2018 MLB Draft Guide: Understanding Contact Rates

As fantasy baseball prep season rolls on, the 2018 MLB Draft Guide continues to dive deeper into advanced analytics. Contact rates, simply enough, measure how hard a pitcher or hitter’s batted balls are hit with strength, power, emphasis, etc. You can insert your own adjective as seen fit. The usage and importance of contact rates vary between pitchers and hitters. Previously in the MLB Draft Guide we touched upon Ground Ball, Fly Ball, and Line Drive rates. Those statistics are better served in analyzing pitchers, but do have some use for hitters. On the opposite end of the spectrum, contact rates are better served analyzing hitters over pitchers. However, this piece won’t completely neglect pitchers, but it’ll focus mostly on the hitting side of fantasy baseball.

Brief Overview of Pitchers

For pitchers, with regards to contact rates, the objective is simple: give up as little hard contact as possible. A few of the pitchers that gave up the most hard contact last year also ranked among the pitchers with the highest fly ball rate and home run-to-fly ball (HR/FB) ratio. Below is a ranking of the 20 pitchers with the highest hard contact rate in addition to their fly ball rate and HR/FB numbers.

Now the purpose of this table is mostly to highlight the lack of a correlation between hard contact and fly ball or home run rates. The table is all over the place with hard contact pitchers giving up a high percentage of fly balls to others giving up significantly less. Pitchers giving up hard contact just don’t always translate to home runs. Just ten of the players listed above ranked in the top 20 for highest fly ball rate and only eight ranked in the top 20 in HR/FB ratio. Some of the guys ranked well into the 40’s or 50’s. So while hard contact doesn’t necessarily lead to home run damage, it does potentially still lead to hits. 11 of the pitchers listed above did rank inside the bottom 30 for WHIP, while nine of them even ranked in the bottom 20 in terms of opponent batting average. Below is a look at the same 20 pitchers from above in regards to WHIP and opponent batting average:

For what it’s worth, Robbie Ray shouldn’t exactly be avoided in fantasy this year because of the hard contact he gave up. You can see that fellow his teammate, Zack Greinke, also gave up a lot of hard contact. But both men will also benefit from the humidor in Chase Field, which will make the ball a bit heavier and allow them to get a better grip so the ball shouldn’t travel as far.

As mentioned at the top of this piece, you are better served using contact rates when considering hitters over pitchers. Contact rates vary so much on a yearly basis for pitchers and it’s very rare they can maintain consistent rates. Take a look at Justin Verlander for example. Verlander seems like a reliable pitcher to look at due to the fact that since 2006 he has 11 seasons with at least 185 innings pitched. So he offers a large enough sample size to look at his contact rates over his long and successful career.

The numbers have fluctuated over the years in Verlander’s prime from as low as 21.5% all the way up to 34.5%. In general this happens a lot with pitchers, but it won’t deter fantasy players from drafting high-end pitchers. Verlander had a strong 2017 season, regardless of the career-high hard hit rate. Verlander himself would cite an issue with the baseballs over the past couple seasons. More on that toward the end of this piece.

Contact Rates for Hitters

Hard contact applies more to hitters because it’s believed that it’s more a product of skill and talent. In some instances, like in pitching, there will be some outliers that have year-to-year numbers that fluctuate a bit. However, hard hit rates tend to stabilize better with hitters than pitchers. Here’s a list of the players with the 12 highest hard contact rates from 2017:

As you can see from above these guys have all become household names because of power. Some of them (Miguel Cabrera and Chris Davis) may be past their prime, but they’re still hitting the ball hard. Hard contact may not lead to fantastic plate discipline. Over half the guys in the list above failed to hit .250 last season. But eight of them did contribute at least 25 home runs as well. Typically the most elite power hitters in baseball will have hard contact rates around 40%, but even if they come in at 35% that’s still considered very good. The other six players to finish the season with a hard contact rate over 40% were Justin Upton, Nelson Cruz, Jose Abreu, Ryan Zimmerman, and Trevor Story. Story was the only one of those six players to not reach 30 home runs last year. For those sitting at home wondering where Giancarlo Stanton ranked never fret, he did rank 27^th in hard contact at 38.9% which is still fantastic. No one’s going to deny the fact he’s a great hitter. Remember, he did hit 59 home runs with a ridiculous .631 slugging percentage and he’s moving from a pitcher’s park to a hitter’s park in 2018.

How could you use hard contact rates when building your fantasy roster? Hard contact is a good way of explaining why a hitter may have seen an uptick in power. Take a look at Scooter Gennett. Gennett’s had the luxury of playing in two great hitter’s parks in his career: Miller Park and Great American Ballpark. In his time with Milwaukee he never put up monstrous power numbers. However, over his last two years his hard contact rate was on the rise. It was at a modest 22.1% in 2015, then 28.9% in 2016. He hit a total of 20 home runs between those two years. After signing on with Cincinnati the hard contact rose again to 34.4% and he went off for 27 home runs last year. While some may claim it was a fluke year because he also had a game where he hit four home runs, it’s not all that unrealistic for Gennett to reach 20-25 home runs this in 2018. Outside of Jose Altuve there aren’t many elite hitting options at second base. Why not target a guy like Gennett who has gradually hit the ball with more authority while some may write him off as a fluke?

Gennett’s former teammate, Zack Cozart, is a guy you could target in the mid-to-late rounds of your draft if you need power at shortstop. Sure he’s taking a ballpark downgrade going from the Reds to the Angels, but like Gennett, he also saw an increase in hard contact. Prior to 2016, Cozart never had a hard contact rate over 26%. In 2016 and 2017 it reached 31.2% and 30.8% respectively. To everyone’s surprise he hit a total of 40 home runs between the two years while even touting a slugging percentage of .548 in 2017. So if you see a guy who has experienced some improvement in his numbers, don’t just write it off as luck. Take a look at his contact rates and batted ball data. Once players reach the big leagues they are actively seeking to better themselves. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that some do improve their hard contact numbers.

While Cozart also improved his walk rate it’s worth mentioning again hard contact doesn’t translate to plate discipline. Chris Davis, Joey Gallo, Trevor Story, Aaron Judge, Khris Davis, and Eric Thames possessed high hard contact rates, but also had the six highest strikeout rates. Davis had the highest rate at 37.2% while Thames had the lowest of the six aforementioned players at 29.6%.

Now don’t be surprised if there’s some regression overall with hard contact in 2018. Though Major League Baseball has vehemently denied altering the baseballs to generate more offense, some pitchers have insisted the balls are “juiced.” Additionally if you look at the general trend of hard contact rates it’s hard to argue with them. Starting in 2014 there were just seven players with a hard contact rate of 40%. That increased slightly to eight in 2015, then to 13 in 2016, and then jumped to 18 players last season. Oddly enough in a couple separate studies by FiveThirtyEight.com and ESPN Sport Science it was discovered the cores of baseballs were somewhat less dense. This allows the ball to travel further, and that leads to an increase in hard hit contact. According to Fangraphs exit velocity is not used when calculating hard contact. Only hang time, trajectory, and where the ball lands are used in calculating contact rates. Major League Baseball has long denied the use of a juiced ball, but now that the evidence basically supports the arguments of Justin Verlander's Theory it’ll be worth keeping an eye on to see if hard contact rates regress a bit in the upcoming season.