When Orioles slugger Mark Trumbo enjoyed his career year in 2016, it came at a time when the way things that have occurred on a baseball field for generations were analyzed and categorized began to change.
After years of data creeping into traditional forums and becoming more common, MLB's Statcast data becoming public meant that barreling a ball went from a feeling to a quantifiable, countable stat. Solid contact was made better if it had the proper launch angle off the bat, measured to the tenth of the mile per hour.
Trumbo was up to speed on all of it, and at least at the time, the correlation was obvious.