What is Pull Air%, and how can it help identify fantasy baseball hitters to target and avoid?

Statcast has plenty of metrics to sort through when preparing for the fantasy baseball season, but one of my favorites is Pull Air%. It’s a pretty simple stat that just measures the percentage of a batter’s hits that are non-groundballs, which are hit to the pull side. So why is that important?

Well, for starters, we know that around two-thirds of all home runs at the MLB level are on pulled fly balls. We also know that pulled fly balls lead to much higher batting averages and OPS numbers than other types of contact. So if pulled fly balls lead to more damaging contact than other types of contact, it follows that we would want to target hitters who pull the ball in the air more often than others.

In this article, I’m going to discuss some of the MLB leaders in Pull Air% but also highlight some players who had strong Pull Air% numbers in 2025 and did not produce elite surface-level stats in the hopes of finding us some potential value picks in drafts. I’ll also discuss some players at the end who had the lowest Pull Air% in the league, so that we might be able to find some potential under-performers that we want to avoid.

⚾️ Coming soon: MLB returns to NBC and Peacock in 2026! In addition to becoming the exclusive home of Sunday Night Baseball, NBC Sports will broadcast MLB Sunday Leadoff, “Opening Day” and Labor Day primetime games, the first round of the MLB Draft, the entire Wild Card round of the postseason, and much more.

2026 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Rankings, strategy, sleepers, mock draft results

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Fantasy Baseball Power Hitters Using Pull Air%

MINIMUM 40 BATTED BALL EVENTS

A lot of these guys are hitters you know you can count on for power: Kyle Schwarber, José Ramírez, Spencer Torkelson, Cal Raleigh, Isaac Paredes, and Rhys Hoskins. We also know that Danny Jansen has always had strong offensive potential but struggles to remain healthy, and I should note that Davis Schneider is likely going to be limited to a short-side platoon with Jesus Sanchez in Toronto. Lastly, I covered Jordan Lawlar in detail in my post-hype hitters article, so you can click here to check that out.

Max Muncy – 3B, Los Angeles Dodgers

Muncy is one of my favorite picks at the 3B spot. I think people are forgetting what he did last season after he started wearing prescription glasses to help with an astigmatism in his right eye. Muncy also suffered a knee injury that kept him out for a month in July and then an oblique strain that kept him out for a couple of weeks as well. Still, from May 7th on, Muncy slashed .278/.411/.571 in 258 plate appearances with 18 home runs, 60 RBI, and a 16.3% strikeout rate compared to a 17.4% walk rate. He was lights out. He posted the highest average exit velocity of his career to go along with a 13.6% barrel rate and a career-high hard-hit rate. I don’t think projections are accounting for that in Muncy’s outlook for 2026, and I think we could see something closer to what he did in 2021 when he hit 36 home runs and batted .249. I’m not ready to project him for 144 games played, so that will knock the home runs total down, but I think Muncy is in for a good season.

Pete Crow-Armstrong – OF, Chicago Cubs

PCA is 12th on this list and 7th in Pull Air% if you limit it to just qualified players. Of course, you know we can’t talk about his season without addressing the first and second half splits. In the first half of the season, PCA hit .265/.302/.544 with 25 home runs and a 23% strikeout rate. That came with a 17.6% HR/FB ratio. In the second half, he slipped to .216/.262/.372 with six home runs and a 25.6% strikeout rate. That came with a 7.8% HR/FB ratio. Considering the league average HR/FB ratio is 11.9%, it could be fair to say that PCA simply got lucky on fly balls in the first half and unlucky in the second. But there’s also a little bit more to it.

This may actually be a case where pulling the ball in the air so much actually hurt the hitter. In the first half of the season, PCA had a 28.2% Pull Air% rate and a 49.3% pull rate overall. Then, in the second half, he posted a 33.7% Pull Air% and pulled the ball 59% of the time in that stretch. His xSLG dropped drastically from August 1st to the middle of September, and his hard hit rate fell significantly from early July until the end of the year. But it wasn’t as if he wasn’t pulling the ball in the air a lot in the first half. That 28.2% mark was 12th among qualified hitters. He simply leaned into it too much. Some of that could very well have been because of how he was pitched, but it’s hard to dig into changes to how a hitter was being attacked in the middle of the year.

At the end of the day, PCA did’t swing and miss much more in the second half. He still showed strong bat speed, and he started to correct his pull-happy tendency in the middle of September. I think the first half power surge was a little bit of a fluke, but I still expect him to get the most out of his power because he tended to hit the ball in the air to the pull side, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he pushed close to 25 home runs in 2026.

