How much is hard hitting worth? Who is due a stats correction?
At the Fantasy Baseball Today blog, Chris Towers takes a look at which players have had the best and worst luck when it comes to hard-hit balls.
By
Chris Towers
•
5 min read
There is a lot that goes into hitting a home run. You have to hit it hard, obviously, but that isn't everything. There are plenty of players who hit the ball hard without producing much over-the-fence power -- Say hello, Christian Yelich and Robinson Cano -- because they are crushing the ball right into the ground.
This is why HR/FB ratio might just be the best indicator of raw power we have. When you look at the leaders in that category over the last five years, it certainly passes the smell test; Giancarlo Stanton, Chris Davis, Pedro Alvarez and Chris Carter rank among the burliest of power hitters in the majors these days, and they also happen to lead the majors in HR/FB in that time.
However, as with anything, HR/FB rate can be subject to small-sample-size flukiness, even as far as two months into the season. Stanton leads the majors over the last five seasons with a 25.8 percent HR/FB rate, but nine players have bested that so far this season, including Stanton. We can't say for sure if Joc Pederson and Steven Souza truly are better power hitters than Stanton, but it is probably fair to say that this group of players will settle in below their current rate.
The question is, how much regression should we expect? Are there any stats we can look to that might be able to give us an idea of who is playing over there head? Given how much information we have at our fingertips these days, it shouldn't be a surprise that we do.
One other good indicator of raw power -- or at least the ability to consistently square up the ball and hit it hard -- is the newly available quality of contact stats, from Baseball Info Solutions. BIS has been keeping track of this data in one way or another since 2002, but it is publicly available at FanGraphs.com for the first time. They keep track of one statistic in particular that is of interest to us for this purpose: Hard-hit average.
At the risk of stating to overly obvious, hard-hit fly balls are more likely to go over the fence, so hard-hit average should correlate nicely with HR/FB rate. A cursory glance at the leaderboards for both from 2011-15 lines up, as names like Miguel Cabrera, Stanton, Paul Goldschmidt and David Ortiz lead the way as the only players with a hard-hit rate over 40 percent.
And the data backs that conclusion up, as you can see below:
Hard-hit average is, then, a pretty good analog for raw power as well, which makes sense. The harder you hit the ball -- and the more consistently you hit the ball hard -- the more often it is going to go over the wall. So, how can we put this information into action? One way is by looking at players who might be looking at some regression in their home run rates this season.
An obvious candidate for some negative regression is Starling Marte, who surprisingly leads the majors in HR/FB ratio at 35.5 percent. Marte is already two home runs shy of his career-high mark of 13 from a year ago, and will eclipse that by a wide margin before long. However, he is also an extreme groundball hitter, with the seventh-highest GB/FB ratio in the majors.
You can make up for a low rate of groundballs by putting a higher share of your fly balls over the fence, which is exactly how Marte has found success. However, there is little to indicate he can keep this up. His HR/FB rate hovered between 12 and 13 percent in his previous two seasons, with a hard-hit average right around 33 percent. That average has tumbled to 29.9 percent, a mark that typically produces a HR/FB rate in the low teens. From 2011 through 2015, only five players posted a HR/FB rate above 15 percent with a hard-hit average between 29 and 31 percent.
One thing Marte does have working in his favor is his batted-ball direction data. He is an extreme pull hitter this season, and that can tend to lead to a higher HR/FB, though the correlation isn't nearly as strong as it is for hard-hit average. So he might be able to beat the odds moving forward, but he probably shouldn't be considered one of the games elite power hitters all of a sudden.
Some other outliers who could see similar regression coming their way are: Hanley Ramirez (23.2 HR/FB; 31.1 hard-hit), Shin-Soo Choo (21.1 HR/FB; 33.6 hard-hit), *Edwin Encarnacion (20.0 HR/FB; 27.5 hard-hit) and *Russell Martin (20.0 HR/FB; 29.6 hard-hit)
*Playing in Rogers Center could inflate HR/FB; the Blue Jays have the fourth-highest HR/FB ratio from 2011-15.
If Marte is the poster boy for the good luck (for lack of a better word) side of things, Troy Tulowitzki best exemplifies the other extreme. He is third in the majors in hard-hit average so far, at 46.3 percent, a fact that is reflected in his healthy .359 BABIP. However, he has a HR/FB ratio barely above league average at 11.5 percent.
Keep in mind that Tulowitzki's career HR/FB rate is 15.3 percent and hasn't been below 13.3 since 2008, so he is a pretty obvious candidate for regression even without taking into account his hard-hit data. However, that data is screaming for improvement, and I think we'll get it from Tulowitzki before long. He also ranks 46th out of 266 players with at least 50 at-bats tracked in average batted-ball velocity at BaseballSavant.com, another great sign.
There are some worrying trends in Tulowitzki's game this season, as his plate discipline has largely collapsed. He has become a much more aggressive hitter overall, which isn't a great sign. However, if he is selling out for power -- which isn't so crazy -- it seems his approach could lead to better things than what he has accomplished so far.
Some other outliers who could see better times ahead: Jorge Soler (11.4 HR/FB; 39.5 hard-hit), Evan Longoria (7.8 HR/FB; 36.3 hard-hit), Robinson Cano (4.5 HR/FB; 34.8 hard-hit), Marcell Ozuna (6.4 HR/FB; 34.5 hard-hit), Matt Kemp (3.8 HR/FB; 34.5 hard-hit)
