Travis Sawchik reviews Alan Nathan’s presentation at the annual Saber Seminar on changes in the ball and the increase in home runs. The takeaway is that the ball started traveling farther in 2016:
What Nathan found was that the ball did change, it had less drag, in comparing 2015 to 2016. But what was most interesting to me is the ball has apparently not changed from 2016 to 2017.
But HR/FB rates continue to increase — 13.7% this season compared to 12.8% in 2016 — even as the ball is playing similarly in 2017 compared to 2016, according to Nathan’s research. We can deduce there are reasons behind the spike.
I’m convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the ball has a role in this surge and perhaps even a leading one, but there are more elements involved and that was a takeaway, for me, from the presentation.
And the other missing variable I strongly suspect continues to be those joining a growing band of air-ball revolutionaries, which can have strong convictions in their swing plane changes thanks to the data tools now available. While pitchers and defenses first enjoyed data-based advantages to understand their own performance and influence strategy, hitters can now easily understand and quantify launch angles and exit velocities, thanks to Statcast and similar tools.
In the early years of blogging, Mickey Kaus introduced the Feiler Faster Thesis:
The news cycle is much faster these days, thanks to 24-hour cable, the Web, a metastasized pundit caste constantly searching for new angles, etc. As a result, politics is able to move much faster, too, as our democracy learns to process more information in a shorter period and to process it comfortably at this faster pace.[1] [emphasis in the original]
Teams have analysts pouring over data every day. They very well may have realized the ball was traveling farther before Nathan did and started telling their hitters, “Get the ball in the air, it will go out.” Players can get data thrown at them quickly today, and they are learning to process that data at the faster pace.
This whole subject gets more fascinating every time I read about it.
& your last paragraph made me realize that in the near future, I expect we’ll see very defensively poor infielders. If so many balls are being hit over the infield, then teams will care less about acquiring hot glove shortstops, second basemen, & third basemen. The outfielders will have to be better defensively and the infielders can be more slugging friendly guys. That would be strange. If that happens, then once it becomes pretty common, we should see players hitting grounders more, to sneak the ball through the slower or less skilled fielders.