Power Up — Who Would Benefit From More Pulled Fly Balls?
One of the components of my new xHR/FB equation is fly ball pull percentage (FB Pull%). Sadly, I have spent significantly more time discussing barrels per true fly ball and average fly ball distance, so I’m going to change that. Let’s talk FB Pull%!
First, let’s look at the trend in the metric over the past three seasons in my population set:
| Season | FB Pull% |
|---|---|
| 2015 | 22.5% |
| 2016 | 23.7% |
| 2017 | 24.2% |
Probably not surprising to find that FB Pull% has inched up in each of the last two seasons. This jibes with the leaguewide shift toward elevating fly balls and sending them over the fence, as pulled fly balls go for homers far more frequently than those heading the opposite way (33.7% HR/FB rate for pulled vs just 4.5% for opposite way in 2017).
It’s clear that pulling your fly balls is preferable if you want to find your name among the home run leaders. So let’s filter for batters who were above average in both Brls/True FB and Avg FB Dist, but below average in FB Pull%. These guys seemingly have some hidden home run upside if they decide to join the revolution and start pulling more of their flies. They already have the power to turn those flies into homers, they just need those balls to travel at the correct horizontal angle.
| Player | HR/FB | xHR/FB | HR/FB – xHR/FB | Brls/True FB | FB Pull% | FB Oppo% | Avg FB Dist | PF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Avila | 21.5% | 25.0% | -3.5% | 45.3% | 7.7% | 55.4% | 345 | 101 |
| Nick Williams | 20.0% | 16.5% | 3.5% | 28.8% | 10.0% | 45.0% | 323 | 116 |
| Domingo Santana | 30.9% | 21.1% | 9.8% | 35.8% | 10.3% | 58.8% | 340 | 104 |
| Derek Fisher | 26.3% | 16.2% | 10.1% | 31.3% | 10.5% | 36.8% | 351 | 104 |
| Eric Hosmer | 22.5% | 18.0% | 4.5% | 34.0% | 10.8% | 57.7% | 332 | 93 |
| Bradley Zimmer | 13.1% | 16.8% | -3.7% | 32.1% | 11.5% | 45.9% | 325 | 105 |
| Corey Seager | 16.2% | 16.1% | 0.1% | 26.9% | 11.8% | 51.5% | 331 | 107 |
| Khris Davis | 26.9% | 23.7% | 3.2% | 44.7% | 11.9% | 37.5% | 350 | 95 |
| Carlos Correa | 22.6% | 16.9% | 5.7% | 31.3% | 12.3% | 41.5% | 330 | 103 |
| Brandon Nimmo | 12.8% | 12.7% | 0.1% | 21.6% | 12.8% | 43.6% | 328 | 99 |
| Shin-Soo Choo | 20.4% | 19.7% | 0.6% | 33.6% | 13.0% | 42.6% | 336 | 103 |
| Robinson Cano | 14.7% | 13.4% | 1.4% | 21.5% | 13.5% | 44.2% | 330 | 104 |
| Nick Castellanos | 14.3% | 17.1% | -2.8% | 28.5% | 13.7% | 50.5% | 329 | 101 |
| Michael Conforto | 27.3% | 19.4% | 7.9% | 37.1% | 14.1% | 48.5% | 332 | 99 |
| Jason Castro | 12.0% | 12.5% | -0.4% | 22.7% | 14.5% | 44.6% | 323 | 98 |
| Freddie Freeman | 19.9% | 20.1% | -0.3% | 32.6% | 14.9% | 47.5% | 334 | 105 |
| Chris Taylor | 15.8% | 13.7% | 2.1% | 23.6% | 15.0% | 45.1% | 323 | 96 |
| Ryon Healy | 15.1% | 12.5% | 2.5% | 21.4% | 15.7% | 39.8% | 328 | 95 |
| Joey Votto | 19.7% | 16.6% | 3.1% | 24.2% | 15.8% | 50.8% | 331 | 110 |
I sorted my filtered players in ascending order of FB Pull%, so the hitters at the top would seemingly have the most upside from a change in approach.
Look at Alex Avila all by his lonesome at the top. Rather than pull the ball, he goes the opposite way far more frequently than average. His aversion to the fly ball clearly hasn’t hampered his ability to knock the ball out of the park though, so it’s hard to envision much more upside from here.
We’re still not entirely sure what the Phillies plan to do in their outfield after their Carlos Santana signing pushed Rhys Hoskins into a corner spot. But if Nick Williams earns a starting job, there’s some serious power potential there, and it could be better than expected if he starts pulling the ball more often.
Man, Domingo Santana has to be one of the weirdest elite HR/FB guys in the league. He has never posted a fly ball rate of 30% and his highest FB Pull% is just 15%. So he doesn’t hit fly balls, or pull the flies he does hit, yet he’s one of the top home run guys in the league! I can’t imagine it gets better, but an increased FB Pull% would help stave off regression toward that xHR/FB rate.
