More On Early 2019 Statcast Hitting Trends

On Tuesday, I shared some early Statcast statistic trends and compared them with historical marks going back to 2015. Unfortunately, I compared April 2019 numbers to full season marks from previous seasons, which wasn’t exactly apples to apples. I have corrected that error and spent some time collecting data only through the end of April for all previous seasons. So let’s try this again.

On Tuesday, it appeared that overall exit velocity and fly ball exit velocity had spiked this year versus last. When cutting off the data to just through April though, we actually learn that both marks peaked last season and are down ever so slightly from that mark. What this means is that oddly exit velocity declined after April last season, which is opposite of what we expected to see.

This April, batters are essentially hitting it just as hard as last April, but their fly balls are traveling three feet further. That’s strange. Adding to the weirdness is that last April, batters posted an exit velocity 0.8 MPH higher than in 2017, yet the ball traveled two feet less. Was this the effects of the juiced ball in 2017?

Looking at the combination of fly ball exit velocity and distance, they generally match the HR/FB rate trends. However, the changes between the EV and distance marks from season to seasons are pretty minor, which you wouldn’t expect to drive such dramatic changes in HR/FB rate. If it’s not just fly ball exit velocity and distance, what else could it be?

We found out on Tuesday that batters were barreling their fly balls at a significantly higher rate this year, a mark that has risen each season since 2015. But perhaps those barrels weren’t as “barrely” as previous years, so the exit velocity and distance have barely budged? There are more of them, resulting in a higher HR/FB rate, but they are of lower quality, resulting in similar exit velocity in distance marks. That’s the hypothesis.

I isolated the exit velocity and distance on just barreled fly balls to find out if this was the case. Nope! These numbers showed the exact same trends as the previous table using all fly balls. Exit velocity here is down ever so slightly from last year, while distance is back up (though this time it’s just below the 2017 distance).

There’s one more piece to the puzzle which I shared in last week’s hitting trends post.

So while I still can’t figure out how batters are barreling up their flies far more frequently, and yet exit velocity and distance have barely budged, this table is key. Batters are pulling a higher rate of their fly balls, which is the batted ball direction that easily leads to the highest HR/FB rate. So they are certainly making the most of those fly balls and actually don’t need as high an exit velocity or distance to hit the ball out.

All my questions haven’t been answered, but this is a better start to understanding what’s going on with homers over the first month of the 2019 season.