In this video, we're going to cover everything about launch angle in baseball.
Is it a type of swing?
Is it just the way the ball leaves the bat?
What should older hitters be doing about it?
What should younger hitters be doing about it?
What is launch angle?
Why do we need to think about it?
And why is it so prevalent in the conversation in baseball?
Today,
So first, let's cover
what launch angle is not launch angle is not a type of swing
launch angle is simply the angle at which the ball leaves the bat.
So every batted ball has a launch angle.
It could be straight up in the air.
That would be 90 degrees.
It could be into the ground.
That would be in the negative degrees.
Zero is horizontal. 90 is straight up.
Anything below that would we typically call a negative launch angle?
So let's define the main different types and how they sort of manifest in baseball.
So ground balls are typically less than ten degrees
and this also depends a little bit on how hard it's hit.
But if it's ten degrees or less, it's probably not going to leave the infield
without taking at least a couple of hops,
line drives or somewhere between ten and 25 degrees.
Fly balls between 25 and 50 degrees generally.
And pop ups tend to be 50 plus degrees.
So this is important to understand.
This is sort of how they're categorized.
There's a range for each.
Now, obviously, when people are talking and talking about launch angle swings,
we understand that if you want to lift the ball more often, you can do that.
I was a pitcher, so when we would have Pitcher's BP once
in a while for throwing a shutout or whatever, we would try to hit dinners.
Right.
So all of us pitchers would be up there taking a little more uppercut
in our swings, trying to lift the ball,
trying to hit them out because we were there
to hit ground balls to the right side.
We had eight swings to have fun and try to hit the ball
out of the ballpark and feel good about ourselves. Right.
So everyone understands that you can add loft to your hits
by swing with a bigger uppercut and this is what people typically mean
when they're saying these launch angle swings.
The difference is understanding who benefits
from increased loft in their swings.
So let's talk real quick about what the probabilities look like
for a couple different standard launch angles.
So homeruns at the big league level.
We know are generally between 25 and 30 degrees.
They can definitely be a little higher than that.
It's kind of rare that they're lower than that.
But we also know that the ballpark, you know, it's three 30
down the lines to 90 in some places like in Boston down the right field line
and it's you know up to four 22 dead center.
So the launch angle was going to be different,
something that might squeak out to left field will probably never go out
to center field if it's like a low line drive like Mark McGwire's 61st
homerun was a missile that might have had a launching of like 18 degrees right.
It's very hit very hard also very low.
But most most homeruns are hit at 95 plus miles per hour.
That's sort of like where they start
consistently being homeruns and they're 25 to 30 degrees in loft.
You know traditionally now four line drives and probable hits.
Most balls hit hard at ten to 20 degrees will be a hit.
They're going to fall into that area that's over the infield but not yet
reaching the outfielders so hitting line drives at ten to 20 degrees
is going to get you on base a lot of the time
assuming that your bat isn't you know a wet Wall Street Journal
you have a little bit of pop and you can hit the 15 degrees
it's going to go over the infield almost all the time.
So if every batted ball was a 15 degrees off
your bat, you would have an extremely high batting average,
but you also wouldn't hit many homeruns and not nearly as many doubles
because the ball wouldn't be in the air long enough to get past the outfielders.
And then below that in the ten degrees and below, it really starts to depend on
how hard you hit the ball. So you're hitting the ball five degrees.
The launch angle that's going to carry, you know, maybe ten,
20, 30 feet in the infield before it starts to bounce.
So if you hit it really hard, you'll get a lot of hits.
If you don't hit it quite as hard, you won't get as many hits.
And everything below that is going to have it's
going to be very much dependent on exit velocity.
So let's talk about exit velocity for a second.
Exit velocity is obviously the speed at which the ball leaves the bat.
So the two big important factors really combine to determine how far, far
the ball is going to go is launch angle plus exit velocity.
So if you hit a ball at a 30 degree launch angle
at 110 miles per hour, it's always going to be a homerun.
That ball is going to go in the 400 feet
or it's well into the four hundreds of feet.
And we know for a fact
that if you just hit it that hard at that angle, it's going to go out.
No ballpark will contain it.
So as those angles change, what the outcome is going
to be will also change.
And this is where we get into the big deal of why are people
talking about launch angle and why is it important.
So if you're Aaron Judge or you are Mark McGwire or Ken Griffey Jr
anyone else who scorches the ball and you hit a ball 105 miles per hour,
you don't get points for hitting it right back at the pitcher.
You'll get a single right.
It'll go through the infield if it doesn't kill him.
But that's all you'll get is a single right.
