Sorry, I was living on a Greek island for a month, and missed a lot of baseball and baseball related stuff
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Originally Posted by Grandstander
Adjusting one's swing can triple one's homerun rate? In '08 with a 38.8 % flyball rate, Bautista hit a homerun every 24.6 at bats. In '09 with a 42.1 % flyball rate, he homered every 25.8 at bats, a decline. And now advancing his flyball rate by 11% in '10 has resulted in a homerun every 11 at bats? The flyball rate is insufficient to explain the metamorphisis.
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He's actually only less than doubled his home run rate per fly ball
Bautista has had close to a full season's worth of at bats in 5 seasons (2006-2010)
Home run per fly ball %
2006 - 11.6%
2007 - 7.9%
2008 - 13.8%
2009 - 12.3%
2010 - 21.3%
Hitting more home runs per fly ball and hitting more fly balls will rapidly increase your number of home runs.
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Your thesis suggests that Bautista was always capable of this sort of production, but he wasn't swinging properly until this year, and that an adjustment in a swing is the difference between say Gary Mathews Jr. and Adam Dunn.
I'll need more to be persuaded of that.
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Joey Bats Goes Ballistic | FanGraphs Baseball
Bautista has also changed his swing to concentrate on hitting more balls to left-field
Hitters are often told to 'use all fields', this works for some hitters, not Bautista.
Bautista has never homered to RF. And puts up very poor numbers overall when going that way
His numbers to center are much better
but...
He is a beast to LF
Compare Bautista to the MLB average. To LF he is better than average, to CF he is about average, to RF he is much worse than average.
By concentrating on hitting more fly balls, and more fly balls to LF he is maximizing his his strength and minimizing his weakness.