Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/sports/mlb-launch-angles-story/?utm_term=.bf67cdee5d05

by jaydub • 9 years ago

127 91 9 years ago

huangc10• 9 years ago

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.

mtalantikite• 9 years ago

Reminds me of an old episode of Seinfeld, where George teaches the Yankees how to hit based on simple physics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTwE7xDZkPk

dogruck• 9 years ago

Brilliant. "In 6 games."

RoutinePlayer• 9 years ago

I absolutely love that line... Yes, you just won a WS, but it took you 6 games!... LOL

kodablah3• 9 years ago

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.

phamilton• 9 years ago

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.

kodablah3• 9 years ago

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 been on my mind to develop a tensorflow graph trained w/ existing data to help me win some FanDuel/DraftKings money, but I haven't as of yet (and I should note the MLB data has restrictions against bulk or commercial use).

0 - https://github.com/baseballhackday/data-and-resources/wiki/R...

1 - http://retrosheet.org/

2 - http://gdx.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2017/month_06/da...

bluGill• 9 years ago

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.

Does it though? medicine is learning that when you do data mining the bar for statistical significance needs to be much higher. When you do the traditional hypothesis/experiment loop and a result hits 95% likely that is good enough. However when you data mine from millions of data points anything interesting is much more likely to be coincidence. Modern statistics is trying to figure out how to handle this.

Data mining is good for generating hypothesis that you can then test with a controlled experiment. It can be used in meta-analysis to find small effects that were not significant in individual experiments but when you combine them they are significant. However it is dangerous to use it alone.

In more depth, if you look at 100 data points and find 5 things that meet the 95% bar - that is 5 out of 100, odds are that all of them are false positives since you studied 100 things and found 5. (this is a gross simplification of things like p-values, real statisticians will cry about it, but the average person has a chance of understanding)

repiret• 9 years ago

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)

howeyc• 9 years ago

Interesting how the article mentions it would seem intuitive to someone new to the game as well. Just hit where there's less defense and more area to cover, the outfield.

pgodzin11• 9 years ago

Sure, more area to cover but also a lot more time to get there. It's less trying to hit to the outfield, but rather hit homeruns. The problem is that it's easier said than done, and the old philosophy (look at Ichiro for example), was higher average and putting the ball in play was preferable to loading up and trying to hit a homerun. Now strikeouts and homeruns are way up, but batting averages are down.

thatwebdude2• 9 years ago

That's getting harder and harder to do with "the shift".

Now players are specifically working to beat the shift.

Lukeas143• 9 years ago

"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.

bryanbuckley2• 9 years ago

Does it suggest that leadoff guys will be cheaper in the future? The next moneyball trend will be fast guys who can accurately place hits?

Lukeas143• 9 years ago

Possibly. My guess is that only the exceptionally good leadoff guys will make it to a team, making them more expensive. Other teams might rather have a slugger hitting first than an average fast guy. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

adventured2• 9 years ago

Fast guys that can place hits have always been extremely rare (and will always be), even when they were considered a lot more valuable. There may be ten guys in the last 50 years that could do that at a high level, consistently, for a career.

pgodzin11• 9 years ago

There's been a trend recently to put high OBP bats at leadoff regardless of their speed (see Kyle Schwarber)

pgodzin11• 9 years ago

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.

adventured2• 9 years ago

I see no evidence that speed is meaningful re recent MVPs.

Harper, Trout, Stanton, Bryant, Donaldson, Cabrera, Posey, Josh Hamilton, Pujols, Votto, Pedroia, Ryan Howard, Morneau, Mauer - none of them are defined by speed. Trout has stolen a few bases, but he's not particularly fast.

The actual results indicate it's quite the opposite, MVP hitters have been on the slower side. Power very clearly matters more than speed. What nearly all the last 20 MVP hitters have in common is substantial power production, while being on the slow side.

ubernostrum2• 9 years ago

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.

nissimk• 9 years ago

It is awesome how the tactics keep changing to respond to strategic changes. There will also be a shift towards training to hit towards both sides of the infield. Not everyone can be a power hitter, and classic baseball includes a lot of "small-ball" hitting.

The increase in power hitting is also cyclical in baseball. Remember last time it dropped it was due to changes in drug testing policies and procedures which may also be a cat and mouse game.

