Ellsbury: Is the Home Run Spike Real?
Jacoby Ellsbury – After spending much of 2010 on the DL, Ellsbury has had a nice break out season in 2011. The main reason for his increase in production has been the ability of the 27 year old to more hit home runs. In over 1500 PA before 2011, he hit a total of 20 home runs. In less than 1/3 that number of PA this season, he has hit 16. I believe the spike in home runs is not caused by a change in his batting profile and can not be sustained.
Note: I am gone for the week and scheduled and wrote this article ahead of time so some of the stats may be a couple days old.
There are several items to look for to see if a batter has changed in order to hit more homes. The keys are making contact with the ball more, hitting more fly balls, the direction he hits those fly balls and how far the balls travel.
First, he is putting the ball in play about the same as in the past, maybe actually a little less. His BB% (7.5%) and K% (13.5%) are both a bit higher then his career averages (6.9% and 12.1%).
The second key is that his OFFB% this year (22.9%) is a bit higher then his career value (19.8%). These fly balls have been leaving the yard more often as seen by a jump in his HR/FB% from a career number of 7.8% to 15.2%.
An increase in home runs can usually attributed to hitting the ball further or hitting the ball into shorter corner OF porches. Jose Bautista did both of these two to accomplish his recent break out.
First, here is a look at the angles (-45 is the LF line and +45 is the RF line) of the fly balls and home runs, Ellsbury, a left handed hitter, has hit over the last 3 years. A LOESS averaging curve is added to look for trends.
He has been turning on the ball a bit more in 2011 than in the 2 previous seasons. It is not the at the level that that some hitters do, but it is an improvement.
Finally, the average distance of his outfield fly balls and home runs can be examined to see if he is actually hitting the ball further.
This season Ellsbury has not hit the ball any further than in previous seasons, actually less so.
Conclusion:
There has not been a huge change in Ellsbury’s home run talent this season in my opinion. He is hitting more fly balls and more into the right field corner. On the other hand, he is hitting the ball less and a shorter distance. He may have been unlucky in hitting home runs in previous seasons and this season’s totals is a regression to the mean or this season could be his career year. Either way, I would expect his season home run total to be in the low teens in the future.
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Just curious, but where did you get all the flyball distances?
hittrackeronline.com has them, I don’t know if Fangraphs uses that, however.
The data is available with the Pitch FX information.
It is the same information used at TexasLeagures.com and http://www.baseballanalytics.org/baseball-analytics-blog/2011/7/19/alex-rios-dead-last-pull-hitter.html
Instead of plotting the x-y data of the balls, I turned the data into a distance and angle from home plate to help with detecting trends.
It is a program I can use that creates the plots.
Even if ellsbury is a 15 homer a year guy, he’s still an elite fantasy option.
Cool article. Nice to see something besides player rankings based on WAR.
I don’t accept the premises. His ISOP is .194 vs. < .120 for his career before this season, and that's additional doubles over career high in addition to the home runs. His LD% is 24, which is much higher than in the past, and the GB% is down. Run value on FBs is also much, much higher than in the past. As noted, contact rate is down. Sounds to me like a very talented hitter who has piled up a couple thousand ABs at this level and is putting himself in FB counts, then attacking it and having success. I doubt that he's a 20 HR per year guy, but then who predicted Grandy's lofty HR numbers in the first year of his power breakout? At the very least I'd bet on him maintaining high extra base hit totals going forward, with a very similar line in the power dept. to Pedroia.
His pull power always has been there while opposite field power is mininal. This season he makes a lot of LDs the other way rather than hits flyball out. That is the key difference for him. The outer part of zone isn’t his weakness any more. Now pitchers have to adjust. Inside? That is his hot zone. He can lift the ball really well with good pull power. He becomes much more complete hitter.
I don’t agree with this assessment, but if there’s data to prove me wrong I’d be interested in seeing it.
When Ellsbury came up in 2007 he got the league’s attention by performing quite well in his cup of coffee and carried that over into the post season. Pitchers seemed to figure out, even by the end of that post season, that Ellsbury had real difficulty handling inside fastballs. He was poor at getting his hands inside the ball and would often hit weak fly balls to right-center or beat it into the ground. It seemed to be a source of frustration for the Boston coaching staff as he would demonstrate an ability to pull the ball for power in BP, but come game time that swing would disappear.
This year he seems to be getting to those fastballs, so much so that I’ve noticed pitchers moving away from that part of the plate. Which if he truly has improved his ability to hit that pitch, would be wise since he has yet to prove he has much opposite field power (though like many good lefties, he seems capable of taking a pitch middle-away and pulling it with some authority). I’d love to see if there’s any data that backs this up. I know Jeff mentioned that he’s shown more ability to pull this year but are those pitches he’s pulling in the middle of plate? Away? Or inner-half?
I think he has improved his hitting, but I don’t see him as a 20 homer guy year in and year out, but it also wouldn’t shock me to see him exceed my expectations.