The Definitive Home Run Tracker Study: The Good Names
Yesterday, I published the results of an exhaustive study I conducted to determine the predictive value of the data available on ESPN Home Run Tracker. As we suspected all along, the various home run classification buckets do indeed provide some valuable information. Today, I will unveil the names of the hitters who get a positive boost from knowing this new information.
As I found, there are two classification buckets worth monitoring, the “No Doubt” (ND) home runs and “Just Enough” (JE) homers. First, we will take a look at the ND bucket. My research suggests that those hitters with the highest ND % are in a better position to maintain their HR/FB rates the following year. Here are the top 10 hitters from 2012 in ND % who hit at least 10 home runs:
| Hitter | HR/FB | HR | ND% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raul Ibanez | 15.2% | 19 | 42.1% |
| Justin Upton | 11.0% | 17 | 41.2% |
| Mitch Moreland | 15.3% | 15 | 40.0% |
| Justin Maxwell | 22.8% | 18 | 38.9% |
| Mark Trumbo | 20.6% | 32 | 37.5% |
| Carlos Pena | 14.3% | 19 | 36.8% |
| Cody Ross | 14.9% | 22 | 36.4% |
| Logan Morrison | 11.3% | 11 | 36.4% |
| Josh Hamilton | 25.6% | 43 | 34.9% |
| Colby Rasmus | 13.2% | 23 | 34.8% |
| Population Avg | 14.6% | 20 | 19.0% |
Obviously, the Mariners were keenly aware of this data when they decided to sign Raul Ibanez. Right? He may have been the 200th guess if I asked you readers who you thought led the league in ND%. With the team boasting about a thousand OF and DH candidates, he’s unlikely to garner a whole lot of playing time.
Justin Upton. Go Braves. This is extremely promising to see given his power decline last year. Playing through injury likely sapped some of it, but it appears that some bad luck did as well. I am still waiting for that 40 home run explosion. Could this be the year?
Mitch Moreland hasn’t played a whole lot versus southpaws and he hasn’t proven that he could hit them. I’m not sure how much upside he actually has over that 15.3% HR/FB rate, but at least his appearance here suggests that he could maintain that rate and offer some cheap power.
Justin Maxwell will be battling it out in Houston for a starting spot in the outfield. He would be quite the intriguing fantasy and real life player if only he could put the bat on the ball. He has serious power though, as his average HR + FB distance ranked among the top 30 last year. It is difficult to believe he has a good chance to maintain that 2012 HR/FB rate, but he should come close. A nice sleeper if you could stomach the batting average.
For those worried about Mark Trumbo’s second half, maybe his appearance on this list will quell those concerns. Would you look at that, the Astros sport two of the top six hitters in ND%. But who knows how much playing time Carlos Pena is going to garner.
Logan Morrison would be a nice sleeper once again if he were ever healthy. Hmmm, maybe Josh Hamilton isn’t in for a major power decline in the Anaheim section of the region known as Los Angeles.
Colby Rasmus! Landing on a good list for a change. His HR/FB rate jumped last year after taking a dive from 2010, so it’s a nice sign that the increase doesn’t appear like a fluke, according to ND%. Now, if only he could hit lefties, make better contact, and not hit a ton of fly balls that kills his BABIP, he might be worth penciling onto your sleeper list once again.
And now let’s take a look at the JE% list. This time, we will check out the 10 hitters who had the lowest rate. In the top 5% bucket from the 10+ HR population, the group actually increased their HR/FB rate, so knowing these names could pay some dividends.
| Hitter | HR/FB | HR | JE% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Justin Upton | 11.0% | 17 | 5.9% |
| Andruw Jones | 17.5% | 14 | 7.1% |
| Mark Reynolds | 18.1% | 23 | 8.7% |
| Cody Ransom | 19.6% | 11 | 9.1% |
| Chase Utley | 11.6% | 11 | 9.1% |
| Vernon Wells | 12.5% | 11 | 9.1% |
| Shane Victorino | 6.0% | 11 | 9.1% |
| Alex Presley | 16.4% | 10 | 10.0% |
| Andrew McCutchen | 19.4% | 31 | 12.9% |
| Kyle Seager | 9.8% | 20 | 15.0% |
| Population Avg | 14.6% | 20 | 30.9% |
JUSTIN UPTON. Second on the ND% list and first on the JE% list. If you draft him and he does hit 40 homers this year, and you also finish in the money in your league, you could send me a personal thank you note, or, a percentage of your winnings. Your choice. Deal? Cool.
Look at that, Andruw Jones is still playing baseball. I had no idea. Well, this is good to know, maybe Progressive Field won’t completely strip Mark Reynolds of a top-tier HR/FB rate. I still think he’s replacement level in a 12-team mixed league.