Sal Stewart – 1B/3B – Cincinnati Reds

Sal Stewart has a small MLB sample size to work from, but this is exactly what you want to see. He posted a 52.5% hard-hit rate in the majors and a 51.3% mark in Triple-A. He had a 112.6 mph max exit velocity in the majors and a 113.7 mph mark in the minors. Considering he also posts about an 85% zone contact rate and a swinging strike (SwStr%) rate around 10.5% in the minors and majors, this is a profile that looks like it should account for a decent amount of power. Now, even though there is no Pull Air% for the minors, we should point out that Stewart pulled the ball 39% of the time in the big leagues but just 31% of the time in Triple-A. He also lifted the ball 42.5% of the time in the big leagues, which was significantly more than at any stop in the minors. He did run high pull rates in Double-A, so I do expect him to be about a 37% pull rate guy or higher, but the fly ball rates would likely have regressed over a larger sample. That may ding his Pull Air% and power potential just a little bit, but I still believe this is a guy who should start at 1B most days for the Reds and surpass 20 home runs in his rookie season while also registering a solid batting average. Go get your shares.

Cedric Mullins and Jake Fraley – OF, Tampa Bay Rays

We know the Rays love hitters who pull the ball in the air, so it’s no surprise that they went out and added two hitters who finished in the top 15 in Pull Air% in 2025. While it’s certainly a profile that the Rays like, but does that mean they’re going to get more out of Mullins or Fraley than their previous teams did? That’s less clear. For starters, according to Statcast’s Park Factors, Fraley used to play in the 2nd-best park for left-handed pull power, and Mullins used to play in the 3rd-best. They now play in the 24th-best. That doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence that we’re going to see a breakthrough in 2026. What’s more, Mullins may have had a 29.6% Pull Air% and a 67.5% Air Rate overall, but his 12.7% Pop-Up Rate was the 7th-highest among qualified hitters. The only hitters who had a higher rate of pop-ups were Joey Ortiz, Matt Wallner, Jurickson Profar, Bo Naylor, Tyrone Taylor, and Cal Raleigh. Of those hitters, only Wallner, Profar, and Raleigh have given us fantasy seasons that we might want to search for. Wallner and Raleigh both have the natural power that Mullins doesn’t have. Maybe the Rays will optimize the approach to more closely resemble Profar.

Yet, even if Mullins’ approach isn’t great, his batted ball quality is better than Fraley’s. He hits the ball harder, swings and misses a little less. Fraley will make more contact, but even though he pulls the ball in the air at a good rate, there isn’t a power explosion coming here. Mullins could at least push for a 20/20 season in Tampa Bay if they can rein in some of those pop-ups.

⚾️ Coming soon: MLB returns to NBC and Peacock in 2026! In addition to becoming the exclusive home of Sunday Night Baseball, NBC Sports will broadcast MLB Sunday Leadoff, “Opening Day” and Labor Day primetime games, the first round of the MLB Draft, the entire Wild Card round of the postseason, and much more.

Fantasy Baseball Power Breakout Hitters

Of this list, I already covered Coby Mayo in my article on second-year hitters, and I wrote about Bo Naylor in my post-hype hitters article, so check those out. I’m also not going to dive deeper into Miguel Amaya here because he’s in a catching timeshare with Carson Kelly, and I’m also going to skip over Adrian Del Castillo and Ronny Mauricio, who are all not projected to start the season in their team’s lineup. However, they are all names to keep an eye on if they are able to win a spot.

Ozzie Albies – 2B, Atlanta Braves

Ozzie Albies is a bit of a forgotten man, and I understand it to a certain extent. His last two seasons have not been great, and he ended last year with a fractured hamate bone that required surgery. However, considering Corbin Carroll, Francisco Lindor, and Jackson Holliday all fractured their hamate bones this spring and will likely be ready on Opening Day or soon after, I don’t think that part needs to factor too much into our analysis on Albies. He will also be six months removed from surgery when the season begins, so his normal power output shouldn’t be impacted by the injury, and that’s also what we’re here to discuss.

Albies put up a 27.2% Pull Air% last season with just a 7.2% HR/FB rate and also a 4.9% barrel rate. Yet, in 2023, when he hit 33 home runs, he had a 26% Pull Air% but ran an 8.2% barrel rate and a 15.6% HR/FB rate. So was 2023 just a fluke? Not quite. That season, Albies also posted a 6.6% infield fly ball rate, which was pretty consistent with his previous career norms. In 2024, that mark was 16.3%, and it was 14.5% last year. So it’s not so much that Albies is putting the ball in the air more; it’s that his launch angle is a bit more extreme in recent seasons, which has led those pulled fly balls to be more pop-ups than balls he drives into the gap. Looking at Statcast’s Swing Path Leaderboard, it seems like Albies was getting the ball out in front a touch more in 2023, which led to a slightly better attack angle, but there’s nothing drastically different.

