HR Fun Facts

[RedsManRick]

I was looking at some data I pulled from ESPN's Home Run Tracker (http://www.hittrackeronline.com/) and thought you guys would enjoy some of my "fun facts". This is for 2011-13, of players with at least 20 HR over the 3 years.


Players (Min 20 HR, 253 players)
Most HR: Miguel Cabrera 118 -- 2. Bautista & Beltre (98), 4. Bruce (96), 5. Stanton, Trumbo, Encarnacion (95)
Hardest Hit HRs: Giancarlo Stanton (107.3 mph) -- 2. J. Upton (107.1), 3. M. Trumbo (106.7)
Further Hit HRs: Justin Upton (418.9 ft) -- 2. G. Stanton (414.5), 3. M. Trout (413.3)

General
Most HR date: April 30th, 2013 (50)
Most HR teams: 25 (3x: 5/30/11, 9/15/12, 7/3/2013)
Most HR dayonth: 28th (3.82%)
Most HR month: August (18.0%) -- 2nd most was May (17.2%), Fewest was April (15.1%)
Most HR park: Oriole Park at Camden Yards (672) -- GABP was 4th with 592, #1 in NL

Reds
Player HR HR_Rk Speed SP_Rk Angle A_Rk TrueDist TD_Rk
Bruce 96 4 104.0 85 27.5 178 401.2 81
Votto 67 37 103.0 149 27.4 190 398.3 116
Phillips 54 68 103.1 145 27.1 212 397.1 131
Frazier 44 106 103.6 115 27.9 131 401.5 77
Heisey, Chris 34 156 103.9 97 28.2 91 391.7 185
Cozart, Zack 29 181 102.0 211 28.1 108 385.5 228

One thing I found interesting: There are strong correlations between true distance, speed, and angle. But not what I expected.

- The guys who hit the ball the hardest, hit the the ball the furthest and tended to hit the most HR (not a surprise)
- But these guys don't hit moonshots, on average. They tended to have very low average elevation angles.

Here's what I think is going on... no great insight, but fun to see it in the data.

Hitters are generally aiming for line drives, as flyballs are mostly outs. At the extremes, pop-flys are nearly always outs, but grounders are occasionally hits. When most guys HR, it comes on a fly ball that they hit at the peak of their power. Unless they get that elevation from the high angle, the ball just won't stay in the air long enough to carry over the fence.

But when a batter hits the ball really hard on average, it allows him to hit HRs at wider spectrum of elevation angles. Sure they get more HRs on fly balls that carry; that's what drives those big distance numbers. But from a HR numbers standpoint, the bigger difference is that it opens up a lower angle option. The ball is hit so hard that it carries further in the same amount of time before it falls below the top of the fence.

Fun stuff!

[camisadelgolf]

Would you happen to have noticed correlations between these numbers and groundball/flyball hitters? Does being a 'type' of hitter have any effect that you've noticed?

[Raisor]

HR fun fact: I get 15 paid days off per year not including holidays

[westofyou]

HR% [(home runs divided by at-bats) times 100]

200 PA's to qualify for best in Reds history


CINCINNATI REDS
SEASON
AT BATS displayed only--not a sorting criteria
HOMERUNS displayed only--not a sorting criteria
HR/100 PA displayed only--not a sorting criteria
HR/100 OUTS displayed only--not a sorting criteria

HR% YEAR HR% AB HR HR/PA HR/OUT
1 Kevin Mitchell 1994 9.68 310 30 7.89 13.10
2 Art Shamsky 1966 8.97 234 21 7.75 10.94
3 Adam Dunn 2008 8.58 373 32 6.90 10.81
4 Ted Kluszewski 1954 8.55 573 49 7.44 12.10
5 David Ross 2006 8.50 247 21 7.09 10.66
6 George Foster 1977 8.46 615 52 7.55 11.63
7 Bob Thurman 1957 8.42 190 16 7.77 10.96
8 Greg Vaughn 1999 8.18 550 45 7.00 10.44
9 Adam Dunn 2004 8.10 568 46 6.75 10.80
10 Ken Griffey Jr. 2003 7.83 166 13 6.47 10.00

2013



CINCINNATI REDS
SEASON
2013
AT BATS displayed only--not a sorting criteria
HOMERUNS displayed only--not a sorting criteria
HR/100 PA displayed only--not a sorting criteria
HR/100 OUTS displayed only--not a sorting criteria

HR% HR% AB HR HR/PA HR/OUT
1 Jay Bruce 4.79 626 30 4.31 6.26
2 Joey Votto 4.13 581 24 3.31 5.61
3 Chris Heisey 4.02 224 9 3.69 4.97
4 Shin-Soo Choo 3.69 569 21 2.95 4.93
5 Todd Frazier 3.58 531 19 3.17 4.41
6 Xavier Paul 3.35 209 7 2.93 4.24
7 Brandon Phillips 2.97 606 18 2.70 3.73
8 Devin Mesoraco 2.79 323 9 2.56 3.44
9 Zack Cozart 2.12 567 12 1.94 2.59
10 Ryan Hanigan 0.90 222 2 0.77 1.06

[RedsManRick]

Would you happen to have noticed correlations between these numbers and groundball/flyball hitters? Does being a 'type' of hitter have any effect that you've noticed?

