The Twins Led the League in Optimized Contact. So How Do They Get Better Next Year?

So let’s start at the beginning. Going by weighted on-base percentage (wOBA, if you’re in a hurry), here’s the value of each kind of batted ball during the 2024 season.

• Groundball: .228
• Line Drive: .642
• Fly Ball: .420
• Popup: .014

Fly balls are good. Line drives are great. So long as you don’t pop the ball up, hitting the ball in the air is where it’s at. Let’s get a little bit more granular, now, and break down those air balls by spray angle.

• Pull: .792
• Straightaway: .427
• Opposite. 362

All three are still great, but pulling the ball in the air is even more where it's at; it's where "where it's at" is at. There are two big reasons for that: First, you tend to hit the ball harder when you pull it. Second, center field is where the fence is deepest and the best outfielders play. Even though pulled balls are hit harder, this season, the average pulled home run was hit at an exit velocity of 104.2 mph, while the average home run to center was hit 105.9 mph. It just takes more mustard to hit it out to center. Maybe you hate the focus on power and launch angle that has taken over the game, for aesthetic reasons. That’s completely understandable. But the numbers above are too clear to ignore. They’re why everybody is trying to pull the ball in the air.

So far, I’m guessing I haven’t surprised you, but maybe you will be surprised to learn that in 2024, no team pulled the ball in the air as much as the Twins. The Twins pulled 819 line drives and fly balls, which represented 7.2% of their swings, 13.4% of their total plate appearances, and 19.3% of their batted balls. All four of those numbers were the highest in baseball. Everybody is trying to pull the ball in the air, and the Twins were the most successful team in the league, not just this season, but in the entirety of the Statcast Era. Since Statcast started measuring these things in 2015, that 13.4% mark is the highest in baseball. In second place? The 2019 Twins, who pulled the ball in the air in 13.1% of their plate appearances, and who inspired Matt Trueblood to coin the statistical phrase "Bomba Rate".

In today’s game, Isaac Paredes is the poster boy for pulling the ball in the air. Doing so allows him to hit the ball out of the ballpark even when he doesn’t get all of it. In 2024, Paredes’s average home run was hit at just 99.8 mph. He was the only player in baseball who hit more than 15 homers and whose homers had an average exit velocity under 100 mph. That’s his specialty, and when Paredes put the ball in the play, he pulled it in the air 28.9% of the time, the highest rate of all qualified players. But you know what the Twins specialized in last season? Players who didn’t get enough playing time to qualify. If we drop the batted ball minimum to 200, Byron Buxton jumps into first place at 29.1%. That’s right, higher than Paredes.