Yesterday I wrote a post concerning Jacoby Ellsbury‘s sudden power surge last season. In that post I concluded Ellsbury would see his home run total decline in 2012 (shocking!) but I found some interesting connections between a player’s HR/FB rate, his average home run distance and his average ball speed off the bat. As it turns out, when a player’s HR/FB rate is disproportionately greater than the other two stats, he tends to suffer a drop in home run production the following season. This is what we’d expect and it’s what the numbers suggest.
One of our commenters wondered if the opposite was true. If a player’s HR/FB rate was disproportionately lower than his average homer distance and average speed off the bat, does he tend to have a better power season the next year? I looked into that today.
But first, here’s a quick recap of the data we saw yesterday regarding expected home run decliners. In that Ellsbury post I noted 44 potential home run decliners whose HR/FB rate...
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