u/DigiQuip

Currently the Reds BABIP is the worst in the MLB. When looking at some surface level stats, and even some advanced stats, the usual suspects don't exactly justify this number. The Reds are not a great hitting team, but they're also not the worst. Instead, pretty average in most areas.

In terms of power and quality of contact, roughly 85% of contact is either medium or hard. In fact, the Reds have the third lowest soft contact percentage. Where the bat meets the ball, we're pretty average; 15th in SqUpCon%, 7th in IdealAtkAng%, and 19th in BlastCon%.

When hit, the Reds are pretty much up the middle and do a decent job hitting opposite field. The Reds have the 5th lowest pull rate meaning, even with shift rules, we're not hitting the ball into defensive alignments. Infield fly percentage is 8th highest, but still fairly normal. The differences here between just a few points.

Nothing here screams problematic, nothing is fantastic, but not bad. So why are so many of our batted balls turning into outs?

The issue, launch angle.

The one stat that is league worst is our LA which is a whopping 18*. Going back 5 years, it's the highest average LA in that time. In fact, the five highest LAs since 2021 are from 2026 teams. Rotographs did a deep dive into why this is, and they believe it has to do with pitching trends of faster velocities and placing balls higher in the zone, but I digress.

This is causing a lot of our problems because not only are we hitting the ball higher, but weather impacts the distance the ball travels. Colder and wetter weather means denser air which means more drag, which means the ball doesn't carry as far. Something like every 10* higher the air temperature, the ball travels 3ft further. It's still early in the season and temps have been touch lower for some our games. The impact this has is noticeable and the stats, I think, support this.

Player	BBE	xwoba	xba	launch_angle	velocity	Dist
McLain, Matt	14	0.185	0.128	38.5	89.6	293
Steer, Spencer	13	0.387	0.241	36.5	91.9	311
Stephenson, Tyler	12	0.28	0.163	40.5	92	303
Hayes, Ke'Bryan	12	0.354	0.207	33.5	90.3	332
Stewart, Sal	11	0.405	0.25	34.5	92.5	311
Friedl, TJ	7	0.07	0.065	42.7	94.9	272
De La Cruz, Elly	7	0.354	0.18	45.4	91.3	284
Suárez, Eugenio	7	0.271	0.144	42.4	94.2	296
Benson, Will	7	0.06	0.046	38	89.3	299
Myers, Dane	6	0.412	0.232	37.2	86	315
Hinds, Rece	2	0.048	0.042	53.5	81.7	239
Marte, Noelvi	2	0.092	0.09	48	82.3	202
Trevino, Jose	1	0.006	0.006	45	87.2	271
Team	101	0.287	0.173	38.8	90.8	348

In this chart we see the number of batted ball events that resulted in a fly out to an outfielder. The LAs here are incredibly high, which means all that exit velocity that we're doing fairly well in, is being wasted in the ball going up and not going out. Ideally, you want a LA no higher than 30*. Anything higher than that and you're looking at an EV of over 103 mph to clear the fence. The balls being caught are in and around 300ft. So even if the weather was warmer and drier, that extra 15-20ft wouldn't make much difference. These are very low xBA events.

This doesn't compare very well with the rest of the MLB.

Team	BBE	FB Outs	Percentage
LAA	546	118	21.6%
DET	551	116	21.1%
KCR	524	105	20.0%
PHI	527	105	19.9%
CIN	519	102	19.7%
NYY	513	98	19.1%
CLE	569	107	18.8%
CHW	519	97	18.7%
MIN	538	100	18.6%
CHC	547	99	18.1%
BAL	521	94	18.0%
MIA	566	102	18.0%
SEA	537	95	17.7%
LAD	546	95	17.4%
TOR	584	101	17.3%
NYM	579	100	17.3%
ATL	599	101	16.9%
TEX	543	91	16.8%
SFG	592	99	16.7%
COL	527	88	16.7%
ATH	537	87	16.2%
PIT	574	92	16.0%
STL	543	87	16.0%
SDP	562	89	15.8%
WSN	608	96	15.8%
TBR	598	94	15.7%
BOS	511	79	15.5%
HOU	606	93	15.3%
ARI	565	80	14.2%
MIL	526	71	13.5%

As you can see here, the Reds have the 5th highest percentage of batted ball events that result in fly ball outs. And it's not like our other batted ball events are home runs or triples. In fact, we rank dead last in extra base hits. Basically, we hit a bunch of singles and non-competitive fly ball outs. Combine this with our infield fly ball stat and you're looking at nearly 1/3rd of our batted ball events being fly ball outs. That's way too high. Only the Royals hit more fly outs than we do.

I'm sure the law of averages will get our LA to drop some. And that's actually something I think is starting to happen. Turning fly balls into line drives is a very real possibility. If the Reds can drop their LA down a few points between 12-15* we'll turn outs into doubles easily.