Rays’ Yandy Diaz Finally Got The Launch Angle Memo

I’ve always been one to pump the brakes on major league hitters’ recent fixation with launch angle. It’s simply not for everybody. Many a career has been short-circuited by getting away from hitting the ball hard where it’s pitched and focusing solely on lifting and pulling.

All of that said, you can’t hit the ball over the fence if you don’t elevate it, and you can’t truly become an elite offensive player without home run power. Every now and then a player comes along who has EVERYTHING offensively, except for a high launch angle.

Christian Yelich was one such player. Through 2017, the Brewers, Yelich’s career high seasonal average launch angle was a mere 4.7 degrees. I was writing for Fangraphs back in those days, and predicted that he would win an MVP award if he could simply lift his launch angle into the double digits. His average exit speeds were over a full standard deviation above average across all major batted ball groups – fly balls, liners and grounders. Well, he did win an MVP award in his first year as a Brewer, and was even better the next season when he did crank his average launch angle up to 11.2. Subsequent injuries have again made him more of a ground ball hitter, but I digress.

Yandy Diaz at times has been a much more extreme version of early Yelich. In the COVID-19 pandemic-shortened 2020 season, he put up an outlandish -7.9 degree average launch angle. Yes, that’s a negative number. An amazing 66.0% of his batted balls were hit on the ground that season. Despite such grounder-heavy output, Diaz has been an above average offensive performer in all of his seasons at the major league level.

How has he done this? Well, start off with a very strong K/BB profile as a foundation. In each of the last three full seasons, both his K and BB rates have been over a full standard deviation better than league average, and last season, both were over two full standard deviations better.

Diaz has never hit his fly balls materially harder than league average in the past, but he has consistently hit both his liners and grounders quite a bit harder than average, a la Yelich.

He’s always had another key marker in his favor. His home park, Tropicana Field, has a very fast infield and has consistently yielded above average production on ground balls. This is perfect for a high volume, high authority grounder hitter like Diaz.

So he’s always been a solid offensive player with an extremely high floor and a surprisingly high ceiling, assuming he’d eventually begin lifting the ball more.

And here we are. Thus far in 2023, his average launch angle has cracked double digits at 10.9 degrees. Even more importantly, his average exit speed has exploded, across all batted ball types. His average liner exit speed of 103.4 mph would have been the highest in baseball in 2022 (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. led at 100.9 mph). His average grounder exit speed of 95.3 mph would have been the highest in baseball in 2022 (Giancarlo Stanton led at 95.0). And his average fly ball exit speed of 92.3 mph isn’t as extreme, but is comfortably above league average.

He’s been a bit lucky on grounders so far this season, batting .371 AVG-.400 SLG on them, but his success is in large part supported by the batted ball data. As usual, his K/BB profile is doing its part with matching 14.3% marks both well better than league average. Diaz “should be” hitting .323-.408-.552 thus far in 2023, for a 184 “Tru” Production+ level that isn’t that far off of his actual 198 wRC+ mark.

Another loud note in his profile – Diaz already has 9 homers through Saturday’s games (his career high is 14) – and four of them have been line drives (launch angle below 20 degrees). Line drive homers are for the big boys – Yandy Diaz is now officially one of them.

The Rays have authored many individual success stories, and he is one of the biggest ones. I wrote about him here not that long ago, when he inked his recent contract extension. He would have been somewhere on my MVP ballot last season if I had one, and despite his lack of defense and baserunning value, would certainly be up there thus far in 2023. Along with teammate Wander Franco, Diaz has to be considered on the short list of most valuable American Leaguers in the early stages of this season.