The Definitive Home Run Tracker Study: The Bad Names
Yesterday, I unveiled the top 10 list of good names with regards to both No Doubt percentage and Just Enough percentage from the home run classification buckets on ESPN Home Run Tracker. Today, I will present the negative nellies. These hitters are at greater risk for HR/FB rate decline this season, so it might not be a bad idea to use as a tie-breaker if debating between a hitter on the list and someone else.
First, here are the 10 hitters with the lowest ND% among all batters who hit at least 10 home runs last year. Scratch that, instead here are the 15 hitters who failed to hit even 1 ND homer last year, sorted by the most home runs:
| Player | HR/FB | HR | ND% |
|---|---|---|---|
| David Wright | 12.5% | 21 | 0.0% |
| Ian Kinsler | 7.9% | 19 | 0.0% |
| Gordon Beckham | 8.7% | 16 | 0.0% |
| Austin Jackson | 11.4% | 16 | 0.0% |
| Jed Lowrie | 11.3% | 16 | 0.0% |
| Derek Jeter | 16.1% | 15 | 0.0% |
| Eric Hosmer | 11.3% | 14 | 0.0% |
| A.J. Ellis | 12.5% | 13 | 0.0% |
| Ryan Roberts | 7.9% | 12 | 0.0% |
| Shane Victorino | 6.0% | 11 | 0.0% |
| Coco Crisp | 8.0% | 11 | 0.0% |
| Salvador Perez | 13.1% | 11 | 0.0% |
| Geovany Soto | 11.1% | 11 | 0.0% |
| Casper Wells | 11.0% | 10 | 0.0% |
| Norichika Aoki | 7.9% | 10 | 0.0% |
| Population Avg | 14.6% | 20 | 19.0% |
Wow, color me surprised to see David Wright’s name topping the list. He’s only 30 and his power still remains down from his peak. Tough to know what to think here, but since he’s unlikely to be undervalued in any league, this may be reason enough to shy away from paying value.
Every time I see Ian Kinsler’s low HR/FB rate, it surprises me. He hit 30 home runs twice, and managed to do so with HR/FB rates of just around 12%. Chalk that up to his excellent contact ability and extreme fly ball tendency. He isn’t really all that powerful though. He has literally alternated between single digit and double digit HR/FB rates every year, so he’s due for a rebound season. I wouldn’t count on it though.
Hmm, maybe Austin Jackson’s power outburst was more fluke than real after all. His average distance was identical to 2011, both years being lower than 2010. Jed Lowrie might really hate his new home park.
Caution to those hoping for an Eric Hosmer rebound. His appearance here is obviously not a good sign. Aside from the hope his BABIP rebounds, another issue is his missing power. He posted just a .127 ISO last year, which is pitiful for a first baseman. Though, his average distance portrays a better picture as it suggests some HR/FB rate upside. So these two factors clash, which makes me throw up my hands and pronounce that I have no idea what Hosmer is going to do this year.
If you didn’t already assume it, no power repeat for A.J. Ellis this season. Well isn’t that interesting. Shane Victorino appears here and also showed up on our low JE% list. In fact, 10 of his 11 homers were of the “Plenty” variety. That’s fine, no concerns here.
Now let’s check out the top 10 in JE%:
| Player | HR/FB | HR | JE% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jed Lowrie | 11.3% | 16 | 62.5% |
| David Wright | 12.5% | 21 | 57.1% |
| Alex Gordon | 8.5% | 14 | 57.1% |
| Drew Stubbs | 13.2% | 14 | 57.1% |
| Carlos Quentin | 13.9% | 16 | 56.3% |
| Melky Cabrera | 10.7% | 11 | 54.5% |
| A.J. Ellis | 12.5% | 13 | 53.8% |
| Jhonny Peralta | 8.3% | 13 | 53.8% |
| Will Middlebrooks | 21.4% | 15 | 53.3% |
| Seth Smith | 13.6% | 14 | 50.0% |
| Population Avg | 14.6% | 20 | 19.0% |
Oh boy, Lowrie is doomed. He’s the Justin Upton of the bad names list. Wait, maybe that title belongs to Wright. There he is again! So yeah, remember how above I said maybe it’s not worth paying value for Wright? His appearance on these lists is obviously not an automatic death wish, but again, if you have an opportunity to draft him at value, there is little reason to do so knowing this information now.
Alex Gordon baffles me. What happened to the future 30 home run hitter? And his appearance on this list is coming when his HR/FB rate fell below the 10% mark. Stop doing your best Nick Markakis impression and be the 2006 Double-A future superstar!
There’s Ellis again. Not a good sign for Will Middlebrooks, but it’s doubtful anyone expected him to maintain a HR/FB rate anywhere close to what he posted last season anyway.
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.
Great stuff. This is some of the most interesting FanGraphs material I’ve ever read.
Is it also possible that Home Run Tracker might discriminate slightly against homers hit to center field? A ball hit out 406 feet to center still gets the same “Just Enough” label as the 360 foot ball hit to left. Look at Granderson’s batted-ball distance chart, and it doesn’t look too impressive, but because he was a dead-pull home run hitter in a favorable park, he chalked up a bunch of No-Doubters according to Hittracker. Looking at batted-ball distance and spray chart might give more insight than the number of “JE’s” by themselves.
But that doesn’t really matter – it is more likely to be repeated.
If the question is how impressed you should be with the homers, you have a point. You can look at average distance or something like that.
But IS IT more likely to be repeated? None of the trajectory stuff was included in the original analysis, so it may turn out that JEs to CF predict an increase in future HR/FB while pull JEs predict a drop, and then features of the samples give the result that high JE rates predict lower HR/FB rates in the future.
Right. If that batted ball trajectory is likely to be repeated, then would the JE’s in this case NOT be indicative of a future decline?
