How Launch Angle Is Changing Baseball
Launch Angle and the Boom in Baseball Hitting Technologies
By: Daniel Marcillo
Baseball has been America’s pastime for generations, and playing the game has been as simple as grabbing a bat and a ball and heading to the local field. But the game is not so simple any more. New high-tech training methods are revolutionizing the way hitters have approached the game by putting an emphasis on measurements with exotic names such as “launch angle” and “exit velocity.” Hitters now focus on hitting the long ball instead of putting the ball on the ground.
A home run is, essentially, a high arching fly ball that clears the outfield fences. It is hit with enough power that it clears the fence surrounding the ballfield, allowing the hitter to circle all the bases and score.
It is as old as the game itself and is the ultimate reward for any hitter from the big leagues all the way down to Little League. From Babe Ruth to Hank Aaron to Mike Trout of today's Los Angeles Angels, some of the biggest names in baseball are synonymous with hitting the long ball.
The home run is a quick and more glamorous way to score runs. New-generation hitting approaches and techniques are allowing smaller players, those under 6 feet and less than 200 pounds, to generate power numbers never seen in prior generations.
In 1903, the year of the first World Series, only 355 home runs were hit all season. During the 2019 season, 6,776 home runs were hit, which was the highest number ever. New age terms like launch angle and exit velocity, and an emphasis on keeping the ball off the ground, have led to the home run boom.
The 2020 season had expectations of the home run record being set once again but the COVID-19 pandemic halted any idea of that happening.
But when and if baseball returns to a regular season, the result of this in the future is that fans and players are more expectant of what will happen on each play. The three most likely outcomes of a plate appearance (home run, strikeout, walk) make up over one-third of the plays in baseball. Hardcore fans may have become blasé about home runs, but these displays of power draw in more casual fans and appeal to younger audiences.
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Launch angle has become an important concept. According to the MLB glossary, "Launch Angle represents the vertical angle at which the ball leaves a player’s bat after being struck.”
Many coaches, parents, and even some players are against the new obsession with launch angle because they assume coaches want hitters to practice the kind of hitting that leads to high-arcing “pop-ups” and “fly balls.” These hits give the fielders, who play defense, enough time to run under the ball and catch it for an out. (A hit caught before the ball touches the ground counts as an out.)
“The swing itself is not a launch angle swing,” Jim Martin, assistant baseball coach at Stony Brook University said. “It is just the result of the swing, it’s what has happened when the ball leaves the bat.”
This is the mentality and approach that is working its way down from professional baseball all the way down to high school.
How Does Launch Angle Work?
The higher the angle at which the ball leaves the bat--the angle that launches the ball into flight--the more likely the ball will arc high into the air. A lower launch angle indicates a hitter is more likely to hit the ball so that it bounces the ground.
One key understanding is that every ball put in play has a launch angle, which could either be positive or negative. Launch angle measurements breakdown as such:
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Ground ball (bounces on the ground before a defensive player can catch it): Any negative number and up to 10 degrees
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Line drive (between fly ball and ground ball, usually has the most velocity off the bat and leads to the most hits): 10-25 degrees
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Fly ball (comes off the bat and has an arc on it, usually results in either a home run or caught by an outfielder): 25-50 degrees
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Pop up (ball usually hit straight up in the air and does not make it past the infielders): Greater than 50 degrees
A high launch angle “is something we want our guys to do for extra-base hits. It is basically in the high teens to mid-20s,” Martin says. The key for batters is to consistently remain in the line drive range for a better chance of producing more than just a single.
Extra-base hits--doubles, which bring the batter to second base, and triples, which take him to third--are important because they make it easier for the runner to score on the following hit. In the case of a triple, with less than two outs, runners can score on most results from the following batter.
“Why would I want my perfect swing to simply be a single?” Billy Sullivan, a catcher at Southern Connecticut State University said. “I won’t lead the team in home runs, but I give myself a chance to lead the team in extra-base hits.”
Sullivan is almost a foot shorter than the Yankees 6-foot-7-inch star Aaron Judge, but both share a similar mindset. During the 2019 postseason, Judge said, “I’m going to get my A swing off as much as I can rather than take a B or C swing and put it on the ground. I’ve got three strikes. Why not take three chances to get one out of the park?”
More than Just Keeping the Ball Off the Ground
Hitting at a high enough launch angle is just a small part of the larger equation of power hitting. Exit velocity, the speed at which the baseball leaves the bat, is another factor. The harder the batter hits the ball, the more likely the hit will have a positive result, such as a home run or a double. (And then there are those rumors about “juiced” baseballs that allegedly create more home runs.)
Launch angle and exit velocity have a direct effect on one another. Major League Baseball players can afford to play with launch angle methods because of their strength and because defensive players need more time to reach fly balls in the spacious outfields of MLB parks.
But for younger players, the focus on these approaches is more controversial. In the MLB, a player’s job is baseball, while college and high school players are not fully grown into their bodies and cannot dedicate the same amount of time to their craft. Younger players’ hits may work in high school games, but they would be far less effective in the big leagues.
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In the words of Minnesota Twins third baseman Josh Donaldson, winner of the 2015 Most Valuable Player award in his league, “In the big leagues, these things they call ground balls are outs. They don’t pay you for ground balls. They pay you for homers.”
