Another Look at Mauer’s Power

Again looking at leaderboards, I noticed that only one of the top 10 hitters by batting average has fewer than 10 home runs; that would be your 2009 American League MVP, Joe Mauer.

Mauer is hitting .324 through 127 games and, barring a disaster to end the season, will finish as a 5-WAR player.  It’s a far cry from his 8-win 2009 season (which no one could reasonably expect him to repeat), and just looking at his lines across the two seasons, it’s not hard to see where the difference is.

Season	G	H	2B	HR	BB%	K%	ISO	BABIP	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	WAR
2009	138	191	30	28	12.5%	12.0%	0.222	0.373	0.365	0.444	0.587	0.438	8
2010	127	155	41	8	11.3%	10.6%	0.140	0.345	0.324	0.400	0.463	0.370	4.8

The BABIP change almost entirely explains the batting average and OBP drop, but a lot of Mauer’s value in 2009 came from the 28 home runs.  He was third in slugging percentage in 2009 (behind only Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder), but this year is just 54th, between Victor Martinez and Gaby Sanchez.

Mauer hit nine home runs in the minor leagues (294 games), then hit 6, 9, 13, 7, and 9 home runs in his first five big league seasons, for a total of 44 home runs in 561 games.  Heading into 2009, the projection system PECOTA pegged Mauer for a 10 home run season with a .436 slugging percentage*.  Going into 2010, PECOTA predicted 19 home runs for Mauer and a .491 slugging percentage.  The five projection systems provided on FanGraphs had Mauer hitting 22, 18, 16, 21, and 19 home runs, with slugging percentages between .498 and .536.  So what happened?

Mauer’s plate discipline numbers remain virtually unchanged from 2009 to 2010, and only one number in his batted ball profile sticks out:

Season	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%
2009	20.4%	56.1%	37.0%	79.1%	91.1%	87.6%	46.5%	51.7%	4.3%
2010	24.4%	56.0%	39.4%	80.2%	96.2%	91.0%	47.6%	55.3%	3.3%

Season	GB/FB	LD%	GB%	FB%	IFFB%	HR/FB
2009	1.62	22.6%	47.8%	29.5%	1.5%	20.4%
2010	1.56	24.2%	46.2%	29.6%	2.3%	6.3%

So he didn’t hit any more fly balls; he just hit more of those over the fence.  Since, for this study, I’m only really interested in the home run power, I checked Greg Rybarczyk’s HitTracker to get the details of Mauer’s 2009 and 2010 home runs.  From the website, here’s how it works:

Hit Tracker is a spreadsheet tool that takes as inputs atmospheric information and observation data, and gives as an output the true distance that the home run traveled, along with the initial speed of the hit off the bat and the precise angles at which the ball left the bat. It does this by creating as a starting point an initial “best-guess” three dimensional trajectory for the home run, and then modifying that trajectory, a little bit at a time, until the trajectory matches the observed data from the actual home run event.

With these data, Rybarczyk has categorized the home runs based on how far they go over the fence and, with the estimated trajectory, can determine how many parks that particular hit would have been a home run in.  He also categorizes home runs at “Just Enough,” “No Doubt,” and “Plenty.”  Again, Greg’s explanations:

“Just Enough” home run – Means the ball cleared the fence by less than 10 vertical feet, OR that it landed less than one fence height past the fence. These are the ones that barely made it over the fence.

“No Doubt” home run – Means the ball cleared the fence by at least 20 vertical feet AND landed at least 50 feet past the fence. These are the really deep blasts.

“Plenty” home run – Everything else, except for the 2 above Homerun types

Lucky Homer – A home run that would not have cleared the fence if it has been struck on a 70-degree, calm day.

With that in mind, here’s Mauer’s 2009 home run list:

