#38 What we hope to learn from Statcast swing path metrics

Plus: Cal Raleigh en route to 66 homers?

The Opener

1. On Thursday, the Dodgers postponed their plan to announce support of immigrant communities in Los Angeles in response to federal agents showing up at the ballpark. But, credit to the team, they didn’t wait long. On Friday, they pledged “$1 million toward direct financial assistance for families of immigrants impacted by recent events in the region.” It’s a little euphemistic and a little, well, little. But it is admirably responsive to the feedback from the fanbase.

2. Elly De La Cruz vomited at shortstop over the weekend, playing through blistering heat wave conditions in St. Louis, but later hit the go-ahead homer in that same game. The Reds, trying to break out of the swirl of .500-ish clubs, have top pitching prospect Chase Burns making his major league debut Tuesday against the Yankees.

3. Seventy-three-year-old Angels manager and fungoes legend Ron Washington is stepping back for an indeterminate amount of time due to health issues. A bummer of a news story and we don’t even get an insightfully brash Wash quote to go with it.

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Cal Raleigh is currently on pace for 66 home runs.

HI, it’s Hannah and I’m getting invested. We’re approaching the All-Star Break and I’ve decided that the storyline I’m most interested in following for the second half of the season is this: Will a switch-hitting catcher, previously best known for his rear-referencing nickname, who plays half his games in one of the least hitter-friendly parks and all of his games using a baseball that MLB itself has acknowledged is “deader” this season, top the single-season American League home run record set by one Aaron James Judge in 2022? A record that had previously stood for 61 years, toppled by a literal giant within the sport, threatened a mere three years later by a guy who will make his first All-Star game this season and who should seriously consider using Sir Mix-a-lot’s iconic opus as his walk-up song.

In the Mariners’ series in Chicago over the weekend, Raleigh hit two home runs on Friday, one on Saturday, and one Sunday. In doing so, he passed Johnny Bench for the most home runs by a catcher before the break and set the record for the most home runs by a switch hitter before the break. As it stands, he has 31 home runs, the most in the majors. Four more than second-place Judge, who is having perhaps his best season of an already legendary career.

Here’s a benchmark to keep an eye on in the coming weeks, as noted by MLB.com:

The record for most homers before the All-Star break is 39 set by Barry Bonds in 2001, and Raleigh will have 20 games to reach that mark after Sunday. Bonds, of course, set the home run record that season with 73.

Probably he will not do it. Not 74, or 70, or 63 home runs. Probably not because basically no one ever has. Probably not because he will cool off; no one is as good as their hottest streak all season. Probably not because catchers get tired or hurt or both. Raleigh has played in all but one of the Mariners’ games this season, he’s caught more than 75% of those. It’s a bazillion degrees in June and July and August will be hotter.

But I’m rooting for this to happen. Not because I dislike Judge (I don’t¹) or because I like Raleigh (although I do!) but because it would be fucking bonkers. This is not an esoteric record, not wonky or flukey or fleeting. Without dipping into debate, the “clean” home run record set by Judge just a couple years ago is weighty. It’s simple and substantial and something casual fans can track without having to update their understanding of what constitutes value within the game.

A home run chase — even one that ultimately falls short — would be fun. It creates daily stakes in a sport that plays every damn day. We’ve been writing and talking a lot about what it takes to mint a new main character in baseball — how do you get the public to care about who’s good if it’s not the guy they already know is good or the guy who set a contract record? If Raleigh is still on pace for 60-some home runs in a month, in two months, in three months? That’ll do it.

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What Statcast’s swing path metrics might teach us

by Zach Crizer

The latest Statcast metrics to hit the public sphere track the bat, adding the hitter-side yin to the ingrained yang of tracking the ball. Per usual, this suite of new metrics will require some time to produce fully coherent stories, but it’s an interesting time to sketch out some basic shapes of understanding.

Where exit velocity and launch angle are pretty intuitive hitter results metrics to visualize and grasp, these new numbers — specifically the swing path metrics released in May — diagram the split-second process of how the bat comes to meet the ball.

To give a very, very basic rundown of some of these metrics:

• Attack angle measures the vertical direction the bat is traveling at the instant it connects with the ball (or crosses paths with it, in the case of a whiff). The league average is 10 degrees.

• Swing path (or tilt) is about the path of the bat in the 40 milliseconds before that point of contact. If you envision the tip of the bat leaving a trail, and then hardening into a frisbee, this metric tells you the angle the frisbee would be floating relative to the ground. As MLB.com puts it, 0 degrees would be totally flat, and 90 degrees would be a golf swing. The league average is 32 degrees.

• Attack direction tells us about horizontal direction — pull side or opposite field — and in essence tell us about timing. A hitter who is always out in front will have a very strong pull attack direction. The league average is 2 degrees to the pull side.

With these numbers, we might move closer to understanding the minute, often inscrutable variations that separate the swings of All-Star regulars from Quad-A bats. As Patrick Dubuque wrote of swing path at Baseball Prospectus, “It’s the closest we get to some sense of identity, or intention, separate from what the pitcher and the pitch are necessarily doing.”

I wanted to take a second to spotlight some great early analysis using the metrics, and direct your attention toward some big picture drwhat we might eventually learn.