It seems likely to me that Albies got a little lucky in 2023 and then had a slight change in his swing mechanics, which prevented him from getting the ball out front as often as he’d like, hence the ball getting on his hands and leading to infield pop-ups. That could mean that Albies is able to produce about 75% of what he did in 2023 and hit .250-.260 with 20-25 home runs and 10-15 steals. That’s a pretty valuable player at a shallow position.

Christopher Morel – 1B/OF, Miami Marlins

I feel like we’ve done this song and dance with Morel before, so I’m not sure there’s much to take away from this. He pulls the ball in the air a lot and hits the ball hard, but he had a nearly 20% SwStr% last season and has a career 73.6% zone contact rate. Some hitters can succeed with a chase rate as high as his is, but they are usually hitters who consistently do damage on pitching in the strike zone. I’m just not convinced Morel will ever be one of those guys; however, he is just 26 years old, so we shouldn’t write it off completely.

Colson Montgomery – SS, Chicago White Sox

If you just look at Montgomery’s 2025 MLB results, you’d pick him as the biggest sleeper entering the 2026 season. He posted a 14.4% barrel rate, 44.3% hard-hit rate, and an .840 OPS while clubbing 21 home runs in just 284 plate appearances. However, that would be ignoring that he had a 29% strikeout rate, 15.4% SwStr%, and 70% contact rate over that same stretch. Plus, in his 242 Triple-A plate appearances last season, he posted a 34% strikeout rate and 13% SwStr%. Now, the 74% contact rate he registered in Triple-A is more palatable, and his 88% zone contact rate at that level is also something we can work with.

I don’t think Montgomery is going to hit for a high average, and swing-and-miss will always be part of his game, but the zone contact rate makes me believe that something around .225-.235 is manageable. Yet, his 25.9% HR/FB ratio from his MLB stint is also not going to carry over. He has run high HR/FB rates in the minors, likely because of how often he pulls the ball in the air and can run his max exit velocities up over 114 mph. It’s a batted ball quality that’s similar to Josh Bell, except that Bell doesn’t pull the ball in the air nearly as much. That should mean that Montgomery can put up 25+ home runs, but with a lower average than Bell has historically run because of a worse contact profile. Oh, and Montgomery doesn’t really steal bases, which isn’t ideal for a middle infielder.

Andrew Benintendi – OF, Chicago White Sox

Montgomery’s veteran teammate had his best power season ever last year, tying his career-high of 20 home runs but doing it in 116 games. It’s actually kind of wild when you look at Benintendi’s underlying metrics. His average exit velocity and max exit velocity last year were the same as what he’s done in his career. His hard-hit rate was in line with what we’ve seen from him before. We just saw a clear approach shift with Benintendi trading contact for power. He lifted the ball 6% more than he ever has, pulled the ball almost 4% more than he ever has, chased more, swung more, and swung and missed more. Yet, because of how much more often Benintendi swung, his strikeout rate actually dropped. To me, that’s pretty repeatable for Benintendi.

Dylan Beavers – OF, Baltimore Orioles

As of now, FanGraphs projects Dylan Beavers to start in right field for the Orioles, but there’s still a chance he loses that spot to Tyler O’Neill, who the Orioles signed to a pretty big contract, or Heston Kjerstad, who is having a good spring training and has fewer minor league options than Beavers. If Beavers does make the team, I’m certainly intrigued. Beavers doesn’t sting the ball with a 39% Hard-hit rate in Triple-A and an 89 mph average exit velocity in his 35-game MLB sample, but he makes the most of his contact by getting to the pullside about 40% of the time, and trying to get the ball in the air when he does. Beavers has run about a 30% groundball rate over the last few years, so, despite having good speed, he is trying to keep the ball on the line or in the air, which is great for power production. He had much higher pop-up rates in the minors than he did in his MLB sample, so I expect that to regress to the norm a bit more, but there doesn’t appear to be anything flukey about the 22 home runs he hit between Triple-A and the big leagues. Beavers has a good eye at the plate and makes regular contact, so I truly believe this is the profile of a .260 hitter with 20/20 upside over a full season.

Spencer Steer – 1B/OF, Cincinnati Reds

With Euguenio Suarez and Ke’Bryan Hayes in town, Sal Stewart figures to shift to first base, which means Spencer Steer needs to beat out JJ Bleday for the starting left field job. I think he does. The 28-year-old battled a shoulder injury at the start of the season, but he actually hit better in the first half of the season than he did in the second half. While part of that could be luck, some of it was also approach. In the second half of the season, Steer had a lower strikeout rate and a higher walk rate but sported a considerably lower BABIP. Yet, his flyball rate in the second half of the season was also 55.3%. We love when hitters try to elevate the ball to the pull side, but Steer’s second half seems a bit over-the-top.