So when you have hitters with a really high bat speed
in the major leagues, that's, you know, guys are consistently hitting the ball
well into the hundreds because everyone can do that.
But the guys have more power, do it more often.
Or if you're a 13 year old and you consistently can can hit it over
the outfielders head like you have a lot of pop
relative to your level,
you don't need to know
the exact mile per hour that you hit it with with your exit velocity.
But all of you should know that, hey, I can hit the ball over the outfielders
heads pretty reliably when I get into one, you know, that's
going to apply to some hitters and not others at any given level, right?
It makes sense to get some air under it
because now it's going to go over the outfielders heads
and that's where you get all the extra base hits and the home runs.
Now, who is it not good for?
It's really not good to add launch angle into a swing again,
not into the swing itself,
but to try to add loft to your consistently batted balls.
It's not a good idea.
If you don't hit the ball that hard,
because if you're hitting balls at 25 or 30 degrees,
which is the homerun typical band of launch angles,
but you only hit the ball at 80 miles per hour as a high schooler,
that was never going to leave the yard.
Even if you hit it at 25 to 30, that magical range, we hit 100.
It'll go out if you hit that 80, it's a fly out.
So this is the really important thing.
You have to understand who you are as a hitter
and whether or not increase launch
is actually going to get the ball over the outfielders heads.
And if it's not, you're just going to add a lot of fly outs to your game.
So this is a very it can be a very misguided thing
when parents and players are trying to change their swings to lift the ball more,
but they don't actually have the pop to get over the outfielders' heads reliably.
Even in the major leagues, everyone can hit a ball probably 110.
But it's going to be pretty rare for the second baseman on a big league team
who's not nearly as big and strong versus like a first baseman like Pete Alonso,
who's enormous and has a lot more bat speed than he does.
So Pete Alonso doesn't have to hit the balls as perfectly
to get his 100 mile per hour or 105 mile per hour exit speed.
As someone who's smaller
who probably can do it, but only if they hit it perfectly.
And that's a really important thing to understand as well.
So as you look at take home implications for launch angle in baseball,
the implications are this if you're a legitimate power hitter
for your level,
you can definitely reliably hit the ball over the outfielders heads,
then consistently trying to get more loft into your batted balls
makes sense for you
because you're going to turn line drives into doubles and homers
if you're the type of player who does not have the power
to reliably hit the ball over the outfielders heads at your level,
then it makes much more sense to hit line drives over the infield,
which will result in you being on base much more often.
So, Aaron, Judge should should lift the ball more often
and someone small like Jose Altuve, who does have a lot of power
I mean he's hit 30 plus homeruns he's still most of the time going to try
to hit line drives over the infield and maybe into the gaps
because he's still smaller.
So if he doesn't square balls up quite as well,
he's going to fly out a lot more if he doesn't.
So even in the big leagues it's hard to find examples
as ever again like Jose Altuve hit 30 plus homeruns in a season
but he's a good example of a smaller player
who in general is going to want to spray the ball over the infield,
take his singles and doubles and hit and try to hit line drives.
This is like default
versus a big power hitter who's going to try to lift the ball
over the outfielders heads more as default
because again you don't want to hit a ball 100 or 110 miles per hour
and only get a single out of it every time you hit a ball, 100 or 110
miles per hour, you'd like to get four bases out of it
and jog around jogging, you know, jog around the bags.
So this is the thing to understand and
and it comes down to understanding who you are as a player.
If you're a small player and you don't have it's on a pop
and you cannot reliably hit it over, the outfielders heads
you should not be trying to do that.
You should be trying to hit line drives over the infield,
which is ten to 20 degrees of launch angle
if you have a lot of power, then 20 plus degrees is going to make sense for you.
You're going to be at a put over the outfielders heads consistently
and you'll see your extra bases and the damage you do to another team
go up pretty reliably.
So that's sort of the take away from launch angle.
So hopefully this video has been helpful.
One of the big things to remember at all
walks of life and in baseball is that knowing yourself,
what you're capable of and what you're not is very important to your success.
So you can be extreme
only successful as a baseball player without having a ton of bat speed and pop.
You don't have to hit homeruns to be successful in baseball,
but if you do have that pop, then you can also add more homeruns
and extra base hits to your game by being smart and adding loft
to your batted balls by thinking a little bit more about launch angle.
All right.
So again, hopefully today's video is helpful
if you have more questions, leave them the comments section below.
And for more info on figuring out who you are as a ballplayer
and what's important to you in your career.
Check out my new book, Clean Your Cleats.
It's got all sorts of discussions just like this.
Easy to understand for ballplayers of all ages.
All right.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you here in the next video.