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A lot of younger hitters who are now looking to drive the ball in the air instead of settling for singles share Donaldson’s mindset, especially the ones looking for a college baseball scholarship or a baseball career. College coaches and even professional coaches can easily find players who can hit a single consistently, but they really want the hitters who can drive in multiple runs with one swing.
“I can bring in any high school player who knows how to hit a 150-foot line drive for a single,” Phil Fratello, former coach at Dominican College, said. But these days, that’s not enough: “I’m not helping anyone if I don’t allow someone to take advantage of all the power in their body.”
Difference Between Coaches and Instructors
The emphasis on power hitters has created a disconnect between the major leagues and the lower levels of baseball that feed them. Coaches at the high school, college and minor-league levels tend to have more of an old-school approach to the game.
“My high school coach taught more of a downward plane on the swing, trying to catch the ball and give it backspin,” Joseph DePalma, the baseball coach at Nyack High School, said. “I believe you should have a slight upward swing and keep the bat through the ‘hitting area’ for a long time.”
DePalma has been the head coach at Nyack for almost a decade and has seen an uptick in parents’ involvement in their kids’ careers. The parents see how baseball can earn their kids scholarships and even become a career. It is part of the reason why these new-generation hitters are going to hitting instructors to practice these new-age techniques.
Think of those who are not as gifted as being rubber bands. If you pull the rubber band as wide as possible, without breaking it, and let go, it will fly its maximum distance. If you pull it less than that, it won’t fly as far. Hitters are the same way. If they only use 75 percent of their potential power, that could be the difference between a home run and an out. This is where working with a hitting coach comes into play. The coach can tap that additional 25 percent.
But not all youth coaches agree with the new emphasis on power hitting for younger players.
“When amateur hitters try to increase their launch angle to hit the ‘optimal home run angle,’ the result is usually a fly out because they have not yet developed the strength needed to consistently hit home runs,” Andrew Cirafici, assistant coach at Nyack, said.
He said that because typical high school players have not fully grown into their bodies, it is harder for them to produce those extra-base hits and home runs, even when they achieve the higher launch angle. They lack the size and strength to create the necessary exit velocity. While launch-angle coaching methods look good in batting practice and in the hitting cage, they don’t always translate to the field for younger and smaller players.
Private hitting instructors can play a huge role in a young player’s development because their job differs from the job of the team coach. A hitting instructor is paid to focus on an individual player in a private session. The coach of the team has to put the time in with every player, and the team takes the hitting philosophy of the coach. This could put young players in a weird spot because they hear two different things.
“As both a high school coach and a private hitting coach, I have been on both sides of the fence,” Cirafici said.
Hitting instructors who encourage kids at younger levels to put the ball in the air have a different perspective on the way hitting should be taught. Past generations of baseball players did not have the opportunity to practice the amount kids do today. A week’s worth of practice can equal the same number of hours as a part-time or even full-time job for elite high school and college athletes.
And the business of coaching has expanded. Today, coaches see working with younger players as a profession, and they now have the platforms to display their most promising prospects: baseball camps, travel teams, and college showcases--and social media.
Technology Takeover
Hitting instructors like Darren Nicholson, CEO of TheHitLab, a hitting facility in Tennessee that attracts youth and college players, influence the new generation of hitters by posting their videos to Instagram and using technology that teams at the college and professional levels use. The technology helps hitters, no matter their size or age, by identifying what a hitter does well and does less efficiently.
HitTrax, one example of the new baseball technology, provides real-time performance data during a batting practice session. Right after the batter completes a swing, a monitor displays the hit using infrared technology. HitTrax measures the speed and trajectory of the ball and displays the real flight of the ball on a monitor, like a video game.
“It has to be one of the coolest things I have ever worked with,” Sullivan said. “You can compete in the cages the same way you would in a game and you can make the needed adjustments instantly.”
At TheHitLab, instructors take the process a step further, using Rapsodo, a technology similar to HitTrax. The Rapsodo Hitting Unit and Cloud collects data on exit velocity, launch angle, direction and much more. Through an app, batters can track their progress and how each session went.
“We’re pretty much exclusive on Rapsodo,” Nicholson said. “The data collection is the best you’re going to be able to find, and you can track the progress week in and week out. Collecting this data gives you an understanding of where they need to develop.”
Statcast and the Future
Technology is only poking its head through the window when it comes to baseball. Major League Baseball teams are using Statcast, an automated tool that analyzes players’ athletic movements and abilities. Introduced in 2015, it shows statistics such as exit velocity and launch angle, and more.
Statcast looks at more than just hitting. It tracks statistics that the average fan has never seen, not only for hitters but also for fielders, base runners, pitchers. It’s populated by mysterious lingo: Rolling Windows, Active Spin, and Outfield Jump. But all of this translates into different ways for teams to evaluate their players.
These stats replace the classic way of looking at batting average, home runs and runs batted in. Teams have been built using these “analytics” and it is being used to make in-game decisions throughout the season.
All of this is only the beginning. Managers and organizations are relying on technology instead of the naked eye to judge players. The game as we know it will be completely different ten years from now.
Stony Brook Baseball using HitTrax at Practice