Good news for Chase Utley, who may be the healthiest he has in years. At age 34, the injury risk won’t go away, but he does offer some profit potential as a potential 5-category contributor at a shallow position.
Poor Vernon Wells. Maybe he should send a link to this post to Angels general manager Jerry DiPoto and then ask him to forward the article to every other team in the league to convince them to take on his contract.
I think Shane Victorino has been undervalued in drafts this year and his appearance here increases confidence that his HR/FB rate will perhaps rebound to 2010-2011 levels.
Wow, and I thought Andrew McCutchen had little chance to repeat that inflated HR/FB rate. That rate jumped by a bit more than 50% over 2011, so the knee-jerk reaction would be that it is due for regression, perhaps to a severe degree. But, aside from his appearance here, his average HR + FB distance climbed above 300 feet and ranked 8th among all hitters. In 2011, his distance ranked just 60th. So maybe his huge home run outburst was indeed for real.
Kyle Seager was another surprise performer that most, including me, likely did not believe in to come close to a repeat. But, he hits a lot of fly balls with a pretty good contact rate, so even a below average HR/FB rate was enough to fuel a 20 home run total. The fences coming in at Safeco is even more good news. He might not collapse this season after all.
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.
How much do park dimensions affect these clasifications? Specifically, I’m thinking of the short right field in Yankee Stadium.
I would think a lot since the classifications are based on how far past the wall the ball flew. So it will be easier to record ND homers with shorter walls and harder for further walls. That, of course, potentially ruins the entire study! But, seems like a massive amount of manual work to take fence distances into account.
From Hit Tracker’s About Page:
“”Just Enough” home run – Means 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.
“No Doubt” home run – Means the ball cleared the fence by at least 20 vertical feet AND landed at least 50 feet past the fence. These are the really deep blasts.
“Plenty” home run – Everything else, except for the 2 above Homerun types
Lucky Homer – A home run that would not have cleared the fence if it has been struck on a 70-degree, calm day.”
They also calculate in how many ballparks the ball would count as a home run. Click my name for an Curtis Granderson home run that Hit Tracker marked as “PL/L”, which means it was plenty long enough, but also lucky because they estimate that it gained 18 feet due to wind and temperature, therefore would not have been a home run on a 70 degree day with no wind in any stadium, Yankee Stadium included.
I’m surprised you seem unaware of this Mike. It seems like you could have easily divided home runs into buckets based on how many stadiums they would have counted as a home run in, and that would have removed this potential bias.
I was plenty aware of that column, and it also provides potentially very useful data. Unfortunately, manually collecting it would take forever as the site doesn’t include any easy way to export every hitter’s # of parks breakdown. It was easy for the buckets as there are leader board pages that list everyone with their totals for that bucket.
Thanks for the article. Upton is moving up on my target list. I can’t believe Giancarlo didn’t make the list, it seems almost all of his homers were highlight material.
Stanton ranked 27th in ND%.
Good stuff, Mike. question about the analysis, though:
You say “that those hitters with the highest ND % are in a better position to maintain their HR/FB rates the following year”. Based only on this, isn’t it BAD news for Justin Upton to be near the top of the ND table? i.e., it seems to imply that he is likely to maintain the crappy (relative to his past) HR/FB rate he had in 2012.
No, it’s just not totally clear based on how I felt I had to word it. What it comes down to is that on average, the entire hitting population sees a HR/FB rate decline in year 2. But, for the high ND% group, on average, they either see less of a decline, or no decline. In Upton’s case, obviously maintaining that rate isn’t exactly a positive, but the fact he’s part of both groups mean that he was indeed unlucky, or whatever term you want to slap on it.
Very nice breakdown Mike. Thanks! I feel like J-Up has always had the skills, seems more about focus and attitude to me. Not that this depreciates the value of any of these statistics at all, but ADD in the fact he’s playing where he’s wanted, AND with his older bro…breakout. I think Utley and Victorino are the other two very encouraging names on this list. They aren’t very big “stature” guys and that whole crew once of Philly has lost fantasy appeal. Both perhaps semi-sleepers. Nice work!
I know I’m late to the party, but Cameron Maybin is a reeeeeally interesting name based on this sort of analysis. His data is a little bit skewed by the MONSTER he hit at Chase Field (3rd longest of the year at 485ft), but he actually had the highest “avg. true distance” of any player I looked at BY FAR, with 427.1. Even if you through that one out though, he has an average of around 419, which is STILL THE HIGHEST I COULD FIND. For comparison, HR Tracker hero Justin Upton had an average of 414.4, and certified destroyer of worlds Giancarlo Stanton had an average of 413.
Now, I’m well aware that Maybin only hit 8 homers last year. However, I feel like this points to a far greater power output on the horizon. Maybe this is the long-awaited break out year everyone’s been predicting since 2008?