Geoff Burke-Imagn Photos
We’re 10 years or so into the launch angle revolution, and the reasoning behind it hasn’t modified a lot. Groundballs have a .228 wOBA this season, whereas all different balls in play are at .462. Hit the ball on the bottom, and also you’re Christian Vázquez. Hit it within the air, and also you’re Aaron Decide. Gamers are gearing their swings for harm within the air. They’re optimizing their bat path for an upward trajectory. They’re assembly the ball farther out in entrance. They’re trying to hit the underside third of the ball. Realizing all this, I doubt you’d be stunned to study that 2025 is shaping as much as set the report for lowest groundball fee since 2002, when Sports activities Information Options first began monitoring such issues. However you is likely to be stunned to study simply how excessive the shift has been.
To date, I’ve talked about all the explanations that batters have tried to place the ball within the air extra, however that’s solely half the story. 5 years in the past, Ben Clemens wrote an awesome article wherein he tried to find out whether or not batters or pitchers exert extra management over groundball charges. After separating the batters from the pitchers, he break up every group into quartiles based mostly on their 2018 groundball charges after which seemed on the outcomes when every group confronted off in 2019. He discovered that the impact was almost equivalent. If you moved the batter up one quadrant, the groundball fee of the brand new pairing went up by a mean of 5.2 proportion factors. When the pairing moved up a quadrant within the pitcher pool, the groundball fee went up by 4.8 proportion factors. Realizing that, let’s not blame this all on the batters. Are pitchers as accountable as batters for the shrinking groundball fee throughout the majors? Let’s begin by updating my 2023 league-wide replace on pitch combine.
The most important modifications over the past 10 years have been the well-documented enhance in breaking balls and the rise in four-seamers usurping sinker utilization. Nonetheless, these numbers have kind of stabilized in recent times. Most lately, although, we’ve seen upticks within the utilization of cutters and offspeed pitches, therefore all that enterprise in regards to the Yr of the Cutter/Splitter/Kick Change. Offspeed pitches, which drop and fade to the pitcher’s arm aspect are normally thrown towards opposite-handed batters. They path solely sinkers by way of their capability to generate groundballs. If this graph had been all we needed to go on, we would count on a slight uptick in groundball fee this season, because of the rise of offspeed pitches, as an alternative of the opposite approach round. However, after all, this isn’t all we now have to go on.
As you certainly know, pitchers aren’t essentially chasing groundballs. They’re way more involved with chasing whiffs, and people two targets are generally at odds with each other. For instance, pitch peak has an actual impact on batted ball sort. Right here’s how issues have averaged out for four-seamers this yr: People who turned grounders crossed the plate at a peak of two.61 toes, line drives at 2.67, fly balls at 2.76, and popups at 2.91. We’re solely speaking a couple of unfold of 4 inches in whole, nevertheless it paints a really clear image. On the similar time, four-seamers earn extra whiffs on the high of the zone, so pitchers are throwing them larger and better, and which means fewer groundballs. Right here’s how all pitch heights have modified.
As anticipated, four-seamers are coming in ever larger, however over the course of this decade, each pitch sort apart from offspeed pitches has additionally been coming in larger. There are logical causes for this. Pitchers are more and more instructed to belief their stuff and let it rip, aiming for the middle of the strike zone and letting the motion take it to the sting. The rise of the sweeper and the bullet slider implies that the typical slider has much less drop than it used to. The excessive sinker is not only a mistake pitch. Pitch peak positively isn’t the one cause for the drop-off in grounders, however each single pitch sort has seen its groundball fee decline from 2021 to 2025.
Put all this collectively, and we’ve received a recipe for an enormous shift in general batted ball composition. To date this season, the A’s pitching employees has a 36.8% groundball fee in accordance with Sports activities Information Options, which has been monitoring these items since 2002. That’s the bottom groundball fee SIS has ever recorded. Second place belongs to the 2025 Blue Jays, and fourth and tenth place additionally belong to 2025 groups. That’s 4 groups from the present season within the high 10. On the hitting aspect, two groups from this season, the Tigers and the Cubs, rank within the high 10. In keeping with Baseball Savant, this would be the fourth yr in a row and the eighth yr in 10 with a record-low groundball fee. I’ve been saving this for the very finish, so check out this graph and prepare to do your greatest Sarah Langs impression.
Every thing we’ve lined to this point is intuitive sufficient, however whenever you mix all of it, you get an awfully sharp decline. In keeping with Statcast, from 2015 to 2025, the league-wide groundball fee has dropped from 47% to 42.3%. In different phrases, 10% of all groundballs have and became air balls. Batters and pitchers are each contributing to it in their very own approach, nevertheless it’s a giant shift, and so long as the present tendencies maintain, the one mitigating consider sight is the very slight enhance in offspeed pitches in recent times. The battle between pitchers and hitters is all the time evolving, with changes and counter-adjustments percolating all through the league. Batters steepen their swings, so pitchers assault them with excessive fastballs, so batters begin swinging above the place they count on excessive pitches to return in, so pitchers begin throwing excessive sinkers, and so forth. The factor is, all of these changes have tilted towards extra air balls and fewer groundballs. We’ll have to attend and see what the following adjustment brings, however for the time being, it certain appears like groundball charges will solely proceed to fall.
