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Rick Lucks breaks down how to use Pull% to project and validate a hitter's power and batting average as his 2024 series on making sabermetrics more accessible to fantasy baseball managers continues.
We have previously determined that fantasy managers generally prefer batters to hit the ball into the air to have a chance at a home run. Yet, all fly balls are not equal for this purpose. A player can maximize his power production by pulling the ball in the air.
One way to illustrate this is to look at league-wide HR/FB by batted ball direction. Flies to the opposite field seldom found the cheap seats in 2023, posting a HR/FB of just 3.9%. Flies to dead center fared slightly better (8.4% HR/FB), but pulled fly balls were clearly the most productive (32.6% HR/FB). The exact numbers vary from year to year, but every season illustrates this trend.
Raw Pull% is found on the Batted Ball graph on a player's FanGraphs page fifth from the top, but that number is virtually useless. As we will see below, Pull% has to be considered by batted ball type (grounder, fly, or liner) to be a useful fantasy tool, forcing managers to turn to the second of three tables under the Splits tab at the top. Let's take a closer look at how Pull% can help you win your fantasy leagues in 2024!
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How to Interpret Pull%
In 2023, there were a total of 5,868 homers hit. Of those, 3,750 went to the batter's pull side (about 64%), 1,421 went to center field (24%), and the remaining 697 were opposite-field shots (12%). This distribution is fairly consistent year-to-year, so it's safe to count on something similar going forward.
This makes intuitive sense. Pulled baseballs tend to be hit with the highest exit velocity, making it easier for them to leave the stadium. The power alleys next to the foul poles on either side of the ballpark also present the shortest distance to a HR. If a player's HR/FB dramatically improves, a change in approach involving more pulled baseballs could help explain why.
Mookie Betts provides a good illustration of this kind of change. Betts set personal full-season bests with 39 HR and a 16.7% HR/FB last year. An increased Pull% on fly balls helps explain this change as he pulled 32.1% of them against a career rate of 27.5.
To be clear, the number of fly balls pulled by a batter is prone to random fluctuations and may not indicate anything with predictive value. Boston's Xander Bogaerts appeared in this space in the past, and his Pull% on fly balls is pretty much a random number generator. Still, a higher Pull% on fly balls can help explain why a power outbreak happened and could prove sustainable if the batter continues to pull flies.
Did the 2023 Shift Ban Work?
Pulled flies are good, but many fantasy managers cringe when they hear the word "pull" because they envision infield shifts eating their batting average alive. Rob Manfred banned shifts before the 2023 campaign, and now it's time to quantify what that did.
At first glance, Manfred won. MLB hitters hit .300 against the shift last season, up from .288 in 2022. MLB hitters hit .299 without a shift in 2023, down from .303 in 2022. It didn't matter if teams shifted or not as the resulting batting average was virtually the same. The shift is dead!
Except it isn't. FanGraphs always categorized shifts as "traditional" or "non-traditional." Traditional shifts limited MLB hitters to a .282 average over 66,942 PAs in 2022. The new rules reduced their effectiveness, and hitters hit .294 in 65,786 PAs against traditional shifts in 2023. There were slightly fewer of them, but they still shaved five points of batting average compared to straight-up defenses.
Non-traditional shifts were never particularly effective as batters hit .348 against them across 7,725 PAs in 2022. The new rules rendered them even less effective, with 2023 batters hitting .375 in 6,631 PAs against non-traditional shifts. The overall shift numbers are skewed by these wildly ineffective non-traditional shifts, masking the fact that traditional shifts still work.
The days of every player seeing a shift are likely over, but extreme-pull guys will still lose hits to infield shifts going forward. Furthermore, production against the shift is likely to decline from 2023 levels as teams realize some players shouldn't be shifted while non-traditional shifts should be abandoned. Shifts should still be a consideration in batting average forecasts.
The Problem with Raw Pull%
Of all pulled baseballs in 2023, 57.4% were grounders. Pulled grounders might have a higher average exit velocity than other ground balls, but they will never turn into home runs. In contrast, only 22.7% of pulled baseballs were classified as fly balls last season. Ideally, fantasy managers want their hitters to pull fly balls while limiting how often they roll grounders to their pull side.
This is much easier said than done, as all players pull many more grounders than flies. Let's consider Freddie Freeman as an example. His raw 2023 Pull% of 36.5 was much lower than the league-average 41.1, but he pulled 51.6% of his grounders compared to 21.8% of his flies. At first glance, you might think that Freeman was making himself vulnerable to shifting without significantly boosting his power potential.
That assumption would be wrong. The shift was designed for batters who pull roughly 70% of their ground balls, and Freeman scorched it for a .388 batting average in 374 PAs last year. He "only" hit .327 in 113 PAs without a shift, making Freeman a guy who should see fewer shifts in the future.
Freeman's Pull% on fly balls was slightly lower than the league's mark of 22.7%, but he has enough raw power to overcome that. Pulling more grounders than flies is far from a death sentence.
Conclusion
To sum up, pulled fly balls tend to perform better than other fly balls. This means that pulling more flies can produce an increased HR/FB, but you should never use raw Pull% to determine this. Most pulled balls are hit on the ground, where all of the exit velocity in the world cannot turn them into home runs.
Therefore, you should filter a player's Pull% by batted ball type to produce the most reliable results. If you're interested in learning more about the role of advanced analytics in today's fantasy environment, stay tuned!
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