Parts 1 and 2 of this Home Run Trends series dealt with batter count and pitch speed. In today’s Part 3, we’re going to look at pitch types and, specifically, which type of pitches result in home runs the most frequently. Again, thanks to BaseballSavant.com, this is a really easy find. Here are the results for 2015 so far.
Probably to no one’s surprise, home runs are hit by far the most frequently on four-seam fast balls, with sliders, two-seam fast balls, and changeups all over 10% as well. In case you’re wondering what an “eephus” pitch is, according to the wonderful research website Wikipedia, it is a “very low speed junk pitch” and it is sometimes thrown as low as 40mph. It’s obviously not a very common pitch – only 238 on the year (117 of those by Odrisamer Despaigne) – but can you imagine trying to hit a ball in the low 40’s after just seeing one in the 90’s?
Anyway, it’s definitely useful to know what sort of pitches guys generally throw and this is an easy way to get a leg up on the casual DFS player. Most people with a bit of MLB knowledge can tell you that R.A. Dickey is a knuckleballer, but do you know who throws sliders the most in the league? (Answer: Tyson Ross on nearly 46% of his pitches.)
This information is very easily accessible, both on BaseballSavant.com and FanGraphs.com. For example, here’s a screenshot from FanGraphs:
Fast balls aren’t broken down into four and two-seam on FanGraphs, but that data is on Baseball Savant in the PITCHf/x search part of the site. Here’s a search for pitchers this year who have thrown the most four-seam fast balls on the year, along with what percentage of their total pitches that entails:
Finding home runs in GPPs is imperative. Targeting fast-ball pitchers, while certainly not the only important factor in finding home runs, is definitely a useful part of the equation. Part of this is probably somewhat factored into Vegas lines, but I’m all about learning the “why’s” of DFS research. So the Red Sox are projected to score lots of runs in a particular game; why is that? Sure, the easy answer is they have good batters or they’re going against a bad pitcher, but because of site scoring – home runs, not necessarily just runs period, are important – diving deeper could definitely lead to DFS value.
So should you always target only fast-ball pitchers or take guys who hit fast balls well? Of course not, that’s why daily fantasy sports are so fun. I would never advise drawing a hard line with anything in DFS – that’s a surefire way to not adapt and fall behind in your play. But can stuff like this be a good part of the research and possibly be a deciding factor between two batters? I think some of these “deep dive” data studies can be very helpful if used in that light, especially given the fact that this sort of stuff isn’t priced into either site salaries or the the daily fantasy market (as in tournament ownership).
