St. John: Home runs and horizontal exit angles

From Chris St. John at Beyond the Box Score on April 19, 2013:

The day I found Hit Tracker (now-named ESPN Home Run Tracker) was a life-changing experience for me. At first I perused the site as normal people are wont to do, looking at the longest homers, finding hitters who are getting a little lucky, and reading about the physics of pokes.

Then I started to, well, do my thing. The first research I did on this data set was to create the Home Run Damage statistic, which I still feature on my personal blog, Steal of Home. Next, I confirmed that hitters who hit a bunch of “Just Enough” home runs actually hit fewer the following year.

But of course, that is not enough. Today I will look at a different part of the data, mainly horizontal exit angle. At which angle do most home runs leave the bat, how does this compare for different handed batters, and which parks are more conducive to different angled home runs?

Read the full article here: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2013/4/19/4221684/home-run-angle-parks



Originally published: April 19, 2013. Last Updated: April 19, 2013.