Ray’s Ramblings: Batted Ball Distance

Here are some data points taken from Baseball Heat Maps.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia leads baseball with an average batted ball distance of 234.2 feet. The only other player over 231 feet is David Ortiz. Here’s a look at the top-10.  

If we up the limit from 50 batted balls to 125, here is the new leaderboard.

Freeman is an interesting case. He’s on pace for 62 RBI, and that’s all folks seem to want to look at. How about we pay attention to the .518 SLG and the 29 homer, 38 double pace.

Murphy is having a hell of a season as he’s already hit a career best 17 homers.

Shaw and Werth aren’t elite, nope, but their average batted ball is going pretty far. 

Let’s move over to ESPN. Here is the list of players who had “Just Enough” to gain a home run. Here are all the men with seven homers that qualify.

Three men are in the double-digits, and that would seem to speak to guys who are likely to see their homer pace slow a bit in the second half, no?

Here’s the even more concerning table of homers. The following list of homers includes “lucky” blasts.

The number of four doesn’t sound like much, but think of it this way. Betts has hit 18 home runs this season. That puts him on pace for 34 homers this season. If we remove his four “lucky” homers he would have a total of 14 homers hit. That would mean he is on pace for about 26 homers this season. That’s a pretty substantial difference, is it not?

The loss is even more significant if you’re Eduardo Nunez. Losing three homers takes him from 12 to nine homers. That loss would take his pace to well under 20 instead of well over it.

Here are the batters with the longest average distance per home run hit (minimum 10 homers).

Mazara has been slumping, but when he hits a big fly, boy does he hit it.

Moreland is probably a shock to everyone. Crushing it he does when hit.

Park is in the minors. So much for hitting long fly balls.

Rasmus never hits the ball, but like Carter, both men hit the ball really far when they square it up.

Valencia hits his ball a tenth of a foot further than Trout. That’s something.

There are 18 men in baseball who have hit 20 homers this season. Here is that list.

According to that list, four men have failed to average 400 feet per homer: Frazier, Duvall, Arenado and Cano. Let’s look at the four.

Frazier has hit 25 homers. Only three of them have been to the right of center field. Seventeen of the homers have been hit from left center to the left field foul pole. The distance doesn’t seem likely to hinder his production.

Duvall has hit 23 homers. Six of his homers have been to the opposite field with only 12 being to the left center to the left field foul pole. His pace could slow if he doesn’t hit the ball more to the pull field or hit the ball further.

Arenado has 23 homers with only one to the right of center field. Nineteen of his homers have been pulled.

Cano has 21 homers with only three going to the opposite field. Oddly, when he pulls the ball he doesn’t hit it very far. Check out the chart.

Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday, 7 PM EDT and Friday on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 7 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).