I found this:

http://www.highheatstats.com/2013/01/reliving-the-hits-how-h...

spike0216• 9 years ago

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.

Lukeas143• 9 years ago

Usually a team will pitch to the shift though. Ex. if the shift is to the left side on a right handed batter they're not going to throw him a fastball on the outside corner. And it's much harder to take an inside pitch to the opposite field. Then again, a good hitter will recognize this, set up for the inside pitch, and launch it over the fence.

aidenn02• 9 years ago

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.

diogenescynic• 9 years ago

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.

bryanbuckley2• 9 years ago

Was there an answer to the question in the title? Just better analytics on the offensive side of things? They mention Oakland A's value approach in getting players.

Clearly wouldn't have been a good choice for Ichiro..

ckirksey• 9 years ago

NY Times is so freakin beautiful

pgodzin11• 9 years ago

It's the Washington Post

craigvn• 9 years ago

Yeah, but his point still stands. :-)

brianzelip• 9 years ago

The data visualization animation with descriptive text scroll on mobile is awesome, nice work WaPo webdevs.

melling• 9 years ago

This a recycled WSJ article from May 18. Here's the story, if you can get access:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-ryan-zimmerman-became-a-slu...

habosa• 9 years ago

As many have said this is a tactical reaction to changes in pitching and defense.

It always amazes me how balanced the game of baseball is compared to other sports. It's been around for more than a century and people have become so much stronger and faster on both sides of the ball. Still, offense and defense remain so perfectly matched. The bases remain 90 feet apart and the pitcher still throws from 60 feet away. A home run is still 400 feet.

Consider basketball which has had to dramatically rebalance the rules over time. Restrictions on time in the paint, the 3 point line, perimeter defense, etc. Or how hockey changed all the rules after the lockout. Or how football has totally re worked pass defense and special teams.

Baseball is just baseball.

ufo• 9 years ago

What kind of changes happened to the hockey rules?

kodablah3• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005%E2%80%9306_NHL_season#Rul...

barking4• 9 years ago

Wasn't there something about the infield fly rule? :) But the same goes for soccer which has altered very little since the rules were laid down in the 19th century.

radicalbyte• 9 years ago

The game changed completely after the (first) war when the offside rule was introduced. But that was almost 100 years ago. Since then the rule changes have essentially been tweaks.

nkozyra• 9 years ago

Keep in mind a lot of various and regional changes happened early in baseball's history and that baseball as a professional sport is much older than football or basketball.

Ground rule doubles were briefly home runs in some leagues, foul balls once didn't count as strikes, then you could strike out on a foul ball, intentional walk changes, spitballs outlawed, balk rules ...

Baseball was probably just as fluid in its first thirty-forty years as basketball, it was just a long time ago.

Edit: Another big one was the pitching changes in the 1960s after a wave of pitching dominance: http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/History_of_basebal...

Twirrim• 9 years ago

Rugby has remained Rugby, pretty much.

There's been various changes over the years, juggling points for tries and penalties, introducing sin bins, and so on, but it isn't really anything fundamental.

Where you do see changes has been in the physique of players, and to some extent it's cyclical. Teams adapt to circumstances, player sizes and types change, and then some outlier will come along and with a visionary coach shake things up again.

Wings used to be lighter sprinters, then Jonah Lomu came along and proved that wings could be big (at 6' 5" he towered over most players, average height for the time was 6' 1") and still fast.

People just didn't have the strength or weight to stop him, especially out on the wings. Players of sufficient size would typically be one of the forwards, the bigger players that dominate a scrum.

Teams adapted to the new paradigm though, wingers started getting bigger and stronger as tactics changed, and we've seen size and weight fluctuate back and forth a bit, sometimes internationals favour lighter faster, sometimes slightly slower but stronger.

barking4• 9 years ago

The reason for advent of behemoths like Lomu was the allowing of wholesale substitutions. This meant that players no longer had to play the full 80 minutes and so endurance could be sacrificed for power. This in turn has likely contributed to the increase in serious injuries in the game, particularly concussions. Rugby has changed a hell of a lot since the advent of professionalism in 1995 and they probably need to row some of those changes back imo.

unethical_ban• 9 years ago

Ehh, I'm in a club with some old timer alumni, and the stories they tell (and 1970s rugby videos on Youtube I've seen) tell a different story.

