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Launch-angle revolution? Without exit velocity, those fly balls are outs

Now that we can measure the angle at which a baseball leaves a bat, some people have advocated hitting the ball in the air because it turns out — somewhat unsurprisingly — that when you hit a fly ball, you’ve got a better chance of hitting a home run.

So far, so good.

The problem with hitting a fly ball is what happens when you don’t hit a home run.

A recent look at Baseball Reference showed that when the Royals hit a ball with what the website refers to as “fly-ball trajectory,” they hit 58 of their 68 home runs .