I hadn't actually looked at GB/FB splits, since they weren't included in that data set. Combing the HR data set with the Fangraphs batted ball data, gives us 193 batters. I spent a bit of time with this, so bear with me, but enjoy.

First, some correlations just among the HR data to set the stage.


HR Variables Corr R-Sq
HR Velo & HR Angle -0.63 0.40
HR Velo & HR Dist 0.87 0.75
HR Angle & HR Dist -0.52 0.27
HR Characteristic Takeaways:
- HR velocity & distance are very strongly positive correlated, almost to the point of being interchangable, but not quite.
- Both velocity & distance are moderately negatively correlated with angle. Guys who hit the ball harder & farther tend to hit HRs at lower angles. This was my hypothesis above -- guys with less power only hit fly ball homers that don't clear the fence by a ton. Guys with lots of raw power hit those same shorter fly ball homers, but can also hit shorter line drive homers and deep fly balls bombs.

Now, let's look at the relationship between HRs & HR/FB.

Homers per FB Corr R-Sq
HR/FB & HR Velo 0.58 0.34
HR/FB & HR Angle -0.22 0.05
HR/FB & HR Dist 0.63 0.40
HR/FB takeaways:
- The guys whose fly balls turn in to HRs most often are those who hit their homers the hardest/farthest. Duh!
- The guys whose fly balls turn in to HRs most often tend to hit their homers a little bit flatter than average. This is probably that effect I was hypothesizing about too; Guys with the power to hit deep bombs have the power to hit lower laser HRs too. This isn't a particularly strong relationship though and is likely clouded by variations in park configurations.

Next, let's look at HRs & GB:FB ratio.

Grounder to Fly Ratio Corr R-Sq
GB:FB & HR Velo -0.05 0.00
GB:FB & HR Angle -0.35 0.12
GB:FB & HR Dist -0.02 0.00
GB:FB takeaways:
- There's basically no relationship between being a flyball or groundball hitter and how hard/far you hit your HRs.
- The stronger a guy's tendency to hit the ball on the ground, the lower the average angle of his HRs tend to be. Again, this is the effect I was hypothesizing. If you're a FB guy, your short HRs are more likely to come from high flies. If you're a GB guy, your short HRs are more likely to be LDs. The deepest homers are those in the middle of the angle range hit really, really hard -- and all hitters hit a fair amount of balls at the league average angles.

And lastly, let's consider line drives.

Line Drive Rate Corr R-Sq
LD% & HR Velo -0.31 0.10
LD% & HR Angle 0.17 0.03
LD% & HR Dist -0.14 0.02
LD% takeaways:
- Guys who hit more LDs tend to hit weaker, shorter homers. I'm guessing this is a bit of selection bias. If you don't hit a lot of LDs, you should probably need to hit the ball harder than average in order to be a successful hitter in general. And if you hit a ton of LDs, you probably tend to toward being a "professional hitter" type who hit more HRs to the opposite field, HRs which tend to be weaker than pulled ones. Think Votto, Mauer, Helton.
- Guys who hit more LDs tend to hit higher angled homers. This supports the "professional hitter" tendency. Guys who spray the ball are more likely to be the ones who drive it in the air the opposite way. If they pull it hard, it's more like to be a liner. Think Votto vs. Bruce.

And because so many of you made it this far, let's just look at some interesting case studies:
- Granderson & Soriano are mediocre in terms of HR velocity & distance and tend to hit their HR at a high angle. But because they hit so many fly balls and played in HR friendly parks, their totals have been pretty high. Especially given how Granderson has let his contact rate slip, I'd be absolutely terrified if I were a Met fan now that he doesn't have a short porch to play with.
- Adrian Beltre & Jay Bruce have crazy similar profiles. They're the 2nd & 4th most prolific HR hitters of the past 3 years. Of the 193 guys in the data set, they're well above average fly ball hitters (45th & 25th), slightly above average HR velocity (73rd & 65th) and distance (71st & 63rd), but tend to hit lower average angle HRs (132nd & 133rd). Both are notorious pull hitters, so I'm guessing that's part of what we're seeing here. Interestingly, as hitters in general, Beltre makes a lot more contact than Bruce, but Bruce makes it up in the walk department. They're also very good defenders, for whatever that's worth.
- EE is an extreme fly ball hitter who hits the ball really hard. But his HR/FB is a pedestrian 15.6% and his HR angle is average. He may get under the ball a bit too much, costing him some HR. Or perhaps Rogers Centre has a big OF. But it looks like his low HR/FB in 2011 was a bit of an outlier, suggesting a healthy dose of bad "luck". We would expect his HR/FB rate to stay high.
- On the plus side for the Mets, Lucas Duda looks like the Jay Bruce to EE's Adrian Beltre. They have extremely similar profiles in terms of GB:FB and crushing the ball. And coincidentally, perhaps, EE & Beltre bat right handed while Bruce & Duda bat left. Unfortunately for the Mets, Duda also plays RF like EE plays 3B.

Ok, I think that does it for me tonight...