Even 20 years ago at a club level, many things were allowed that aren't now: Quicker scrums, high tackles, raking the ruck with cleats, and general hooliganism seem to have been more par for the course than today.

I saw a match from 1977, and there was no Croutch/Bind/Set. The scrum just walked up toward each other and engaged immediately. More dangerous, but a lot different than today. The line-outs didn't lift; the hooker threw the ball in like a football lob.

Woofles• 9 years ago

Probably the largest (and most controversial) change in baseball was the adoption of the DH by the AL in the 70s.

For a full history of rule changes in baseball: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/rulechng.shtml

mwpmaybe• 9 years ago

Dead/live ball was probably more consequential.

John_Cena• 9 years ago

Baseball, like any other sport, has gone under many revisions to its rules throughout its history. The only statement you say has never changed that I can tell is the bases have been 90 feet apart since 1840. Pitchers have not always pitched from 60' 6" from the plate and home run distance, park size from plate, varies even today.

Interestingly the park sizes differ to try and keep the difficulty of a home run equal in lieu of differences in air pressure between locations. It is rumored the Red Sox added a bullpen to give their new recruit Ted Williams, who was a left handed batter, an advantage at home.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2011/09/13/q-why-are-majo... I hate to cite forbes but its hard to find source for something I've known by word of mouth.

apl002• 9 years ago

I mean, it's been 60ft 6 inches since 1888. Thats a long time without a change. 1800's baseball was VERY different.

http://bosoxinjection.com/2013/05/02/origins-of-baseball-in-...

ghaff• 9 years ago

Around the beginning of Ken Burns' Baseball, Bob Costas made a similar point about distance. I suppose play could adapt to a certain degree but I have to believe that base paths that were 10%, much less 20%, longer or shorter would produce a radically different game.

As others have noted, there have been some adjustments. But I agree with your basic point.

(Not that I could ever get through that particular series. It was longer than the Civil War :-))

InitialLastName• 9 years ago

The most glorious thing about that series is how clearly public domain the soundtrack is... nothing but jangly, often unrecognizably slow piano renditions of "The Star Spangled Banner", "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "Dixie". PBS is the coolest.

jimbokun2• 9 years ago

Soccer's changes have revolved mostly around the offside rule and introduction of yellow and red cards, I think.

thatwebdude2• 9 years ago

A home run is still 400 feet.

The stadiums change, though; 400 feet is just the warning track, sometimes. 310 can get you one in Fenway (on the left side of the field).

Someone• 9 years ago

I think that's more a matter of what the organizers think is best commercially than a signal that baseball is special. Like many other games, it allows people in a wide range of capabilities to play a game that is enjoyable to watch. That would probably be different if not for rule changes. For example, requiring wooden bats at top level likely was necessary to prevent offense from overpowering defense.

(That may be a somewhat generic pattern. In both tennis and table tennis, rules were adjusted when players started hitting the ball too hard. Similarly, in javelin throwing, the javelin was changed a few times to prevent players from throwing it out of the stadium)

mannykannot• 9 years ago

I wonder if it is just chance that the 2016 average launch angle appears as though it may have favorable outcomes over the broadest range of exit velocities, and just below the angle where the distribution begins to go bimodal? It would be interesting to see how the featured players' hitting is distributed over speed and elevation (and if I am really interested, I am sure I can find the data...)

idibidiartists• 9 years ago

Taking the fun out of sport, for profit. :)

nickysielicki• 9 years ago

In the past week, a new record was set for the amount of grand-slams occurring on a single day. 7 grand slams!

Fun time to be a baseball fan.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/234270104/7-players-hit-grand-...

oso2k2• 9 years ago

I may be that the moneyball strategy becomes an architectural one; make the walls taller or less conventional like they used to be in the 1920s and 1930s.

aidenn02• 9 years ago

Five Thirty Eight did an article claiming that the results of this strategy have been mixed:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-fly-ball-revolution...

bitwize• 9 years ago

Doubtless for the same reason I'm concerned with them while playing as Junkrat: the relation between launch angle and flight distance.

Why MLB hitters are suddenly obsessed with launch angles

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