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Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles

#2

Post by huangc10 »

The scrolling infographic was a very nice touch, especially with the DBZ style animation.

It's only natural that in little league coaches tell players to hit ground balls because kids have trouble fielding (it requires extreme precision, speed, and dexterity).

It's also quite obvious that you have to hit the ball high and hard to get a triple or home-run. Good to know data backs this up.

Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles

#4

Post by kodablah »

Regardless of analytics, baseball is a game of reactions. Pitchers who traditionally made pitches to induce popups will inevitably change to induce grounders (by pitch choice, location, and/or speed). The beauty of the sport is that the sample sizes can get large enough to make legitimate inferences from the data unlike many other sports.

For those specifically curious about baseball and statistics, both http://www.fangraphs.com/ and http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/ are great sites.

Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles

#7

Post by Lukeas14 »

>"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 much easier for teams to recognize these patterns and position their fielders to compensate. So if you made your living hitting line drive basehits to shallow left field, halfway through the season every team will pick up on that and place an extra infielder right in your sweet spot. The same hits that got you through college and into the major leagues are now outs. This has been such a huge change that MLB thought about outlawing defensive shifts (I personally enjoy seeing the constant back and forth of strategy between offensive and defense which has always been a part of the major leagues). The obvious solution like the article mentions comes down to "the one ball that can’t be caught is the one that lands in the seats".

This is also highly dependent on the type of hitter. If you're Yankee's 6'7" right fielder Aaron Judge then swinging for the fences with a higher launch angle makes perfect sense. However, if you're Dee Gordon, one of the fastest players in the league who weighs about 175lbs, keeping the ball low is probably still going to result in higher batting and slugging percentages. Guys like Bryce Harper who can hit for power and average do seem to be leaning more towards power, which used to only happen later in their career (ex. Barry Bonds). In my observation, it seems like players such as Dee Gordon are slowly becoming obsolete as teams are prefering the long ball to playing "small ball". You certainly don't see as many teams with a true, stereotypical "leadoff guy" these days and many teams seem stacked with guys who would have been labelled "cleanup hitters" 10 years ago.

Re: Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles

#8

Post by phamilton »

kodablah wrote: post #4

Regardless of analytics, baseball is a game of reactions. Pitchers who traditionally made pitches to induce popups will inevitably change to induce grounders (by pitch choice, location, and/or speed). The beauty of the sport is that the sample sizes can get large enough to make legitimate inferences from the data unlike many other sports. For those specifically curious about baseball and statistics, both http://www.f…

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 strike on a 3-0 count in the 8th inning?" and get statistically significant results.

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