Tuesday, March 05, 2019
Statcast Lab: xDistance
Focus on a hitter's hardest hit balls. Those are likely those that he got all of it, and so likely what he intended to do. The launch angle that resulted is probably what he's after. For Mookie Betts in 2016-2017, that launch angle was at 5 degrees (blue vertical below) and 6 degrees (orange vertical line below). In 2018, it was very different at 16 degrees (green vertical line below).
Focusing on a hitter's hardest hit balls also gives us his intended spray direction. We can take all the batted balls at +/- 10 degrees of his intended spray direction to give us his personal straightaway spray direction. Interestingly, in 2016, that was -8 degrees, which is about typical for an MLB hitter, targetting a spot halfway between the shortstop and the 2b bag. In 2017 he pulled more, at -13 degrees, so targetting more directly toward the SS, or the gap between LF and CF. And in 2018, he did the same at -13 degrees. If we focus on these batted balls, balls that he hit at his presumed straightaway, we get the distance of each batted ball.
We can then determine what the distance hit for his actual speed+angle by the league, what we can call his xDistance. And then simply compare his actual distance to the xDistance, for the Extra Distance. That's what the chart below is showing. And we can see that in 2016-17, at the line drive angles, meaning 4-20 degrees, Betts was getting plenty of Extra Distance. Which if you are hitting slightly under is what you would get. In 2018, he must have retooled his swing, since he did not get extra distance on his line drive angles. Indeed, he was short a bit.
But it's not all about the distance. What you care about as well is the frequency of hitting balls in the sweet spot launch angles of 8-32 (and hopefully hitting it hard at those angles). And Betts was among the league leaders in both Hard Hit % and Sweet Spot Angle % (11th and 27th respectively). New teammate JD Martinez was 4th and 20th respectively.
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