The names on the list illustrate its exclusivity. It includes three Hall of Famers: Ernie Banks, Barry Larkin and Cal Ripken Jr. Alex Rodriguez, Troy Tulowitzki and Francisco Lindor, who joined just last year, are also on it. Only 18 players in major league history have hit 30 homers in a single season while playing most of their games at shortstop.
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Didi Gregorius could soon be one of them.
The Yankees shortstop broke out last season despite missing much of April with a shoulder injury. In 136 games, he played strong defense at a premium position and established career highs in RBIs (87), OPS+ (106) and homers (25), eclipsing Derek Jeter’s franchise record for shortstops. The playoffs brought more of the same. Gregorius homered in the wild card game against the Twins. It was an appetizer for his two-homer performance in Game 5 of the Yankees’ division series triumph over the Indians.
It would be easy to assume regression for 2018. But a closer look at Gregorius’ batted-ball profile reveals a tantalizing possibility that even more untapped pop exists in Gregorius’ bat, and that he could add even more power to a lineup with Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton that might challenge the 1997 Mariners for the single-season home run record (264).
“I’m not going to say every player in the big leagues is going to hit .300, because it’s hard,” Gregorius said after Game 5, as he acknowledged adjustments made to his swing. “I’m not going to say every player in the big league is going to hit 30 homers because it’s not easy to hit 30 homers. I didn’t expect to hit 25 homers after missing a month. I’m playing the game. If I hit a home run, I hit a home run. I’m not going out to try to hit home runs every time.”
Gregorius may not be trying to hit homers every time. However, it’s clear that like many hitters in baseball, he’s made a concerted effort to take to the air. According to Baseball Savant, he significantly increased his average launch angle on batted balls. It jumped from 13.5 degrees in 2016 to 17.6 degrees in 2017.
But to further understand the role of launch angle, The Athletic’s Eno Sarris recently worked with Andrew Perpetua, who devised the concept of Peak Vertical Angle. From Sarris’ explanation:
A batter’s peak VA is the angle at which he hits the most pitches the hardest. It’s not the angle at which he hit his hardest ball, it’s the place where his hardest hit balls cluster. Batters generally cluster between 10 and 20 degrees — connecting well usually happens in good angles, after all — but clustering closer to 20 is good for power and line drives, and clustering closer to 10 is better for speedsters who’d like to make the most of their legs.
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Sarris goes on to note that baseball as a whole has increased its Peak VA by an average of five degrees over the last three years. The Yankees were among the clubs that saw a below-average jump in that span, suggesting room for improvement. Gregorius exemplifies that potential. In his case, simply inching a bit closer to that magical clustering point of 20 degrees could put him on the path to 30 homers:
So, will Gregorius continue revamping his swing in accordance with the air-ball evolution? Though it’s clear that the Yankees have seen the light — Brett Gardner’s career-high 21 homers in 2017 also came with a jump in launch angle — general manager Brian Cashman declined to offer specifics.
“We are always open to continue to educate ourselves with anything that’s available within our means that we can apply, teach and incorporate to improve our players within legal means,” Cashman said last week. “We’ll just leave it at that. But I wouldn’t want to speak to anything proprietary.”
Perhaps Cashman and his lieutenants have approached the issue a bit differently. As Sarris noted, the Yankees may lag behind the league when it comes to improving Peak Vertical Angle. But they have compensated partly by brute strength. At 91.7 mph, they ranked seventh in baseball in fly ball exit velocity last season. Indeed, there’s no replacement for hitting the ball hard.
Of course, putting the ball in the air is no panacea. As with all the sweeping changes taking place in baseball, it would be a mistake to believe that all the consequences are fully understood. The current run-scoring environment could shift — and quickly. It wasn’t that long ago (2014) when the industry was grousing about depressed home run rates. There’s even an argument to be made that for some players, the fly ball revolution has done more harm than good.
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One big league executive who runs a team with several beneficiaries of the so-called fly ball revolution cautioned against teaching the method too early in players’ development, when they may not be physically mature enough to reap the rewards of swinging for the fences. After all, hitting for more power is the result of a combination of launch angle and exit velocity.
In a way, Gregorius embodies some of that hesitation. During his breakout season in 2017, his average exit velocity on balls in the air was 87.5 mph. While it was an improvement over the previous year, it’s still below average in relation to the rest of the league, and well below other sluggers in the Yankees lineup. Nevertheless, he hit the ball hard enough to take advantage of a corresponding improvement in his Peak Vertical Angle.
Timing may also be on Gregorius’ side. He’s entering his age 28 season, still within his window of peak athleticism, a requirement for those hoping to successfully marry more lift with more power. As it stands, the Steamer projection system has him hitting 19 homers. Based on WAR, he’d rank as one of the top five shortstops in the American League. Surely, he’d be a candidate for a contract extension.
The Yankees have built dynasties by slotting standout offensive players at positions typically reserved for defense. Whether he hits 30 homers or falls back from 25, it’s clear that Gregorius has shed the all-glove label that followed him from Arizona to New York. Joining the same club as Banks, Larkin, Ripken, Tulowitzki, Lindor, and A-Rod would only drive home his transformation.
“There’s a lot of times guys put a label on a person without letting the person develop . . . This guy can only play defense or this guy can only play offense,” Gregorius told reporters after his Game 5 outburst last October. “But you don’t know how hard a guy works to get where he wants to be, to stay where he wants to be and to keep making adjustments every year to try to get better.”
(Top photo: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
