Kris Bryant has been one of the poster boys of the fly-ball trend, launching home runs that salt rain clouds and threaten video boards. But, believe it or not, his launch angle actually trended downward last season.
As much that relatively new metric is celebrated these days, one would imagine that a sharp decline in launch angle would be a bad thing. And for some hitters, generating fewer fly balls could indeed be bad. Yet Bryant was still able to post almost a .400 wOBA, mainly because he improved the quality of his batted-ball profile.
The “best” types of batted balls are high drives (HD) between 19-26 degrees because, even though they don’t lead to the most homers, they result in the highest expected wOBA.