Batters on a Diet: Sweet-Spot% Fallers

Nate Green examines hitters who saw their sweet-spot percentage (SwSp%) decrease in 2019 and determines if they can revound in 2020 to help their fantasy baseball value.

Last week, we talked about players who increased their proclivity to hit the ball between eight and 32 degrees in a stat known as sweet spot percentage. This week, we focus on some players whose sweet spot percentage decreased.

But not all decreases in a stat are made equal. The players below all saw their sweet spot percentage decrease, as well as their overall production. But their experiences otherwise differed greatly. Examples:

• Overall launch angle may have increased
• Overall launch angle may have decreased, but less significantly than SwSp%
• Their exit velocity/hard hit percentage may have decreased far more than any launch angle issues
• Their sweet spot percentage may still have been decent, but they relied on it enough that their overall offense still suffered
• Their overall 2019 production differed greatly; some stayed good, some became bad, some became bad, but still got good results

While experiences may vary -- as we said in the first part of this two-parter, it's not the be-all and end-all -- the fact that all of these players lost both sweet spot percentage and overall value does show the importance of the stat.

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Andrelton Simmons (SS, LAA)

Simmons is an extreme example of how much finding the sweet spot can matter. Even though his launch angle increased in 2019, his sweet spot percentage decreased. As a result, his barrel rate and x-Stats decreased as well.

Simmons' low K rate has always made batting average one of his better statistics, but his dismal SwSp% contributed to a whopping 50-point decrease in xBA and a drop from .292 to .264 in his actual average, with a BABIP decline from .300 to .277.

Simmons is now on the wrong side of 30. While his defense remains great, his DRS of 12 last year was actually a career-low. If his defense falters much more and he can't start finding the 8-32 angle range to up that BA, his leash will be short in 2020.

Wilson Ramos (C, NYM)

For years, Ramos has hit the ball low, never exceeding 5.9 degrees in the Statcast era. Last year was a career-low in both launch angle (exactly zero) and sweet spot percentage, the latter at 26%.

In the past, Ramos has produced reasonable offense despite the launch angle concerns, in part because he found the sweet spot more like a third of the time, peaking at 34.2% in 2018. But if his average angle is going to be in the low double-digits, he has to find double-digits closer to that one-third of the time than the one-fourth.

One of these years, Ramos will no longer be able to catch. He's 32 now. You don't have to worry about that this season -- even if he did stop catching but kept playing, he'd be C-eligible -- but when that time finally does come, realize that for years now, his position is what has made him a useful fantasy player.

Tommy Pham (OF, SD)

Pham was a monster when making contact in pretty much every way in 2018. In '19, he was still solid, but not nearly as good.

His 6.7-degree launch angle in 2018 was the least outstanding element that year, but it still came with a quite good 38.7 SwSp%. If you look at his '19 launch angle, it went down some, but his sweet spot percentage is what really cratered.

Pham had by far the best 2019 at the plate of anyone in this article, hitting .273/.369/.450 in a 21/25 HR/SB season.

Matt Carpenter (3B, STL)

Launch angle was significantly less of a factor in Carpenter's 2019 decline than his exit velocity. Nonetheless, it played a role as his entire contact profile collapsed.

Although he found the sweet spot less often, down about seven percent (16% relative to the '18 figure), he had many more problems making solid contact, with a hard-hit percentage down over 13 points (30% relative) and a barrel rate down six (a whopping 43% relative).

Carpenter still has two declines to fight. Even if he staves off a further exit velocity decline, it can't come at the further expense of launch angle, or his problems will continue at age 34.

Daniel Murphy (1B/2B, COL)

Murphy remained excellent at finding the sweet spot, but for a declining player, losing any attribute matters. It's become especially important for Murphy, who stopped hitting the ball hard in 2018 but maintained an ability to make good contact by x-Stats. In '19, that stopped too.

Murphy's front-line production stayed reasonable in 2019, although it did decline: .279/.328/.452. However, he did that with home games at Coors, and the underlying data became extremely concerning. Launch angle/sweet spot is all Murphy has left, and if it declines much further, he'll be done as a useful fantasy asset even with the home park advantage. Given where his defense is, he has much less room for offensive sputtering than, say, Simmons.

Conclusion

Each of these players -- except maybe Pham -- has multiple warning signs entering 2020. There aren't too many examples of players who lose in sweet spot percentage and gain overall.

Thus concludes our journey through the ups and downs of sweet spot percentage. The chicken and egg question -- is sweet spot percentage a symptom or cause of a struggling hitter -- was beyond scope here. But if launch angle is a cause, as it's usually discussed as, then sweet spot percentage likely is too.

Either way, the main upshot is, sweet spot percentage will tell you things that launch angle alone doesn't. Do not ignore this lesser-known Statcast measurement in your analysis of players.

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