His results started to nosedive around July 6th, so if we use that as a cut-off point, Steer had a 26.1% Pull Air% before that, with a 63% air rate and 46% pull rate overall. In that time, he slashed .253/.310/.410 with 10 home runs, a 5.4% barrel rate, and a 30.6% hard-hit rate. From July 7th on, he hit .215/.315/.411 in 64 games with 11 home runs, a 36.6% hard-hit rate, and a 10.6% barrel rate. He also had a 25.5% Pull Air% with a 67.1% air rate and 44.7% pull rate overall. The issue is that he had a 12% pop-up rate, and his line drive rate fell from 24% to 16%. He made more authoritative contact, perhaps because his shoulder was stronger, but he was also getting under the ball far more often than he was in the first half and hitting into far more easy outs. Now, it’s entirely possible that as his shoulder got stronger, his swing mechanics were changing, and that messed with his launch angle. It feels like something that an entire healthy offseason could remedy but since the overall approach wasn’t much different, I wouldn’t expect anything beyond the .250 average and 20 home run pace.

Mike Yastrzemski – OF, Atlanta Braves

As of now, Yastrzemski is going to start in the outfield against all right-handed pitching and hit in the middle third of the lineup. Remember that the only two teams he’s played for are the Giants and Royals. Those home parks rank 26th and 28th, respectively, for left-handed home run power. Meanwhile, Atlanta’s home stadium ranks 7th. That’s a pretty big chance for Little Yaz. He has always made an elite level of contact but taken plenty of called strikes, which has led to more elevated strikeout rates. That seems unlikely to change, so I doubt he hits better than .235-.240, but his bat speed has improved in each of the last three years, which has contributed to his average exit velocity increasing as well. His pull rate dipped last year, and his fly ball rate went up pretty drastically, but both of those seemed to happen after he was traded and played in Kauffman Stadium, so it may have had to do with adjusting to a new park. At the end of the day, I don’t expect him to become a totally different hitter, but his presence on this list was intriguing to me since he’s now in a new park and in a good lineup. There’s a chance he hits .235 with 20+ home runs and 5-8 steals while hitting near the middle of Atlanta’s lineup, and that’s not nothing.

Fantasy Baseball Hitters With Power Questions

Of the 537 qualified hitters, who had some surprisingly low Pull Air% numbers?

Some names we don’t have to spend much time on here, but it’s surprising to see James Wood, Lawrence Butler, and William Contreras on here. Remember that Contreras was playing through a broken thumb last season, so that could have played a big part. We know that Jackson Holliday doesn’t have tons of power upside, and both Ke’Bryan Hayes and Christian Yelich have spent their career fighting off our calls for them to pull the ball in the air more. Same goes for Yandy Diaz, who has never lifted in the air like we’d like to see. I covered Edgar Quero in my article on second-year hitters, but I’m not a big believer in his power upside. Lastly, I wrote about Jacob Melton in my post-hype hitters article, and I’m optimistic about his upside in Tampa Bay, but his playing time is not a given right now.

Elly De La Cruz – SS, Cincinnati Reds

This has discussed ad nauseam with Elly De La Cruz, so I’m not going to add much new to the conversation, but I felt like it was worth pointing out. This is a guy who hit one total home run from June 24th to September 18th. That was 74 games where he slashed .251/.316/.346 with that one home run, 27 RBI, and 14 steals. Over that span, he had just a 3.8% barrel rate, 38.6% hard-hit rate, and an 8.1% Pull Air% that ranked 243rd out of 251 hitters. Is he likely to go through a stretch like that again? Probably not, but I can’t say that with certainty, and that’s pretty concerning based on where he gets drafted in fantasy drafts right now.

Francisco Alvarez – C, New York Mets

I wanted to include Alavarez here because I think his appearance misses some larger context. Alvarez went back to his old batting stance after his demotion last year and then returned to the Mets to slash .276/.360/.561 with eight home runs and a 25 percent strikeout rate in 40 games to finish the season. If we look at Alvarez’s performance from July 21st on (after he was recalled), his Pull Air% is still around 9%, but he was pulling and lifting the ball more overall, and the quality of contact went up. Perhaps a full season of that re-adopted stance and that slight focus more on pulling and lifting will lead to better production overall. He’s just 24 years old and also came into camp 10 pounds lighter this season. He has had terrible luck with hand injuries over the last few years, but there could be a major buying opportunity here in fantasy baseball leagues.