Very good point. There is definitely some issues with relying exclusively on HR Tracker data and one would have to analyze each player individually to see if there is a unique situation. As usual, the study results work well on average, but it might not mean every single player would follow the same pattern.
I can’t help but feel that there is a crucial piece of the puzzle missing due to the limitations of ESPN’s data: you have information on “no doubt” homeruns and “just enough” homeruns, but not “almost” home runs. I would think that given two players with a “normal” ND/JE split, if player A had a significant number of “almost” home runs while player B had none, that would likely convey important information about their respective future power prospects.
I agree that including “almost” home runs would be informative. Aside from the Player scenario above, it would also be interesting if a player C had a large number of JE AND “almost.” An “almost” category would certainly shed as much light, if not more due to a possible higher rate of occurrence, as JE homers.
Yeah, definitely. This is where it would be smart to also cross-reference average distance data, because that includes all fly balls that weren’t home runs.
I concur with Dave. This is the kind of outside-the-box information that makes you feel like you learned something new from reading it. Kudos on the good work, Mike.
i’m curious how different wright’s nd% and je% would look at a more neutral park…
i’m also, frankly, glad that he’s pushing up his ld%, which i’m sure has a negative impact on his nd% and je%, especially at citi field.
go to HR tracker, go to NYM select David Wright and select “park overlay” and choose a “neutral” park of your choosing, maybe Nationals’ park, and see how his HRs look. Spoiler: It’s about the same. Wright’s problem is that he doesn’t pull the ball, so most of his HRs are to left-center, which is often the deepest part of a park
This is an awesome study. Question though, the data controls for stadium correct? ie. a short home run to the porch in Yankee stadium would be JE because of distance, not because of how far it clears that specific wall. If that’s the case it is very interesting to see Quentin on the leaderboard for JE home runs. I’d consider anything that goes out in Petco to be pretty close to “Plenty” (I havent looked at his home/road splits, just thinking because he plays half his games in that stadium). Correct me if I am wrong with my interpretation.
Seems like if he hit a majority of his homeruns on the road AND they just barely went out he would be a candidate to have a HUGE drop off considering his home stadium. I play in a 16 team league that uses LF CF RF so he is relevant and this is a very important finding even with the new stadium dimensions.
I guess Ill second that comment to include David Wright. No ND and a ton of JE playing at Citi doesnt bode well for another 20+ season as obvious as it may seem given his…. you know… name I guess.
The JE definition is “the ball cleared the fence by less than 10 vertical feet, OR that it landed less than one fence height past the fence. These are the ones that barely made it over the fence”.
The park dimensions shouldn’t matter though. Regardless of how far the fence is, a JE homer just barely cleared it. The assumption is that maybe with a bit less wind or one centimeter difference in where the ball met the bat, that ball would not have gone out every time.
ohh okay, thanks for the clarification. So a JE home run in SD or Citi Field actually is hit a further distance than a JE in Yankee Stadium. That’s interesting they measure it like that, tough to compare Quentin and Wright’s JE against maybe Curtis Grandersons or somehow who hits in a favorable environment. Have you written up on whats more important in predicting HR/FB rate, average FB distance vs. this JE/ND analysis… if not thatd be interesting to see
Well, not necessarily, depends where on the field the ball was hit. The most important concept to remember is not to compare JE% and claim one hitter has more power than the other. Just that assuming the hitter remains in the same park, more balls barely clearing the fence mean greater chance those same balls just miss clearing the fence.
The issue with the HR Tracker buckets is that I am not sure how to put it into a regression equation, since it isn’t predicting HR/FB rate itself, but rather what the change in rate the following year.
Another important thing to look at is the variety of home runs they hit. A JE home run is more likely if they are making solid contact to all fields. Take Alex Gordon: he hit something like 50 doubles last year to all fields. Odds are some of those days he is hitting doubles he will have favorable wind and/or stadium, so he is still likely to put up double digit home runs and has a good chance to “break out” by having a lucky year somewhere down the road in terms of his wind aided fly balls and/or stadium aided HR.
I think what you mean is similar to the “almost” home runs that mcbrown above first mentioned? The assumption is that Gordon has a lot of them because of all his doubles?
True
I can’t remember where I saw it, but somewhere had an article that looked at average HR distance and pull angle, and listed the folks with the biggest jump from ’10 to ’11. One of those was Josh Willingham, who I subsequently drafted in every league for a big draft day steal. Anyway, I re-ran the numbers this year, and here’s your list of gainers from ’11 to ’12 (filter for min 8HR):
Gomez, Carlos
Utley, Chase
Longoria, Evan
Rios, Alex
Desmond, Ian
Roberts, Ryan
Zobrist, Ben
Zimmerman, Ryan
Freese, David
The corollary to distance was pull angle, or who gained the ability to turn on the ball to aide their HR total and hence changed their skillset going forward for the positive. Here’s that list:
Desmond, Ian
Peralta, Jhonny
Martin, Russell
Jackson, Austin
Lawrie, Brett
Quentin, Carlos
Young, Delmon
Ethier, Andre
Cano, Robinson
Zimmerman, Ryan
Roberts, Ryan
I read all this to say Ian Desmond’s and possibly Carlos Gomez’s breakouts last year were for real, Chase Utley got his pop back, this may be the year that David Freese become an elite fantasy 3B, and a healthy Ryan Zimmerman could break 30 HR again this year.
This analysis is fantastic. I love seeing the actual numbers broken out, but the player implications is great too. Keep up the good work. Love Fan Graphs!
I think it would be prudent to reexamine the results of this around the all-star break. Especially considering that David Wright is leading the NL in AVG True Distance here halfway through May (424.8 feet/hr). Only Mike Napoli has a higher AVG True Distance of 430.5 feet on his 6 HR.