This morning, Baseball Savant released a bunch of new swing pattern data. I won’t pretend to understand all of it, but I wanted to take a look at how some of it MIGHT explain the Orioles’ offensive woes since last July.
A good first step for everyone would be to read the article on MLB.com here.
Read it? Or at least, skim it? Ok, good.
So, we have new data on: Swing Path, Attack Angle, Ideal Attack Angle, and Direction.
The first two seem to vary widely on an individual or even per-pitch basis; what’s “good” for one player might not be good for another. As they explain, re: swing path:
This is more of a stylistic thing, really. Unlike a lot of other things, it’s not as simple as “more is good” or “less is bad.” It tells you something about the type of swinger you’re seeing, and lets you try to better understand swing changes as players talk about them.
Still, there are some correlations between swing paths and outcomes. Too flat, you’re not going to get much power. Too steep, you’re going to make less contact. Right in the middle, you’ll be happy.
And, re: attack angle:
It matters because hitters are aware of it and speak directly about it, for one thing. If it matters to them, it matters to us. But, again, this is not a case of “more is better.” You can have too high of an attack angle, and too low as well.
That’s why there is a happy middle you want to be in — that “ideal” range between 5° and 20°– that we’ll explain further shortly.
For today’s purposes, I thought it might be instructive to focus on that “ideal” attack angle. Here’s how they describe it:
A way to put attack angle numbers into context. It’s hard to understand if, say, a 15° attack angle means anything. It’s a lot easier to understand if you know what’s valuable – in the same way that you might look at hard-hit rate (batted balls over 95 mph) to get an idea of what’s good exit velocity.
Fortunately for us, this ends up being approximately 50% of swings per season. It’s also roughly exactly the angle at which pitches enter the hitting zone – on a downslope between -5 and -20°. When hitters talk about “keeping the bat in the zone longer,” they don’t mean moving the bat slowly. They mean matching their attack angle to the plane of the pitch, or what Williams was talking about when he wrote “A slight upswing … puts the bat flush in line with the path of the ball for a longer period.”
We all know how the Birds’ offense has absolutely cratered over roughly the last calendar year or so. Since we have data from last season as well, let’s start there. Here are how the O’s were doing in the Ideal Attack Angle category from March-June of 2024:
Two players in the red (good), one in the blue (bad), and five in the middle. I would have expected Gunnar Henderson to be a bit higher, given his scorching first half, but it’s not surprise to see Jordan Westburg up there, but Mullins is a bit surprising. Here’s how they hit through June of last season:
Westburg: .281/.332/.505 13 HR
Mullins: .218/.262/.389 9 HR
Adley Rutschman, whose struggles have been much-discussed since around that time, is third on the list. As June wrapped up, he was hitting .294/.350/.471. Ahhh…those were the days.
Now, to the second half of 2024:
Westy improved his percentage of Ideal Attack Angle swings even further, and his results were right there, as his season-long .792 OPS wasn’t quite the .837 he managed through June, but was perfectly respectable.
But man, look at all that blue (bad). Adley, Gunnar, Colton Cowser, and Ryan O’Hearn all saw their IAA% dip, and while Ryan Mountcastle‘s improved a tad, it was poor to begin with.
So, what’s happened in 2025?
Well…(I lowered the minimum number of swings to 50, to capture injured and part-time players)
Brrrr…not much red there. Look at Ramon Urias go. No surprise to see disappointments like Mounty and Tyler O’Neill at the bottom, along with Jorge Mateo, though Ryan O’Hearn and Jackson Holliday are surprising.
Let’s see how that compares with, say, the AL East leading New York Yankees, who also happen to have the highest OPS in MLB:
Well hey, would ya look at that? Twelve players in the red, and two in the blue, compared to seven and four for the Birds.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are tied atop the MLB OPS leaderboard. Here’s their IAA% list:
Not as much red (six players over 50%), but very little blue (only two players under 45%).
Can we make any sweeping generalizations? Probably not from what I’ve gathered. But there are a ton more ways to slice up this data (by handedness of pitcher, by count, by result, etc). I’m curious to see what insights people like Alex Fast or Jon Meoli can gather.
And obviously, the Orioles have such data (and more) internally, so they’re aware of what’s going on. The question is, why can’t they get it fixed? Whatever they’ve been preaching for the past year clearly isn’t working though. Maybe this will at least help us start to understand why.
Head over to Baseball Savant and check it out. Let us know what you discover!
