Archive for Pull rate

In rounding out my series on the most important factors influencing components of BABIP, I will be looking into what most affects a hitter’s batting average on ground balls. So far, the results of these analyses have been consistent. Launch angle has been the main driver of BABIP for pitchers, and it has been for hitters as well, at least when they are launching flyballs. The story is a different one, though, when hitters put the ball on the ground. Ground ball launch angle was not a significant factor in determining a hitter’s ground ball batting average, and neither was ground ball exit velocity.

Whether or not a hitter pulls grounders has much to say about whether that player will hit for average on grounders. There is a negative relationship between these variables that is significant at p < .0001 and with a Pearson’s r of .27. Even more important is how fast the hitter is. The Pearson’s r for the positive correlation between average sprint speed and ground ball batting average was .45.
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Not so long ago, when it came to pull-heavy power hitters, there was no equal to Brian Dozier. Based on developments currently unfolding this season, the genre could explode in 2020.

Back in 2016, Dozier was unique among major league hitters in his ability to pull flyballs at an extremely high rate consistently. Among hitters who launched at least 100 flies in both 2015 and 2016, Dozier was the only batter to exceed a 35 percent pull rate on flyballs in both seasons. He essentially lapped the field, surpassing a 40 percent rate in both campaigns. Then Dozier was the only hitter to pull off the feat in both 2016 and 2017.
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I recently wrote about Statcast measures that were highly correlated with power metrics, such as HR/FB and ISO. The research confirmed that several Statcast measures could be useful tools for identifying undervaled power sources. One factor I ignored in that analysis was pull rate, but in taking a belated look at it, I found that one of the apparently strong relationships gets notably weaker when we control for a hitter’s pull tendencies.

In general, exit velocity on flyballs and line drives turned out to be strongly correlated with ISO for hitters with at least 150 batted ball events in 2018. However, when you isolate the top 10 percent of the sample in terms of pull rate, the relationship is still meaningful, but it’s not quite as strong. That could have implications for how we view two of last season’s top power hitters, Jose Ramirez and Alex Bregman.
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