Striking Balance Between Loft and Speed In Attack Angle
When it comes to attack angle, I’ve always been someone who has suggested that higher is better. I’ve always been interested in shifting players attack angles upward from the low single digits upwards toward the fifteen degree area. In the past I would have suggested that having a higher Attack Angle might be best. It still might be best, but it might not be as clear cut as you might expect.
I’ve covered my thoughts on higher Attack Angles in the Blog below. If you don’t want to click onto it, not big deal. The summary is that Higher Attack Angles could lead toward higher SLG%. This may be true but it is also a little incomplete in some sense.
The biggest factor when reexamining Attack Angle is the trade off between Velocity and Loft.
A swing that produces higher attack angles will inevitably create more loft on batted balls.
While swings that create Attack Angles that are lower should create less loft, while also producing more full contact with batted balls. Which should lead to more Exit Speed.
It would also be true that you can still create excellent Exit Speed while also having Loft. Swings that have lower Attack Angles will be closer to the descent angle of the pitch which would logically make the idea behind this sound. Baseballs that are hit at Lower Attack Angles will have flusher contact with the baseball and should result in some of players hardest hit baseballs.
So it might be simplistic but:
Higher Attack Angles
- More Loft
- Less Flush Contact
- Potential for More Launch Angle
We see below very clearly that a player Average Attack Angle pretty much mirrors their Average Launch Angle. So Lower Attack Angle = Lower Launch Angle.
Lower Attack Angles
- Less Loft
- More Flush Contact
- Potential for Higher Exit Speed
So with the plot below we can see the differences here between the Attack Angle types. In one direction we get loft, in another we get speed.
You can see that when we separate players by their Projected Attack Angle along with Max Exit Velocity that the relationship is actually slightly downward. Meaning that lower Attack Angles should produce harder Hit Baseballs.
So it would seem that there is this continuous balance between the two of these outcomes. Going to far in either direction would seem to create an imbalance between the two. Too much loft may result in negative outcomes, not enough loft will do the same.
When it comes to Launch Angle for the hardest hit balls, we don’t see a great deal hit above 25 degrees Launch Angle. The average Launch Angle for these baseballs was just over 9 degrees. So take a players hardest hit ball and most likely it is around 9 degrees Launch Angle.
We don’t see a lot of the hardest hit baseballs hit at higher degrees. Which should continue to give us an indication that ‘Flatter’ or Lower Attack Angles lead to Higher Exit Speeds.
When you start to separate players into different buckets in terms of Attack Angle you start to see a clearer picture of this play out. We see that we have three different buckets of players. Red representing player with Lower Attack Angle, Green indicating Medium Attack Angles, and Blue for players with High Attack Angles.
We can see in this plot that players with lower Attack Angles tend to have slightly higher Max Exit Velocities. If you compare Low to High players the difference is more stark.
When it comes to putting the baseball in the air we do see some stark differences as well for players.
Clearly Attack Angle is something that effects a lot of different factors in a players swings. But the idea that there is one perfect angle is starting to fade, and it is probably best that players are able to accomplish multiple things within their own swing. Having the ability to do it all is probably the best strategy instead of just settling in on one best above all else.
Their are multiple areas that players with higher Attack Angles tend to do better than those with Lower Attack Angles and this is probably the one piece of evidence that I keep on coming back to to support overall having a higher Attack Angle. The plot below shows Barrel % separated by players with Low, Medium, and High Attack Angles. It shows clearly that players who have higher Attack Angles will create ‘Barrels’ more than those who have lower.
It would seem that having the ability to create higher and lower attack angle in a flexible way is probably the best way to go. Having the ability to both Loft, and Create Speed separately as well as together might be the best strategy. So there is probably not one perfect Attack Angle but it shouldn’t keep us from trying to help optimize players swings for different outcomes.
