Ray’s Ramblings: The Homer Game

LEAGUE LEADERS

Nolan Arenado leads baseball with 11 homers, one more than Bryce Harper and Trevor Story. Thoughts on all three follow.

Arenado has gone for an 11.4 HR/FB ratio in 2014 to 18.5 last season and 22.0 this year. Hard for me to totally buy into the current rate. More intriguing though is the fact that Arenado keeps hitting fly balls. In 2014 he had a 42 percent fly ball rate. Last year he had a 44 percent fly ball rate. This year the mark is 54 percent. If he keeps hitting fly balls at that rate he could repeat the 42 homers he hit last season. At the same time, Arenado isn’t going to hit .300 if he hits so many balls upward.

Harper, like Arenado, has really jacked up his fly ball rate. He owns a 36 percent mark for his career and this year the rate is up at 54.2 percent. He could hit 50 homers if the mark stays that high but know that he’s never hit 40 percent to this point with his fly ball ratio.  

Story has a 32.3 percent HR/FB ratio. No one in baseball matched that mark last season. Story won’t hold on to it. Not happening. Over his last 20 games he’s gone deep three times.  If he kept that pace for 140 games he would hit 21 homers. I can buy that pace. Not what we’ve seen overall however, what we’ve seen the last three weeks.

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HOMER TO FLY BALL RATIOS

The league average in HR/FB ratio is usually in the 9-10 percent range.

Guys establish their own rates. Some always under 10 percent, some always over it.

Using a three year rolling look, as in the last three seasons, is a pretty accurate way to predict what a guy will do this year. That means if a guy has a 15 percent mark from 2013-15, and he’s sporting a 5.2 percent right now, that the odds are very good that a significant power increase is coming.

Nelson Cruz led baseball last year at 30.3 percent in the HR/FB category.

Only four men in baseball had a HR/FB mark of 25 percent last year.

Only 13 men in baseball had a HR/FB mark of 20 percent last year.

Bottom line is that a mark over 25 percent is elite and a mark over 20 percent is outstanding.

There are currently seven men who are over 30 percent in 2016. None of them will continue along at their current pace.

The dip in HR/FB rate could be especially damaging to Goldschmidt, Souza and Santana. Here is why. None of that trio of batters has a fly ball rate of 30 percent. The league average is usually 34-35 percent meaning that the trio is underperforming the league average – substantially: Souza (28.0), Goldschmidt (26.9) and Santana (15.3). The only vaunted power hitter of the group is obviously Goldy who owns a 34.5 percent HR/FB ratio for his career. The mark has been between 32.8 and 36.5 percent each of the last five years. It will climb as the games pile up.

Overall there are 15 men who have a mark of 25 percent.

There are 34 batters with a mark of at least 20 percent.

Some quick hitters about that group.

I talk about Jose Altuve's absurd early season pace in this episode of the Daily Dive. 

Seth Smith has a mark of 25.0 percent. He’s never had a mark of 14 percent in nine previous seasons.

Neil Walker has a mark of 23.1 percent. If you add together his HR/FB marks the last two seasons you end up with a total of 23.8 percent.

Leonys Martin has a mark of 20.8 percent. The last three seasons he hasn’t even hit 8.5 percent.

Is this the breakout for Eric Hosmer? His 20.0. percent HR/FB ratio is light years ahead of 12.1 percent, his career mark. Last season’s rate of 15.1 percent was the first time he was over 13.5 percent in a season by the way. Unfortunately, Hosmer has a 24.1 percent fly ball rate which would be a career worst. He just doesn’t lift the ball enough to be a big homer bat.

At the other end of the spectrum… the guys that are struggling.

Ryan Zimmermann has a 4.2 percent HR/FB ratio. Only once in his career has the mark been below 10.9 percent (career 13.4).

Adam Jones is messed up, he ain’t healthy, but this slow start has still been pretty extreme. Jones owns a 15.3 percent HR/FB ratio for his career. The mark has been at least 15.8 percent each of the last five seasons. Pretty sure he’s not going to languish way down at 5.0 percent all season long unless his body betrays him.

Prince Fielder has just one season in his career below 12.2 percent. This season he’s barely at half of that at 6.9 percent. He’s hitting as many fly balls this year, 34.1 percent, as he has the previous four seasons.

J.D. Martinez is only half a man. Two years ago his HR/FB ratio was 19.5 percent. Last year his HR/FB ratio was 20.8 percent. This year the mark is all the way down at 9.7 percent. When you post a mark for 20 percent over two seasons, unless you’re hurt, it’s very difficult to envision that mark being cut in half. Things should change for the better.

Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday, 7 PM EDT and Friday on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 6 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).