The Top Elevating Team in Baseball Is…
…the New York — not the mashing Yankees, but the Mets. Unfortunately I had a hardware crash so I currently can’t pull reports from Statcast and thus I now take ground-ball rate as a measure for elevation instead of launch angle. I prefer grounder rate over fly-ball rate because that tells you the “off the ground rate” (100 – gb%). Since liners are also very good I think they should be included.
The Mets have faced a lot of heat from sabermetric fans and sometimes for good reason, like their lowish OBP, neglecting defense and handling injuries.
But there is one thing they have done for a couple years now and that is elevate the ball.
In 2015 they had the third-lowest grounder rate in the majors at 41.9%, only trailing the Astros and Yankees. That means 58.1% of their balls were off the ground.
In 2016, after losing the poster boy of the fly-ball revolution, Daniel Murphy, they improved their grounder rate to a clearly league-leading 39.5% (almost 2 points on the second-place Rays). That improved their off-the-ground rate to over 60%.
In 2017, despite a lot of injuries, the Mets have even improved their GB rate to 38.2%, but they’ve been exceeded by the A’s.
Overall, the Mets clearly lead the Statcast era with a 40.3 GB%, almost 2 points ahead of the second-place Tigers.
The elevation also leads to power output, as they are 7th in ISO (only NL team ahead of them is the Rockies) and 6th in HR (top NL team, even ahead of the Rockies). Granted, they are only 21st in OBP, and negative in defense, so they are not without flaw, but there is no doubt they were built to elevate and mash, and that is by design.
Now did the Mets teach that or acquire elevation?
Looking at some long-time Mets:
Curtis Granderson
2013(Yankees): 33.8%, 2014: 34.2%, 2015: 30.8% , 2016: 36.4%, 2017: 31.3%
Granderson was a FB hitter when the Mets got him.
Daniel Murphy
We all know about him. 50% grounders in 2012 and improved that to 42% in 2013 and then more.
Lucas Duda
Always was a FB hitter with sub-40% grounder rates since the minors.
Yoenis Cespedes
Was a FB hitter when they got him (upper 30s grounder rate) but became a more extreme FB hitter in NY. This year he is running an insane sub-30% grounder rate.
Travis d’Arnaud
He started out in the mid-40s and then had some ups and downs with a very bad 50% rate last year, but this year he is down to 39%. We will have to wait to see whether that is sustainable.
Michael Conforto
Sightly improved his grounder rate over his career from low-40s to now high-30s.
And then there is Jay Bruce who was acquired as a fly-ball hitter and became an extreme fly-ball hitter.
It seems like elevation was mostly acquired, but there are or were players who learned to lift more with the Mets. I assume it is at least encouraged by the Mets that hitters hit everything in the air.
The Mets have earned their share of criticism with some things they have done, but when it comes to the fly-ball revolution, it is they who deserve credit as the leaders of the fly-ball revolution, and probably moreso than the saber-darling teams like the Cubs or A’s, who are usually cited when talking about the fly-ball revolution. I’m not saying those teams did not target air balls, as the A’s have the 5th-lowest and the Cubs have the 7th-lowest grounder rates during the 2015 to 2017 to date time frame, but the leaders have clearly been the Mets.