Is there a more iconic representation of the juiced ball era than an opposite-field home run off the bat of a bottom-of-the-lineup hitter? The absence of that phenomenon may be the biggest difference between the baseball landscape right now and where it was in 2019.
Consider this if you’re not convinced. Homers per fly ball are down a little over 20 percent on pulled balls — they’re down 45 percent on opposite-field fly balls. Opposite field fly balls are down almost by half!
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The reason it may not be as noticeable as those statistics make it seem is that, at their peak, 37 percent of pulled fly balls were homers and only 6 percent of opposite-field fly balls were ever homers. Pulled fly balls are the best thing a hitter can do in the game, process-wise.
“I always want to pull the ball,” Joey Votto told me once, which might be a surprise given his success to the opposite field. “Of course I’m going to be more successful if I pull the ball in the air, it’s a big deal. Of course, of course, big gains there.”
Even if you account for the quality of the batted ball, pulled balls have more power than their opposite-field counterparts. In other words, pulled Barrels do better than opposite-field Barrels, generally. In the Statcast era, the slugging percentage on pulled Barrels was 3.299, and on opposite-field Barrels it was 2.467. This year, that last number is down to 2.056 — still good, but not as good as pulling it.
There are all sorts of potential reasons for this. It’s possible side spin has something to do with it, as a ball pushed to the opposite field may have side-to-side spin, robbing the ball of forward momentum. It’s possible that point of contact has something to do with it, because homers live out in front of the plate, and so do pulled fly balls.
The reality is that power hitters need to be able to pull fly balls.
“Being able to pull barrels is super important,” Driveline hitting coach John Soteropulos wrote in a direct message, for three main reasons:
“1. You’ll have more bat speed on pulled balls. Pulling the ball generally means you make contact farther out in front, farther out in front (Point Of Contact) = more time for barrel to accelerate = more bat speed on contact. Also, the kinematics required to pull the baseball are a little more conducive to creating bat speed. Basically, to pull the ball in the air good you have to rotate your pelvis and torso a little more. When guys rotate more, they usually create more bat speed.”
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“2. Because you get more bat speed to the pull-side, your exit velocities are higher as well, Higher EVs mean more production, especially on barrels.”
“3. Pulling barrels is super important because the fence is shorter down the line! Shorter fence = more homers.”
Soteropulos is not a pull-above-all else coach, and he did point out the possible flaws with pulling everything, including a possible contact tradeoff if your point of contact gets too far out in front, decision-making troubles that can come from selling out on everything on the inside part of the plate, and the need to be able to do something with balls on the outer half of the plate to cover a possible hole out there.
“With all that being said, hitters NEED a pull-side barrel swing in their tool belt,” he said, however.
And it rings true — now more than ever.
It follows that a power outage from an opposite-field fly ball hitter is a little more worrisome than one from a player who pulls fly balls. Here, courtesy of the FanGraphs splits leaderboard, are the top 20 hitters when it comes to opposite-field fly ball percentage — in other words, how many of their fly balls were to the opposite field. Listed you’ll find their opposite-field fly-ball rate, pulled-field fly-ball rate, and then further to the right, their current isolated slugging percentage and their career isolated slugging percentage.
Opposite fly ball rate leaders
Name
| Tm
| PA
| Oppo%
| Pull%
| Current ISO
| Career ISO
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CLE | 43 | 65.1% | 4.7% | 0.074 | 0.065 | |
NYY | 38 | 63.2% | 10.5% | 0.128 | 0.122 | |
COL | 41 | 61.0% | 24.4% | 0.153 | 0.185 | |
COL | 38 | 60.5% | 15.8% | 0.156 | 0.155 | |
TBR | 30 | 60.0% | 16.7% | 0.086 | 0.13 | |
SDP | 32 | 59.4% | 6.3% | 0.073 | 0.188 | |
PIT | 39 | 59.0% | 10.3% | 0.089 | 0.135 | |
NYM | 34 | 58.8% | 11.8% | 0.097 | 0.181 | |
OAK | 41 | 56.1% | 14.6% | 0.136 | 0.127 | |
COL | 34 | 55.9% | 17.6% | 0.075 | 0.104 | |
LAD | 61 | 55.7% | 6.6% | 0.171 | 0.212 | |
CHW | 36 | 55.6% | 8.3% | 0.147 | 0.161 | |
BOS | 38 | 55.3% | 18.4% | 0.195 | 0.237 | |
PHI | 46 | 54.3% | 19.6% | 0.123 | 0.175 | |
DET | 37 | 54.1% | 18.9% | 0.129 | 0.129 | |
HOU | 39 | 53.8% | 2.6% | 0.185 | 0.188 | |
CLE | 45 | 53.3% | 17.8% | 0.102 | 0.102 | |
MIA | 32 | 53.1% | 15.6% | 0.147 | 0.168 | |
CHW | 34 | 52.9% | 11.8% | 0.082 | 0.103 | |
KCR | 51 | 52.9% | 13.7% | 0.094 | 0.158 |
For many players on this list, hitting the ball to the opposite field in the air might not be a terrible choice, actually. For guys like Myles Straw and José Iglesias, their lack of power means that some of those fall in for singles before they ever reach the outfielder. And maybe it should make us think twice about the power potential of Steven Kwan and Kevin Smith. But for the rest of these players, who are all trying to hit for power on some level, being on this list isn’t a good sign.
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Let’s take a look at four players who deserve a deeper look.