Date

Pitcher

Team

Ballpark

Type/Luck

True Distance

# Park

9/19/2009	Verlander, Justin	DET	Metrodome	ND	422	30
9/13/2009	Gonzalez, Carlos	OAK	Metrodome	PL	382	30
8/31/2009	Floyd, Gavin	CWS	Metrodome	ND	409	30
8/18/2009	Feldman, Scott	TEX	Ameriquest Field	PL	433	30
8/18/2009	Feldman, Scott	TEX	Ameriquest Field	PL	433	28
8/17/2009	Hunter, Tommy	TEX	Ameriquest Field	JE	372	26
8/15/2009	Sipp, Tony	CLE	Metrodome	JE	417	24
8/13/2009	Meche, Gil	KC	Metrodome	PL	414	29
8/8/2009	Verlander, Justin	DET	Comerica Park	PL	366	27
8/7/2009	Galarraga, Armando	DET	Comerica Park	JE	381	26
7/31/2009	Santana, Ervin	LAA	Metrodome	JE	407	18
7/24/2009	Lackey, John	LAA	Angels Stadium	PL	420	29
7/24/2009	Lackey, John	LAA	Angels Stadium	JE	416	21
7/8/2009	Coke, Phil	NYY	Metrodome	JE	369	16
6/20/2009	Moehler, Brian	HOU	Metrodome	PL	420	30
6/12/2009	Wells, Randy	CHC	Wrigley Field	PL	388	12
6/2/2009	Huff, David	CLE	Metrodome	JE	358	13
5/25/2009	Papelbon, Jonathan	BOS	Metrodome	PL	417	24
5/24/2009	Bush, Dave	MIL	Metrodome	ND	421	30
5/23/2009	Looper, Braden	MIL	Metrodome	JE	361	21
5/21/2009	Gobble, Jimmy	CWS	U.S. Cellular Field	ND	385	22
5/19/2009	Buehrle, Mark	CWS	U.S. Cellular Field	PL	378	22
5/16/2009	Chamberlain, Joba	NYY	New Yankee Stadium	JE	418	22
5/15/2009	Coke, Phil	NYY	New Yankee Stadium	PL	426	27
5/12/2009	Galarraga, Armando	DET	Metrodome	JE	360	9
5/9/2009	Hernandez, Felix	SEA	Metrodome	PL	392	29
5/8/2009	Jakubauskas, Chris	SEA	Metrodome	JE	381	20
5/1/2009	Ponson, Sidney	KC	Metrodome	PL	390	27

Of Mauer’s four home runs, only four were No Doubts, 13 were Plentys and 11 were Just Enoughs.  Three of the four No Doubts would have made it out of all 30 parks.  Only three of the Plentys and none of the Just Enoughs had enough to get out of all 30.  The average for each type was 28, 26, and 20 for No Doubts, Plentys, and Just Enoughs, respectively.  Now for 2010:

Date	Pitcher	Team	Ballpark	Type/Luck	True Distance	# Park
8/18/2010	Floyd, Gavin	CWS	Target Field	JE	367	11
8/10/2010	Garcia, Freddy	CWS	U.S. Cellular Field	PL	412	27
7/26/2010	Marte, Victor	KC	Kauffman Stadium	JE	384	30
7/23/2010	Guthrie, Jeremy	BAL	Camden Yards	PL	411	5
7/6/2010	Tallet, Brian	TOR	Rogers Centre	JE	415	25
6/19/2010	Lidge, Brad	PHI	Citizens Bank Park	JE	419	24
5/14/2010	Burnett, A.J.	NYY	New Yankee Stadium	JE	402	30
4/6/2010	Saunders, Joe	LAA	Angels Stadium	JE/L	409	4

A different story.  No No Doubts, only two Plentys, and six Just Enoughs, including three that would have made it out of less than a dozen ballparks.  There was only home run that would have made it out of so few ballparks in 2009.  Thanks to this great tool, we can also see where Mauer’s home runs ended up in each season.

2009

2010

Only nine of Mauer’s 28 home runs in 2009 were hit to the right side of second base; only three to six more could be classified as left-center, meaning that Mauer hit 13 (or 16) home runs to left field in 2009.  Just looking at the chart, a lot of those look like Just Enoughs, traveling between 350 and 380 feet.  All of Mauer’s pulled home runs traveled at least 400 feet.  It doesn’t seem to me like Mauer did anything differently in 2009 than he did previously or that he’s doing now.  He has always hit the ball to all fields, and in 2009, some of those fly balls to left field found their way into the seats.  Joe Mauer doesn’t have to hit 25 to 30 home runs to be a valuable player; that he did it in 2009 (along with hitting .365 while playing catcher) made him an easy choice for MVP.  Given the extension he got before the 2010 season, he won’t have that long of a career as a backstop; the Twins are going to make sure he hits for as long as he can.

This article was originally published on Knuckleballs, written by Dan Hennessey.