If you grew up in the late 90’s or early 2000s, you might be familiar with a game called Bop It. It’s a plastic doohickey (that is the technical term) with various gizmos (also a technical term) attached. Turn it on, and the game begins. A voice prompts you with commands, all of which must be fulfilled by interacting with the gizmos before time expires. If you’re told to “bop it!” you have to smack the button in the middle. “Twist it!” means twisting the tornado-shaped knob on the left side. And “pull it!” means yanking a lever on the right.
Alec Bohm would not be very good at Bop It. It’s not the titular bopping that’s an issue; his hard hit percentage of 46.8% is above average. The “pull it!” command is where the issue comes in. Only 7.8% of Bohm’s batted balls become (say that five times fast) pulled in the air. That’s the lowest of any Phillie. J.T. Realmuto, the second-least likely Phil to pull it in the air, hits 12.6% of his batted balls that way. Kyle Schwarber, the pull-happiest member of the team, puts 30.7% of his batted balls in the air on the pull side. And Bohm isn’t just pull-averse compared to his teammates: only 6 qualified batters league-wide pull balls in the air with less frequency. Why is Bohm so unlikely to pull the ball in the air? And why does it matter?
In case you’re pulling your eyes away from the screen right now, let’s answer the latter first. Pulling the ball means to hit it towards the side of the field that one stands on and swings towards. So for a right handed batter like Bohm, who stands on the left side of the plate, pulling the ball means hitting it to the left side. Despite the enthusiasm for opposite field home runs (oppo tacos, oppo blasts, call them what you will), it’s pulling the ball that’s really desirable; balls pulled in the air are simply more likely to lead to good results than any other sort of batted ball. That’s in part because the shortest distance between a batter and the fences is found at his pull-side corner, and in part because better contact and timing are more likely to lead to balls being pulled in the air. Think of a batted ball pulled in the air as being like an indicator that the batter did something right, sort of like the little boost you get in Mario Kart for timing your acceleration perfectly at the start of the race. Or if video games aren’t your speed, think of it as being like the jingle from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? telling you that you answered the question right.
Bohm is a good hitter: he posted xBAs in the 98th, 93rd, and 95th percentiles from 2022 through 2024. He rarely whiffs and is good at avoiding strikeouts. But his power lags behind his ability to make contact. He does hit the ball hard, but he doesn’t hit a lot of homers or do as much damage as might be hoped. His lack of pull helps to explain why. But what explains why he isn’t pulling the ball?
Pulling the ball generally means making contact with it out in front of the plate. If you swing early enough, you’ll make contact with the ball as your bat is moving towards the pull side, and thus produce a pulled ball. Swing later, and you’ll make contact with the ball before your bat starts moving towards the pull side. No pulled ball.
As a visual example: here’s Bohm’s average attack direction— the horizontal angle of his bat’s sweet spot at contact.
He makes contact with the ball when his sweet spot is angled slightly towards the opposite field. For contrast, here’s Schwarber:
Schwarber starts his swing earlier, so that the sweet spot of his bat is oriented towards the pull side.
There’s something else interesting in those diagrams: take a look not just at the angle of the bat at contact, but where the bat is when contact is made. Schwarber’s bat is well out in front of the plate. Bohm’s is over it. If we want to be precise about it, Schwarber makes contact 11.8 inches in front of the plate, and Bohm makes contact 0.4 inches in front of it. If you’re swinging early and fast enough to catch the ball in front of home plate, you’re more likely to pull it. Bohm is not. His fast swing rate (defined as % of swings at 75 MPH or above) of 16.7% is the third-slowest among qualified Phillies. The next-least likely Phillie to pull the ball, J.T. Realmuto makes contact even further back than Bohm, but his fast swing rate of 29.7% helps him pull the ball somewhat more than Bohm does. Conversely, Bryson Stott has a much slower swing than Bohm (a minuscule 4.6% of his swings qualify!), but starts his swing earlier, such that his sweet spot is pointing towards the pull side when he makes contact. Bohm’s combination of speed and timing results in a perpetual opposite (field) day.
If Bohm were to pull the ball more, he might produce more power. But while “pull it!” is a simple command when playing Bop It, it’s much less so when playing baseball. Pulling the ball more would require Bohm to make major adjustments to his swing and his timing. Those adjustments would come with tradeoffs (for instance, one can imagine Bohm’s whiff rate increasing if he speeds up his swing). It’s possible, though not certain, the tradeoffs could still result in better outcomes for Bohm. He might want to think about giving it a try, if he feels a pull towards it.
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