Joey Votto’s Opposite-Field Power and Amazing Fly-Ball BABIP
In the comments to Dave Cameron’s Joe Mauer post last week a commenter, Temo, suggested Joey Votto as a player with similar opposite-field power. I thought it would be interesting to check him out, partially as a comparison to Mauer, but also because I think Votto does not get enough attention.
Last year Votto had the fourth-highest wOBA baseball. Obviously he benefits from his home park and we do not have the wRC+ leader boards yet, but I went and checked the fifteen guys after him and saw that the only one who gets pumped ahead is Adrain Gonzalez. So on a rate basis Votto was the fifth-best hitter even taking to account his home park.
So how did he do it? It starts with a good number of walks and solid power. The power, as Temo noted, is great to left — opposite field for the left-handed Votto. To left he has an ISO of .450, but has fairly good power to center, .226, and right, .298. So he is no slouch to any field.
Just as interesting as his opposite-field power though is his amazing .373 BABIP, good for sixth best in the league. Looking at the BABAIP split out by batted-ball type the amazing thing is his BABIP on fly balls, .291. The average BABIP on fly balls in the NL in 2009 was .142. So Votto gets hits on his non-HR fiy balls at a rate double that of the average non-HR fly and higher than a good number of hitters do on all their balls in play.
How can nearly three of ten of Votto’s non-HR fly balls drop for hits? Here I look at Votto’s non-HR flies by field location. As in my Cust post, the numbers are the fractions of non-HR fly balls to each location and the color the BABIP: from red being over one half to gray being zero.
The first thing is that Votto hits very few infield flies compared to the average LHB, actually the third fewest in the league. This cuts down on automatic outs. Additionally he hits way more flies to deep and mid-distance left field, which fall in for hits at a very good rate. This shows how readily and successfully he goes the opposite way, which I think is a big reason for his high BABIP on fly balls.
He probably will not have a BABIP of over .370 next year, but it will most likely be quite high. This great BABIP coupled with his great — and opposite-field fueled — power and his walks result in one of the game’s best young hitters.
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I was just thinking about how bad the left fielders in the NL central are in terms of defense. Soriano, Lee, and Braun were all -8 or worse by UZR/150 last year. STL and Pittsburgh had a rotation going through there all year so its hard to tell how good they were on defense. Perhaps Votto’s natural ability to hit to left field, hit them ball hard, and the bad LF defense in the NL Central combine to give Votto his amazingly high BABIP to left on fly balls last year and could contribute to him posting an above average number again next year
Any chance you could change this graph as well to make the piece a size relative to the % of balls hit there? Reading labels and looking at colors is counter-intuitive (or at least requires conscious thought that would indicate a table may be as good of a solution).
For instance, you could make the size of the average piece 0.37 (max value in the chart) and then scale down the size of each other piece in accordance with how often the ball is hit there. Keep the black outlines, and just scale the colored pieces, so that it’s clear which segment indicates which.
(Any suggestions on how to learn R so that I can do these awesome things myself rather than constantly bothering you to do it? I downloaded the package and have no trouble loading data, but creating the graphs is a nightmare!)
Yeah Sal,
I agree that size/color is a lot easier to compare than numbers/color. Your same suggestion for the Jeter post was totally right on. This one could also work well, but it is a little trickier for me to think about how to code up — especially this late. But maybe I will give it a try in these next couple days.
Anyway your comments are not a bother, they are often very helpful. I guess R has a pretty steep learning curve. My only real suggestion is just to play around with it a lot, but that might not be very helpful. This website has a collection of graphs made in R with the source code.
I’m just happy there’s someone like you who is intent on making clear understandable graphics. For those who haven’t gotten into sabermetrics, these graphs are a really easy window into what the community is doing, and that makes it more accessible.
I’ll just be sad when one of the major media outlets snags you to do their graphics for them.
(Okay, I’ll just follow your graphics there instead)
Sounds like a lefthanded hitter tailor-made for Fenway Park.
There was a good article at the hardballtimes a while back about how parallax might affect what gets called a fly ball and what gets called a line drive. I can’t remember if they mentioned GABP, but I feel I’ve heard discussion about whether or not the scorer at GABP (apparently he’s new as of the past couple years) might suppress LD rates. In particular I recall this being talk about in relation to Jay Bruce’s miniscule LD% last year. Were this the case is it not a possibility that Votto’s high BABIP on flies is actually a reflection of some of those balls being liners? I’m really curious how strongly scorers influence these calls, since we use their subjective decisions to create statistics which get treated rather objectively when run through our analytic ringerer.
Great point. Those classifications are done by stringers and just over a year ago in these very pages Brian Cartwright wrote about this problem specifically with LDs.
That’s a good point, though even if true it only reinforces the idea that he has tremendous skill in going to the opposite field.
At the same time, couldn’t another analysis of this data find that Votto may be in line for a regression at the plate? His fly ball BABIP would be very difficult to duplicate, which means this impressive stat could quickly turn into outs, bringing him closer to the league average.
I see y one could expect regression from joey given that huge babip on fly balls. But if most of those non hr flies to left r so deep, what’s to say he won’t take a step foward and start putting them over the fence. Obviously we won’t know til after this season, but I just thought it was worth mentioning
Votto seems to have really good bat control on pitches up, getting the head of the bat on balls that aren’t your usual “good pitches to hit”. I guess this is a case where the impression matches the data. If he can continue demonstrating this nearly uncanny skill, he will have high averages, including obp as he gets more respect. Pitchers with good command will find a way to tame him a bit but not enough to take these averages down significantly. I, for one, hope he doesn’t ever leave for Fenway (but you’re right drchstrpunk).
Tough call how to align the OF defense against him. Can’t really shift toward left against him can you???
It seems like his high BABIP could in fact be a function of the fact that he hits so many FBs to LF: LFers may be playing him like a normal LHB (to pull, shading to right), and he often hits it too far to their right for them to make a play.
What would really be fascinating to see is a hit chart of Votto’s FBs to LF… pretty good odds that a lot of those are on the “left” half (from the perspective of home plate) of the left field grid.
I don’t have the data and this is pretty subjective, but Votto has tremendous power toward the left-center gap. I’d be willing to bet a good portion of his HRs and non-HR flyball hits are to that area.
I would also tentatively agree with Matt McWax that those HRs/hits are the result of Votto having good bat control on pitches up in the zone.
I’m not at all ashamed to admit that seeing a fangraphs post based on a comment I made is the highlight of my day thus far (to be fair, it’s only 10:50 AM).
Wow, fascinating article! How can you come up with such fascinating write-ups every time? I am impressed ;)