Five Thirty Eight did an article claiming that the results of this strategy have been mixed:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-fly-ball-revolution...
Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
71–80 of 92 posts
Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
#72>"The increase in frequency and efficiency of defensive shifts. According to FanGraphs, teams are shifting at a rate nearly 10 times greater than six years ago" This should be more prominent and is likely the root cause of guys swinging for homeruns more often. Every hitter will eventually fall into a pattern where they're hitting certain pitches to only a certain part of the field. With the increase in data it's muc…
Brandon Belt gets shifted all the time and it's been interesting to see how/when he beats the shift. Sometimes there will be a huge opening, which would allow him to hit toward the opposite field.
More than once, David Ortiz reached on a bunt in the shift. (For those unaware, he's a large man who is not known for his speed).
It was arguably a net loss to have him bunt though, as a medium chance of a single might not make up for the loss of the extra-bases he would hit for otherwise.
Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
#73Doubtless for the same reason I'm concerned with them while playing as Junkrat: the relation between launch angle and flight distance.
Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those not too familiar with professional baseball, there are 162 games in a season. A player starting every game would likely see 600+ at bats. A starting pitcher pitches every 5-6 days and will face 600+ batters per season. League wide there are about 125k outs recorded per season on 700k pitches. That's a ton of data. It allows you to ask questions like "What is the likelihood that a curveball is thrown for a s…
For those wanting to play w/ the data, there are a lot of resources [0]. I personally have combined older retrosheet data [1] with modern MLB data to some neat uses, not the least of which to try out tech like Druid (big data, live slicing, etc). E.g. If you wanted data from Sunday's Houston vs Texas game, GDX has tons of XML for parsing at [2]. There are plenty of guides that tell you what is what of course. It has…
Wow, thanks for the resources!
Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's 162 games per team - it's 2,430 games for all of MLB. Compare that with NFL's 16 games per team, or 256 games league wide. (Edited to fix NFL games per team per season)
Er, that's 16 games per team for the NFL. Your point is still valid, though.
Or 19 if you're the pats
Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think speed will still be valuable as stolen bases continue to decrease across the league, as long as those hitters can still get on base at a .320+ clip. But speed is what makes players who can do it all, like Altuve, MVP candidates now.
The other way to beat the shift -- which few teams/players have adopted -- is to bunt more. Which doesn't require speed, but is more effective with speed. I've noticed it's a thing the Cubs seem to be doing a bit of; Anthony Rizzo (who maybe isn't a great example given he's not a speedy base-stealer) gets shifted on a lot, and has laid down a few bunt hits this year as a way to beat it.
Most modern hitters seem to be really bad at bunting. A lot of times you'll see someone literally push the bat forward into the ball, which is literally the opposite of how to execute a good bunt. I think of bunting like free throws in basketball; they're both things that really seem like they should be so easy, and yet some of the best players really seem to struggle with it.
Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Other teams might rather have a slugger hitting first than an average fast guy. I remember seeing a Red Sox-Blue Jays game at Fenway Park last year where the Blue Jays had Jose Bautista hitting first, which definitely fits this description.
If I remember correctly, that was actually Bautista's idea when the team was in a slump. The manager decided to give it a try, and the team started winning so Bautista saw quite a few games batting leadoff.
That's really cool! Honestly, it seemed really weird to me at first, but I guess if you don't have a tradional leadoff type guy, putting someone who gets on a base a lot is the next best thing, and Bautista certainly walks a lot.
Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, it's not a terrible idea to put someone like Votto or Belt even at the top spot. These guys have very high OBPs who can work the count and coax out tons of walks. If they can get on base, that's really all that matters so the next guy in line can try to get them in.
The theory has always been that those sluggers would be the ones driving people in, rather than counting on the guys behind to drive them in. So it's an interesting tradeoff - more people on base with worse hitters behind them who may not get them in or great hitters who are great at driving people in, but there might not be anyone on.
I remember earlier last year when the Red Sox were batting Betts, Pedroia, Bogaerts, and Ortiz as their first four and Betts was hitting a ton of home runs, my father and I thought that they go Pedroia, Bogaerts, Betts, Ortiz since Bogaerts had little power and Pedroia kept hitting into a lot of double plays. A few weeks later, they started doing Pedroia, Bogaerts, Ortiz, Betts, which was actually even better since then opposing pitchers couldn't safely walk Ortiz.
Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. That then means actual performance doesn't matter to many fans, which is unfortunate considering how interesting this kind of data is and how players use it to improve their game.
Of course performance matters, just not for voting for a meaningless game (that was stupidly given meaning). Schwarber isn't going to be suddenly become thrilled with how well his season is going just because he finishes fifth in ASG voting.
> a meaningless game (that was stupidly given meaning)
"This time it counts!"
Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles
#80>"The increase in frequency and efficiency of defensive shifts. According to FanGraphs, teams are shifting at a rate nearly 10 times greater than six years ago" This should be more prominent and is likely the root cause of guys swinging for homeruns more often. Every hitter will eventually fall into a pattern where they're hitting certain pitches to only a certain part of the field. With the increase in data it's muc…
At the same time, the teams who shift are the teams who lose the most often. Obviously this is correlation, not causation, but it does make me doubt the efficacy of the shift.*
*I'm on my phone so I can't find the source for this at the moment, but did see it in an article in the last few months.