If only the Astros weren’t so darn good, Derek Fisher would be a prime breakout candidate.
Are Eric Hosmer and Domingo Santana the same player? Both hit too many ground balls and don’t pull enough of their flies.
Though I hate that Bradley Zimmer will likely open the season batting last in the Indians order, I love his potential for power and speed contributions, though his batting average may be ugly.
Wondering how Corey Seager gets to 30 homers? This is how.
Carlos Correa could potentially fight off regression by increasing his FB Pull% and then maybe, just maybe, he’ll break even for the owners taking him 14th overall.
I swear Nick Castellanos did not bribe me into including him on every single positive list heading into 2018. But here he is again, offering yet another reason to be optimistic that there’s still more upside.
Look at Freddie Freeman and his twin Joey Votto rounding out this list. Both are just such good hitters that you can’t even really call them power hitters. They both consistently post pristine batted ball profiles and their expertise of the strike zone allows them to mash. Imagine if they pulled more of their flies? They might give up some BABIP, but perhaps take their power to a new level.
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.
Castellanos– did his xHR/FB go down with the formula update? The formula update may have revealed that he’s not quite so “unlucky” as we thought. He makes another list of potential upsiders, but this one is mostly predicated on making a swing change.
I can’t remember where he was at with the old formula, but yes you are correct in that this isn’t a list of those who may have suffered from bad fortune, like my other lists.
Oh and you are amazing. Please don’t leave. Everybody buy a copy!
What is FB pull%? Percentage of FBs that are pulled or percentage of pulled fly balls based on all batted balls?
And how do I acess the stat?
Would love to get that stat.
Btw I looked at Fb and pull rate independently and found out that guys who elevate and pull a lot tend to have more power but also run below average babips (dozier and bautista as prime examples). So there is some cost there but for those two it still paid off.
Have you looked at that combined fb pull leaderboard whether we can see a lower BABIP with the high airball pull guys?
Percentage of fly balls that are pulled. You can find it in the splits leaderboard, filter by fly ball batted ball type and then you’ll see Pull%, Center%, and Oppo%.
The BABIP implications are reflected in my xBABIP. Check out all the research here:
https://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/gettin-shifty-with-it-introducing-the-new-xbabip/
Thank you
In practice, how easy is it for players to hit more pulled fly balls? It seems to me like that would necessitate a plethora of changes in overall approach, to batting stance, swing timing, plane, etc. Would these players still be as adept at hitting the ball hard given the new mechanics and approach? Would they also hit more feeble pulled ground balls as a result? Probably a difficult change to pull off appropriately.
I’m not sure it would require massive changes, as they do happen every year. Often we realize that some of the power surgers are now pulling significantly more fly balls than previously, which is what drove that spike. I don’t know how much effort during the offseason it required to make those changes.
And yes, it could very well hamper BABIP and result in my pulled grounders and shifts. That’s why I stuck with just talking about homers, and not saying more fantasy value!
Interesting. How much of the increase in pulled flyballs is simply from players hitting more flyballs in general?
Do we have good cases of an established opposite field flyball hitter changing his approach to hit more pulled flyballs?
The answer to your first question is presumably “none” given that the pull rate given here is a percentage of fly balls rather than total batted balls, although I suppose it’s possible that gearing your swing towards an uppercut could result in pulling more balls in general.
This is correct. And yes, absolutely. Howie Kendrick, CJ. Cron, Lucas Duda, Andrelton Simmons, Dexter Fowler, Didi Gregorious, etc, etc all increased their FB Pull% by at least 9.8% and all also enjoyed a HR/FB rate surge.
I think the babip aspect makes the low K hitters of that type like bautista was interesting because that gives them an average/obp cushion.
If you have a 25%+k guy with .260 babip you often have a 220 average/300 on base guy but if that guy only strikes out 17% he still can hit 270 with enough homers.
I’d be interested in seeing the consistency of FB pull% from year to year. Is it a skill on its own, separate from pull% of ALL batted balls? For example, are there players who consistently pull fly balls but hit other batted ball types to the opposite field?
One correlation you might want to look at is how well overall pull% in year 1 predicts FB pull% in year 2, compared to how well FB pull% in year 1 predicts FB pull% in year 2.
These are some good questions I’ll consider researching for another post.
On average opposite field balls are easier to lift, that is why many shifts are shifted in the infield and straight up to the of.
There are guys who can selectively pull FBs (lik bautista) but I think all of them have extreme GB pull rates.
That might just be a cost of that approach.
This is good stuff. For anyone who played hurt like Freeman and Seager, do their pre-injury fly ball stats deviate much from their overall numbers?
Don’t have the time to manually check different date ranges for every injured player. I would imagine certain injuries though would make it more difficult to pull the ball. Sounds like a Jeff Zimmerman study.
Khris Davis doesn’t need to pull flyballs in the air more. If you look at his spray chart from this last season, he hits homeruns across all fields with almost equal power. In fact, he hit more to right-center than to left this last year. If anything, he needs to pull grounders less.