The Fly Balls Have Arrived In College Baseball, Too

It was difficult to exist as a baseball fan in 2017 without hearing the phrase “fly-ball revolution” and its family members “exit velocity” and “launch angle.” The idea that ground balls are not great and fly balls are pretty decent isn’t something that only major league batters have figured out and adjusted their approach accordingly. College hitters have taken notice, and purchased trips to Ding Dong City as well.

Even though Major League Baseball has vehemently shot down the idea of the baseball being juiced, the NCAA has been rather transparent when it comes to ways to improving offense in the game. Instead of reverting back from BBCOR bats to the rocket launchers used beforehand, a flatter-seamed baseball was introduced in 2015 after scoring had fallen to 5.08 runs per game and a record low of 0.39 home runs per game. Since then, scoring has jumped to 5.77 runs per game (still a far cry from the 6.98 runs per game the year before BBCOR bats were initiated ) and 0.75 home runs per game.

 

Year-by-Year Home Run Changes Since 2014
Year Home Runs % Change
2014 6825
2015 9074 33.0%
2016 10,050 10.8%
2017 12,297 22.4%

Home run totals have gone up 80.1% since 2014. Again, these totals are nowhere near the insane days when home runs per game was near 1, but

The increase in home runs isn’t just a product of changing the ball. It’s a systematic shift in how players across all levels of the game are approaching hitting. MLB teams have used Trackman data to change hitter’s swings to an optimal level, and now colleges and high school showcases have started to install Trackman systems in their stadiums. Trackman data at colleges certainly isn’t publically available, and all of my emails to coaches asking them to hand it over were not returned.

Without the sophisticated data, I was only able to track the number of ground balls, line drives, pop up, and fly balls that were hit when an out was made from play-by-play data.

View post on imgur.com

Line drives have been stable, but ground ball outs and fly ball outs have been slowly diverging over time. Even without the data to pinpoint launch angle changes amongst college players, it’s still no secret as to what the players are attempting to do; hit the ball in the air.

As any pulse-having FanGraphs reader will know, the surge in home runs has risen in line with the other two of the Three True Outcomes™, strikeouts, and walks. This has been no different at the collegiate level as well. K% has increased from 16.0% in 2014 to 18.3% in 2017, and BB% has increased from 9.0% to 9.9% in the same time. These numbers are understandably off from where the MLB was in 2017 (21.6% and 8.5%, respectively) given that the command of college pitchers isn’t as developed as it is among professional players, and anecdotally speaking, there is more effort to pitch around team’s star players in college than there is in the pros. The NCAA will never be able to perfectly recreate the conditions that exist in professional baseball in college, the days of college coaches instituting modern day dead-ball era philosophies are quickly coming to an end.

These changes to the ball and the way teams approach the game is part of what needed to be done to make baseball at the collegiate level more exciting for fans. It’s no secret that college baseball ranks well below the excitement of its basketball and football counterparts. It’s still to be determined whether a Three True Outcomes™ approach to the game is what’s best for baseball, but with Major League baseball looking to strengthen its relationship with the college game and record number of games appearing on television this year, interest in the game is only going the way of the baseballs, up.

A special thanks to Christopher D. Long and his godsend of a GitHub for supplying the data to make this research possible. 





2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Dominikk85member
6 years ago

Nice article. I also think the ball and approach might be related. Some say it is the ball and other say it is launch angle but a livelier ball also means elevating pays off more.

Now for strong hitters it always paid off but now it also plays for guys with less pop.

crez33member
6 years ago

Global warming.