Using swing path metrics to find fantasy baseball power breakouts: Keep the faith in Nick Kurtz

On Wednesday, Statcast dropped a brand new set of metrics to measure a hitter’s bat path both on the way to contact and at the contact point. This is important data because bat path is one of the aspects of hitting that hitters not only think about the most, but also train the most. Hitters want to make sure they are making quality contact as often as possible, and that takes root in the path of their swing from load to contact.

There’s a great article from Mike Petriello that explains all four of the metrics, and I encourage you to read that to get a more in-depth sense of everything I’m going to discuss here. All of these metrics are going to be specific to the player, their skillset, and their approach, so the best use of these metrics is likely going to be choosing a specific player and looking at his swing path and attack angle and seeing if something has changed to lead to more power production or a higher pull rate or better contact, etc.

However, we can just have some fun today and try to use these new metrics to find power hitters.

For this article, I’m operating under the basic principle that if a hitter has good bat speed and a slight upswing, they are more likely to produce good power numbers. The upswing will create loft on contact, and the bat speed will create exit velocity that will help the ball carry out of the park. To do that, the first stat we’re going to look at is swing tilt or swing path, which tells us “the shape of the swing on the way towards contact.” A higher angle is a steeper swing, and a lower angle is a flatter swing.

The Statcast folks looked at the production on swing paths and found, as the graphic below shows, that hitters who have a steeper swing, between 33 and 38 inches, tend to produce the best offensive results, even if they swing and miss slightly more than players with a flatter swing.

So let’s run with that premise and look for hitters who swing the bat fast but also have steep bat paths to see if we can identify some potential power breakouts. First, we can test the premise to see if many power hitters fall within this range.

Elite Fantasy Baseball Power Hitters

There’s not much to say about the hitters listed above, but we know they are all some of the better power hitters in modern baseball. Since they all had above league average bat speed and a swing tilt between 33 and 40 degrees, it’s a bit of confirmation bias that maybe this isn’t a crazy exercise.

Fantasy Baseball Power Breakouts

A few of these names shouldn’t be surprising since Kyle Stowers, Ben Rice, Riley Greene, Wyatt Langford, Spencer Torkelson, and Zach Neto are enjoying strong starts to the season and have all shown ample power to help fantasy teams. Jorge Soler is also somebody we have always regarded as a premier power hitter. The production hasn’t quite been there so far this season, but

Having Nick Kurtz on a power list shouldn’t surprise you. He had seven home runs and a .655 slugging percentage in 20 games in Triple-A before getting called up. In his 24 MLB games, he has already had a batted ball that was 113.6 mph and has an average exit velocity of 91.8 mph, so he’s making authoritative contact. His 36.5% fly ball rate is higher than we saw in the minors, but not as high as I might expect. The nearly 16% infield fly ball rate tells me that maybe the swing is just a bit too steep right now. However, the bigger issue is that Kurtz had a 12.6% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) in Triple-A, and that was always going to be higher against MLB pitching. Kurtz is not a high-contact rate hitter, so he may be a .240 guy the rest of this season with an elevated strikeout rate, but the power should be there.

We’re seeing something similar with Cam Smith, who had a steep learning curve to adjust to MLB pitching after playing just five games above High-A with the Cubs last year. Smith’s bat speed stands out here, and he does have a 113 mph max exit velocity hit on the season, so there is some power here. However, his production has ticked up in May, going 12-for-40, while his flyball rate has dropped to 18% of that stretch. However, Smith has also seemingly opened up his stance a bit in May and is hitting the ball farther out in front of the plate. These are strong changes for May, and I’d expect the fly ball rate to tick back up.

Andy Pages is enjoying a bit of an under-the-radar breakout for the Dodgers with nine home runs and a .274/.326/.482 slash line in 181 plate appearances. His average exit velocity is not great at 88.4%, but he has solid fly ball and pull rate numbers, which are helping him get to his power. The only issue for Pages now is whether the emergence of Hyeseong Kim is creating a bit of a playing time crunch with Teoscar Hernandez, Tommy Edman, and Michael Conforto all still getting regular at-bats.

Oh, what are we to do with Brett Baty? Every time we want to buy in on him for fantasy baseball, it seems like he ends up back in Triple-A. The bat speed obviously jumps off the page here as one of the best marks for all hitters, and Baty has been hitting the ball exceptionally hard in his at-bats this season with a 90.1 mph average exit velocity and 13.1% barrel rate in 61 batted ball events. He has dropped his groundball rate by 7% as he hits more fly balls and line drives, but he was far too passive in his first stint with the Mets this season, getting himself into bad counts and chasing pitches out of the zone.

Joey Bart and Ivan Herrera both pop on this list, but Herrera leads all catchers with at least 70 plate appearances in ISO with a .350 mark. Now, 70 plate appearances is a small sample size, but both are in the top 15 among catchers in barrel rate and max exit velocity. They also both happen to play the majority of games for their teams and make for solid two-catcher league targets.

Ryan Mountcastle has always interested me. I never thought he was the 33 home run hitter he showed off in 2021, the year of the juiced ball. But I also thought people were writing him off too much the last two years, as he was dealing with myriad injuries. This year, he’s posting an 11% barrel rate and has two of the hardest-hit balls of his career. He’s also pulling the ball more than ever, but is perhaps being overly aggressive, swinging more than ever, and making less contact than he has since 2022. I still think Mountcastle is a solid hitter who can be a 20+ home run guy with a .260-.270 average. With Baltimore imploding this season, I would love to see them trade him to a team that would play him every day in a better home ballpark (Hello, Boston!).

