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June 5, 2019

Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez, And The Fly-Ball Revolution

The Fly-Ball Revolution
Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik, Slate, June 5, 2019
April 16, 2018, was an off day in Los Angeles for the Boston Red Sox. But for outfielder Mookie Betts, there would be no rest.

Boston hitting coach Tim Hyers suggested to Betts that he spend the day working with the silver-haired, blue-eyed Doug Latta, a self-described swing whisperer. ...

The 25-year-old Betts was coming off an excellent 2017 season, albeit a disappointing one for him. His .803 OPS (on-base plus slugging) was slightly above average but down significantly from his .897 mark the previous season. Many athletes are afraid to change. Betts wasn't, even if that meant listening to the advice of an outside instructor like Latta, whose own playing career never advanced past junior college. Already a two-time All-Star, Betts wanted to be better.

Many of the hitters who had previously sought change were desperate, seeking to extend careers. But what if a top-shelf talent like Betts—renowned for his elite hand-eye coordination and athleticism and already experimenting with a nontraditional bat handle designed to enhance bat speed and control—adopted a better swing? ...

Up to that point, few professional coaches had accepted Latta into their circles of trust. He was perceived as an unwelcome outsider who meddled with other coaches' players. ...

They worked together in private for several hours in open-air cages covered by hunter-green corrugated metal. The next day, Betts returned to the lineup against the Angels' rookie sensation Shohei Ohtani. Betts batted first, where he had taken the vast majority of his at-bats as a big leaguer. ...

In the Anaheim twilight, Ohtani threw a full-count fastball that came close to the plate, knee-high. A keen observer could have noticed that Betts's swing—already much changed that spring under Hyers' instruction—looked different. As Ohtani delivered, Betts lifted his left leg and began his stride toward the pitcher. His hands dropped lower, toward his belt. As he moved forward, his hands stayed back and "under" the ball, as Latta teaches, which would enable his bat to travel on an uppercut trajectory. Pitches travel at downward angles, both because they're released from an elevated mound and because gravity acts upon them. A flat bat path is on plane with a pitch for a very short period of time. An upward path increases the odds of optimum contact.

In a blur, the barrel connected with the Ohtani pitch and drove it high into the violet sky, the silhouette of the San Gabriel Mountains still visible in the distance. Rather than wrapping around his back as it often did, Betts's follow-through traveled on a path that finished high and slightly above his shoulders. It was almost like a golfer's swing ...

The ball traveled 411 feet, landing beyond the left-center-field fence and ricocheting off the faux boulders and back onto the field. Betts ran around the bases, businesslike. No smile cracked his countenance.

When Betts came up in the third inning, Luke Bard had replaced Ohtani. Bard's second pitch to Betts was a hanging slider. Betts again dropped his hands lower. His bat got on plane with the pitch earlier, and he drove slightly under and through the ball with lightning-quick hands. He again finished higher in his follow-through. Betts launched the ball beyond the bullpens in left-center field, 417 feet away from home plate. He lowered his head and subtly flipped his bat.

In the eighth inning, Betts faced Cam Bedrosian. ... Bedrosian's first pitch was an inside fastball. Betts swung, making contact well out in front of the plate, where most home-run contact happens. The ball soared toward center field. This time Betts watched it briefly, and a small grin appeared. The ball landed on an AstroTurf knoll beyond the playing surface, 427 feet away: his third home run of the game. And on May 2, Betts would author another three-homer game. ...

The fly-ball revolution [has] also spread thanks to Statcast, which in 2015 began to measure the launch angle and exit velocity of almost every ball hit in every MLB game. ... The data confirmed that air balls were better than grounders: With every 10-degree increment from minus 30 degrees to 30 degrees (where zero is a level line drive), the leaguewide wOBA on contact in 2018 increased, easily surpassing the all-angles average of .315. (The average home run left the bat at a vertical angle of 28.2 degrees.)

Between growing awareness of that relationship and a still-unexplained change in the composition of the official MLB ball in 2015, which caused balls in the air to carry farther, hitters had more incentive to swing up. The average launch angle of a batted ball has increased in every year of Statcast: from 10.5 degrees in 2015, to 10.8 in 2016, 11.1 in 2017, and 11.7 in 2018. ... According to data from Baseball Prospectus, the leaguewide ground-ball rate in 2018 was the lowest on record, going back to 1950.

In 2017, MLB hitters launched 6,105 home runs, breaking the previous record (set in 2000) by 412. ...

"Elevate and celebrate" and "Ground balls suck" became batting-cage cries. In 2018, Red Sox skipper Alex Cora said, "We don't like hitting ground balls. We like hitting the ball in the air." His statement mirrored a Cubs catchphrase—"There's no slug on the ground"—as well as Pirates manager Clint Hurdle's advice to his team: "Your OPS is in the air." An outsider philosophy had spawned insider slogans. ...

At the end of 2017, Hyers joined the Red Sox as their head hitting coach. He and the Sox sought to revamp their hitting philosophy. Another new face, J.D. Martinez, was told by the Red Sox coaching staff to make Mookie his "project." As Martinez watched Betts hit for the first time in the spring with his 2017 stroke, he said, "I don't know that that's going to work." Betts was not offended. He wanted information.

Martinez signed a five-year $110 million deal with the Red Sox over the winter of 2017–2018, several years after reinventing his own swing and saving his career. Through 2013, Martinez had been a replacement-level big leaguer. In his first three years in the majors, he posted an 87 wRC+. He was a below-average hitter and a poor defender. He career was in jeopardy.

"You still talk to coaches, 'Oh, you want a line drive right up the middle. Right off the back of the L-screen,'" Martinez told Travis in 2017. "OK, well that's a fucking single."

Martinez began to question why his best swing would result in a "fucking single." ...

"I have this little theory," Martinez says. "When I think about the best players, I think what makes people so good is when they have that insecurity about themselves ... because they don't want to fall off. It keeps them working. I feel like [Betts] had that little doubt. ... Other guys have good years and they won't make the change. He was like, 'Dude, I have to figure this out. I don't have it figured out.'"

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