the overall theme that is important to pick up here is that the MORE FBs you hit (FB% vs HR/FB rate) at a requisite distance to the pull side, the greater chance you have to hit HRs.
Another example to perhaps most clearly demonstrate this point: Here is Votto’s line:
35 FBs @ 308.98 @ -13.02 (very strong oppo tendency)
Using Pod’s logic, in a vacuum, since his HR/FB rate is 7% lower than his career % and since he hits it *far*, we should expect his HR totals to *surge*. Again, injury aside, this logic is very flawed. Although he has hit most of his FBs to left field (oppo), most of his HRs this year were pulled.
The angle and the raw # of FBs hit is more important, given a requisite average distance traveled, than average FB distance coupled with HR/FB rate.
I put my own foot in my mouth a little bit here, as Pod does allude to the fact that angle is important. I’ve just tried to demonstrate how.
Per my comment above, Marte has the same PNC Park issue as Martin. That field eats homers.
Just to clarify, I don’t use the angle data presented on the leader board. When I researched my FG+ piece and included angle data, it was another set of numbers Jeff Zimmerman sent to me that I requested. Those on the leader board have no correlation with HR/FB
I don’t understand how the overall angle of FB would have no correlation with HR/FB. For example, Martin’s overall angle is 0.70, more or less dead center. If you go to http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/battedballdist.php and look up just his HR’s, his angle is -36.7, a fairly extreme pull to left, given that -45 is the max. I don’t take the dead center angle literally, I assume it means he probably hits to all fields. Therefore, since the only ones leaving the yard are the ones he really yanks, his approach of using the whole field likely depresses his homers. Or am I misreading the data?
The way the angle is presented on the leaderboard is misleading and can’t be used to calculate a projected HR/FB rate. What you want is the absolute value of the angle because the fence distances down the lines are shorter and that’s what is important. The leader board shows the average angle, I believe. But if a hitter hits half his balls down the left field line and the other half down the right field line, his average would be 0….the same as a hitter who hits every ball to dead center. So you could see why the number can’t be relied upon to project HR/FB
This play by Juan Lagares hurt J Werth’s HR/FB ratio. http://www.thescore.com/news/504074
Two Pirates and two Nationals – ballpark issues?
Only if the distance of the fences in those parks are further away than the majority of the other parks. I don’t know if that’s the case.
In the case of PNC Park, the left/center field gap is crazy deep. The shallowest area is 383 while the deepest part (the notch) sits at 410. For comparison, straight center is 399. Obviously right handed hitters with moderate power have it rough in Pittsburgh.
This image does it pretty fair justice.
http://www.andrewclem.com/Baseball/PNCPark.html