Wil Myers, OF, Padres
No qualified batter has added more to his opposite-field fly ball rate this season compared to last season than Wil Myers. There are a couple of other names on this list that are in the top 10, but the fact that Trent Grisham and Mark Canha are there with him in the top 10 might suggest that all three of them are letting the ball travel too far. The difference between Myers and the other two, though, is that he’s not taking walks or getting on base. He’s not getting any of the benefit of waiting longer, and all of the downfall.
Overall, this is the lowest pull rate of Myers’ career. Maybe that contains a kernel of good news, though. Look at his rolling graph and you can already see some of his old approach coming back through.
Mike Podhorzer at FanGraphs found that pulled fly-ball rate is reasonably sticky year to year, and that big changers still regressed about halfway back to their career means after a change. That’s the good news for Myers that some regression is coming. The bad news is that Myers is pushing so many fly balls that he’s not even likely to slug .400 going forward. For the Padres, that means his spot in the lineup is one of the biggest needs, and for fantasy owners, it means it’s probably not worth waiting around for the recovery.
Ke’Bryan Hayes, 3B, Pirates
There might not be a more frustrating player when it comes to the difference between their raw power and their in-game power than Ke’Bryan Hayes. There are 17 players in baseball with a maximum exit velocity over 110 (remember that anything over that threshold moves the needle on projections, usually), a Barrel rate over 7 percent, and a slugging percentage under .400. Here are the top 10 of those players ranked by max exit velo.
Hitting the ball hard with no results
Name
| Team
| maxEV
| Barrel%
| SLG
|
---|---|---|---|---|
MIA | 116.8 | 0.081 | 0.299 | |
OAK | 114 | 0.089 | 0.379 | |
WSN | 113.8 | 0.110 | 0.341 | |
MIL | 113.7 | 0.126 | 0.382 | |
CIN | 112.6 | 0.100 | 0.373 | |
CLE | 112.4 | 0.156 | 0.278 | |
TOR | 112.4 | 0.108 | 0.353 | |
PIT | 112.4 | 0.076 | 0.381 | |
BOS | 112.3 | 0.078 | 0.340 | |
COL | 111.9 | 0.083 | 0.398 |
Normally, you’d think of this list as a great place to buy low. At least among the veterans, there are accomplished power hitters here who should all hit for a little more power going forward if they keep up this process. And then you have the young Buc making you wonder if more power is coming.
As risky as it is to compare one player to just one other, there’s one name that makes Hayes exciting: Jazz Chisholm Jr. Just look at how well Chisholm’s 2021 lines up with Hayes’ 2022.
Hayes the next Jazz?
Player | Season | Barrel | Max EV | GB% | Oppo FB% |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2021 | 8.6% | 112.1 | 49% | 42% | |
2022 | 7.6% | 112.4 | 46% | 59% |
This season, only Santiago Espinal dropped his opposite-field fly-ball rate more than Chisholm. The path forward for Hayes is clear.
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Freddie Freeman, 1B, Dodgers
Are we really worried about a guy who’s currently hitting 41 percent better than league average? No, not really, but it’s still interesting to consider Freddie Freeman’s history for a couple of reasons.
For one, he’s currently sporting the worst isolated slugging percentage of his career, and fantasy owners care about the homers. The reality of it is that he may return to the type of hitter he was before the juiced ball era, when he hit for average but ‘only’ hit 18-23 homers a year for a five-year stretch. With the contact gains he’s made since then, he’ll still be a great hitter, but to be a first-round fantasy investment, he may need to up the pulled fly ball rate.
Secondly, the inclusion of J.D. Martinez on this list, with his slightly different spray chart, makes one wonder if the ratio of pull to oppo fly balls could be more important than any one raw percentage. Freeman is not pulling any fly balls at all right now (6.6 percent) while Martinez is still pulling some (18.4 percent), a little like J.T. Realmuto. Is the spray chart from Martinez (left, but remember he’s a righty) preferable to the one from Freeman (right) from a power perspective?
You’d assume so, which has some meaning for sorting just by opposite-field fly-ball rate.
Andrew Benintendi, OF, Royals
The fact that Andrew Benintendi once hit the ball into the water when he played for Staten Island is a thing I found out minutes before I ran the dizzy bat run on the field and almost ran straight into the dugout. Now Benintendi seems to be stuck making a dizzying choice between the memory of him as a possible emerging power threat and the reality of playing in Kansas City.
“Over the last couple of years I’ve tried to cut down on my fly balls and I’ve tried to cut down on my strikeouts,” Alex Gordon once told me when discussing playing in Kauffman Stadium, which is the third-hardest stadium in baseball to hit a ball out of. “The easiest out in baseball — other than the strikeout — is the lazy fly ball. In a big stadium like Kaufmann, a lot of fly balls just go to the warning track.”
Maybe the former Red Sox outfielder saw those big dimensions and had the same revelation. By weighted runs created plus, Benintendi is having the best season of his career so far. But he’s also enjoying some batted ball luck — a batting average on balls in play (.391) that will regress — and has taken up an approach that will sap him of his potential power. He’s 15th in added opposite-field fly balls this season. As the weather warms, will he take his shots on pulling fly balls? Or will he be happy to have a high batting average and the fewest home runs of his career?
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The Royals will take a bat that’s this much better than average. Fantasy owners, though, may end up wanting more, especially since he’s not stealing bags.
(Top photo of Myers: Denis Poroy / Getty Images)
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