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How the Rays embraced the ground ball in 2018

DRaysBay | October 23, 2018

Related Topics: Tampa Bay Rays, Major League Baseball, Batted ball, Ball, Willy Adames, Mallex Smith, Joey Wendle, Ji-man Choi, Jake Bauers, Austin Meadows

The trend in Major League Baseball has been about getting the ball airborne, however the Tampa Bay Rays went the other way in 2018.

The Rays fly ball rate fell from 36.6% to 32.4%. Their line drive rate rose to 22.1% from 20.0% along with a rise in ground ball rate to 45.6% from 43.4%.

Last week Jim Turvey wrote about the correlation between Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) and hitting the ball to the opposite field.

Hitting to the opposite field might help, but the biggest factor in BABIP is batted ball type.

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