RADIO
This week, we'll dig down to a more micro level in order to see what we can take away from the leaderboard in sweet spot rate. That's essentially the goal for all hitters when they initiate a swing - to get that ideal trajectory that often results in a base hit and is necessary to generate barrels.
Technically speaking, the sweet spot is defined as a batted ball event with a launch angle between eight and 32 degrees. It doesn't speak to exit velocity or distance traveled, so beware of reading too much into this. Of course, that goes for any singular metric in the baseball world. I've previously covered barrel rate, average exit velocity, and exit velocity on flyballs & line drives, all of which should be analyzed in conjunction with SwSp%.
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Sweet Spot% Leaderboard
Notable Players
Nolan Gorman as the leader here is more than noteworthy. He was flexing massive power at Triple-A with 15 HR in 34 games, forcing the Cards to recall him in late May. His power has been sporadic at the Major League level and his average has dropped lately as he somehow went 0-for-13 against Cubs pitching last weekend. He sports a strong 43.7% Hard Hit% but that's offset by his 32.5% K%. Swinging and missing is often a problem for young sluggers, as we've seen.
Gorman is specializing in line drives and is posting an absurdly-high 38% LD% after 114 at-bats. That's a full 13 points higher than the league average and highest among any batter with 50 or more batted ball events. Bear in mind this data is a little different on Fangraphs, which has Victor Reyes highest with a 34.5% LD% and Gorman next at 33.8%. Different strokes for different methods of evaluating sabermetrics, I suppose. Either way, Gorman is hitting the ball exactly how we'd like to see and we know how much power he's got in store. If he can develop better plate discipline, he could become a full-fledged power hitter.
Trey Mancini deserves better. That doesn't just mean he deserves to experience playing for a better team, it also means he should be enjoying better batted-ball outcomes. His xBA and xwOBA are both 92nd percentiles and his hard-hit rate is 75th percentile but his power numbers are just OK. He's hit seven home runs and has a .422 SLG compared to a .564 xSLG. He's also cut down his strikeout rate to a career-best 19.6% K%.
Mancini is doing everything right but he's not been a huge help to fantasy teams. He is far and away the bad-luck "leader" in HR-xHR with 6.9 long flies that shoulda, coulda, woulda gone out of a different park. If you were wondering whether that new left-field fence in Camden would come into play, it sure has. Perhaps a trade before the deadline will make him a second-half breakout performer.
Austin Slater doesn't seem to belong here based on his 4.4-degree average launch angle. His 50.8% groundball rate is actually low for him based on a 54.6% career mark. But he also has a solid 26.2% LD%. He just doesn't hit fly balls, which is why he is no power threat despite an excellent 95.7 FB/LD exit velocity. I have more interest in him than Tommy La Stella or Brandon Belt because at least he can stay healthy. Wait, no he can't... never mind.
Alec Bohm seems to hate Philly less these days. Not that he's knocking the cover off the ball but he's at least producing enough to stay in the lineup every day and has been handling ground balls capably. He picked up five hits, including three doubles in the four-game series with San Diego recently. One thing he hasn't done is go deep. Bohm is homerless since June 7th and has a total of two HR in May and June combined. Here's another case where a high SwSp% is due to a ton of line drives with far more doubles than homers. Like Mancini, Bohm is also massively underachieving on his expected average of .304 this year. In 806 career at-bats at the MLB level, Bohm has 15 homers. I'm not sure he'll ever develop into a high-enough launch angle hitter to become a 20+ home run hitter.
Tyler Stephenson could be about a week away from a rehab assignment which means he will be back behind the plate by mid-July at the latest. That's welcome news for anyone stashing him on the IL given the state of the catcher position in fantasy leagues. Stephenson was on fire, hitting .305 with 31 RBI in 42 games. He has outperformed his expected stats to this point but the Great American Ballpark bump works in his favor and will keep his power in play.
Jorge Mateo's appearance here is a sure sign that a high Sweet Spot rate can't be taken as a sign of power. Mateo has five homers and 10 doubles but it shouldn't be expected that he does much better through the rest of the season. It might actually behoove him to hit the ball on the ground more given his elite speed. Mateo is lining the ball at a high rate but it matters little with his weak exit velocity of 86.6. His 90.1 FB/LD exit velo ranks 237th out of 261 qualified batters. Maybe a few more balls will fall for in for singles or the occasional double here and there but his best-vase scenario might be a .250 average by year's end.
It's rare that you find a catcher with power and a 90th percentile sprint speed. That's Jorge Alfaro, now of the Padres. It's too bad he isn't with the Marlins anymore or he'd be a threat for double-digit steals; he collected eight in 295 at-bats last season. As far as power and average, Alfaro has an excellent 41.8% SwSp% and solid 95.3% FB/LD EV and 12.1% Brl/BBE%. If not for that little plate discipline issue. In 2022, he's got a 27.4% K-BB% and that's an improvement over his career 29.4% rate. Alfaro does good things when he makes contact much of the time. If only he did it more often.
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