Alexander Canario is an intriguing name here because he’s a plus raw power prospect who is now getting the chance to play every day in Pittsburgh. In 16 games in May, Canario is hitting .273/.322/.436 with two home runs and five RBI. He does have a 27% strikeout rate over that span, and that will likely always be part of his game, but he also has an 18.6% barrel rate and 90.1 mph average exit velocity in 59 batted ball events. His 69% contact rate overall is not great, nor is his nearly 17% swinging strike rate, and so I don’t believe you’re getting some major breakout star here, but if the Pirates are going to let him remain in the lineup regularly, Canario could easily push for 15+ home runs from here on out. There’s a strong risk that his swing-and-miss will get him removed from the lineup at some point.

Since I mentioned earlier on that all of these swing path metrics are going to be hitter-dependent, there are a few hitters on here who may have top-end bat speed and the approach that would allow them to lift the ball out of the park but have other issues in their approach that will prevent them from being fantasy producers. Those guys are Jordan Walker, Jo Adell, Nolan Jones, and Yoan Moncada. Moncada is playing well right now, but the issue for him is always health. Those other guys are simply not making enough contact to produce results at the moment, but they’re names you should keep in the back of your mind since they technically qualify for this leaderboard.

More Fantasy Baseball Power Breakouts

Another of the new Stacast metrics I wanted to look at is Attack Angle, which “is the bat’s angle at impact.” Attack angle then tells us “what’s happening with the bat at contact – at what vertical angle the bat is moving as it impacts the ball (or comes closest to doing so, on misses).” For this metric, 0° would be perfectly flat, with positive numbers showing a bat moving upward and negative numbers showing the bat moving downward.

It’s important to understand that a hitter’s attack angle is really about timing. Since it measures the bat’s angle at impact, it can be heavily influenced by how early or late a hitter is on his swing, as evidenced by this image of a James Wood swing that Statcast used in their article.

According to this new data, the average MLB attack angle is 10 degrees, but the ideal attack angle, meaning “the angles that produce the most value for a hitter,” is between five and 20 degrees. Since a larger attack angle would mean getting under the ball more, and that’s better for power, I created a leaderboard of hitters with above-average bat speed (again) and an average attack angle between 10 and 20 degrees.

Some players in the 10-20 degree range that have been proven to be consistent power hitters are Eugenio Suarez (19.2 degree attack angle), Willy Adames (18 degrees), Cal Raleigh (17.8 degrees), Shohei Ohtani (15.1 degrees), Aaron Judge (14.9 degrees), Marcell Ozuna (14 degrees), Brent Rooker (13.4 degrees), Kyle Schwarber (13 degrees), Bryce Harper (12.2 degrees), Yordan Alvarez (11.3 degrees), Pete Alonso (10.2 degrees), and Oneil Cruz (10.2 degrees).

So, who else could emerge as reliable power hitters for fantasy baseball?

I removed Zach Neto and Pete Crow-Armstrong because their bat speed was just under the mark I was searching for at 71.8 mph; however, both of them have proven to have more power than many initially thought, so I wanted to highlight them here.

We also see a few repeat hitters on here with Nick Kurtz, Kyle Stowers, Riley Greene, Ben Rice, Wyatt Langford, Spencer Torkelson, Zach Dezenzo, and Alexander Canario.

Addison Barger is a player who jumped out for me a bit in spring training because he was crushing the ball and mentioned that he had gone back to an older version of his swing mechanics that made him feel more free with his movements. That has led to some really interesting changes and is why these Statcast metrics are so cool. As you can see in the image below, Barger has opened his stance considerably and is now making contact with the ball much farther out in front of home plate. His bat speed is up almost two mph to an elite 76.1 mph mark, and his swing path has changed to be a touch flatter, which has given him a better attack angle. All of these are changes that I like, and when you pair that with a small sample size 14% barrel rate and 95 mph average exit velocity, there might be something here.

Lars Nootbaar is another hitter who has improved his bat speed by almost two mph and flattened his swing path a bit to lead to a much better attack angle. He’s now sporting an ideal attack angle of 60.4% while hitting the ball more out in front of the plate. Perhaps that’s also because he’s moved up in the box slightly, but he’s catching the ball out in front more, which is leading to more consistent authoritative contact. We’ve waited for the Nootbaar breakout for a few years, but we could be looking at a .270, 20 home run season here.

Among catchers with at least 100 plate appearances, Bo Naylor ranks sixth in barrel rate (12.7%), seventh in ISO (.211), eighth in average exit velocity (91.2 mph), and ninth in home runs (nine). His bat speed is up this season, and he’s opened his stance up more while getting to his ideal attack angle 55% of the time. The issue may be that his emphasis on power has led to a 56% fly ball rate that has tanked his batting average. A lot of the changes Naylor has made are good, but perhaps the Guardians can get him to dial back the lift in his swing just a bit.

Jordan Beck and Hunter Goodman both get the benefit of playing in Coors Field, but are also sporting an approach that should lead to some power production. Beck still has some real swing-and-miss in his game, so even though he’s being a bit more selective this season, it’s hard to see him ending the year hitting above .250. That being said, he is making lots of hard contact and lifting the ball much more this season, which is obviously good for power production in the thin air of Coors Field. Goodman has made his swing slightly steeper this year and raised his attack angle, and while that has made his ideal attack angle rate worse, he’s able to do more damage when he makes contact with the ball. Much like Beck, his nearly 16% swinging strike rate is high, but he is aggressive in the zone, so he gives himself plenty of chances to make contact and drive the ball.