The story about the balls being different again this year has been well discussed and looked into. Fly balls aren’t traveling as far, and as a result, slugging is down leaguewide. The league average barrel rate is 8.4%, the highest since Statcast began tracking them in 2015. The HR/FB rate is the lowest in those 10 years at 11.2%.
Fly balls aren’t traveling as far, but we know that pulling your fly balls is the most efficient way to hit for power, and is less affected by the year-to-year differences with the ball. The gap for slugging in this timespan is much wider for the center and opposite field balls in play. The league’s run environment is resembling the down offensive 2022 season, when the league’s slash line was .243/.312/.395 and 4.28 runs scored per game.
For this exercise, we’ll look at a few hitters who have increased or decreased their pulled fly ball rate from last season to this season. From there, we can assess what they’ve done this season and what we can expect moving forward.
Crow-Armstrong has emerged as baseball’s next superstar, with his electrifying speed and defense factored in with how his bat has developed this season. The speedster increased his bat speed this season, from 70.6 MPH to 72.1 MPH, and his damage metrics look outstanding. His uber-aggressive approach works well in him meeting the ball out front and yanking it for homers. On the season, 18 of his 30 barrels (60%) have been to the pull side, which ranks ninth among hitters with at least 15 barrels.
PCA is number nine among all hitters in Pull Air% at 30.1%. He increased his rate by over 10 percentage points, which ranked as the fourth highest out of 264 batters in this sample. The common names at the top of these leaderboards are the hitters who don’t have great raw power, but have that turn-and-burn ability to lift the ball and pull it to the shortest part of the ballpark for homers. Isaac Paredes, Alex Bregman, and Marcus Semien are some of the names that come to mind.
Crow-Armstrong has above-average raw power, which can allow him to play up a level if he can continue this skill. The tradeoff will be in batting average, as a heavy pull and fly ball batted ball diet with a high chase rate will likely drag it down into the .240-.260 range. He’s shown that he can handle premium velocity, turn on inside fastballs, and get out in front of a breaking ball. He’ll get to roughly 30 homers and 50 steals in the process and be a high-round selection for years to come.
Carroll has ascended even higher in 2025, largely due to unlocking another level in the power department. He is only five homers shy of his career high in 2023 in almost exactly half the number of plate appearances (645 vs. 323).
Carroll has always had great raw power regardless of his stature, with a 113.8 MPH MaxEV a few seasons ago, and then he hit a ball an absurd 115.8 MPH this season. The limiting factor that was holding him back from a 30-homer ceiling was his flat bat path hurting his quality of contact. But his angles have been much improved in that regard this season, as he owns a 72.3% ideal attack angle rate this season, which is the 2nd highest among qualified hitters. He’s meeting the ball more in front of the plate and raised his Pull Air% by over five percentage points (16.6% -> 22.3%). Still, he’s hit half of his 32 barrels on the season to straightaway and pulled only 12 of them.
The 24-year-old superstar has been much more aggressive, raising his swing rate by more than eight percentage points. The strikeout rate has ballooned to 24.8% as a result, his highest rate since his rookie season. But the quality of contact can’t be denied. He holds a 50% hard-hit rate and a 15.5% barrel rate. The only batters since 2015 with those markers and at least 20 stolen bases are Ronald Acuna Jr., Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Oneil Cruz.
Amidst a flurry of injuries, Lewis hasn’t produced at the same level when he’s been healthy the last two seasons. He was showing some interesting signs of growth during the small sample from this season, as he cut the strikeout rate to 14.5% while maintaining his contact quality. However, he finds himself as one of the biggest droppers in pulled fly ball rate. He has only eight barrels on the season, and pulled only one of them. For his career, he has pulled half of them.
Of 264 hitters included, he had the 2nd biggest reduction from season to season (18.3%). Lewis was one of the more prolific players in pulling fly balls over the past few seasons. He ranked in the 97th and 99th percentiles in pulled flyball rate in 2022 and 2024. The bat speed is still strong, so it’s not as if he lost some raw power amidst the injuries.
Using Baseball Savant’s tools with the intercept point or contact point, we can see that Lewis is letting the ball travel a bit further this season. It’s resulted in the lowest pull rate that he’s had at any point during his career. But he increased his fly ball rate in the process of this, so he is just hitting more fly balls to straightaway and opposite field, which we know isn’t the best recipe. The frequent injuries throwing off his timing and rhythm could be an explanation, and that will seemingly continue to be an issue for Lewis, unfortunately.
Adames has lost bat speed this year and already owned a long swing to begin with. His Pulled Air% dropped by almost 10 percentage points as he’s looking to settle into his new home in San Francisco. The pitcher-friendly home ballpark doesn’t help, but the degrading of his skills is the more pressing issue and the main contributor to various projection systems projecting him to barely reach the 20 home run threshold, which would be the lowest since his second big league season in 2019.
The process at the plate has been worse, as he owns a 92 Process+ compared to 112 last season. The batting average has totally bottomed out, and there will maybe be a chance at double-digit steals. He also has his lowest pull rate since his first two years in the big leagues. Of his 22 barrels this season, 17 (77.2%) have been hit to the straightaway or opposite field. Knowing the dimensions of Oracle Park, it’s a surefire way to not hit many homers.
The new ballpark is a real home run suppressor, but Adames has also been picked apart by secondary pitches. He’s in the 13th percentile in whiff rate against them. There’s a chance he bounces back for the rest of the season, but with the lost bat speed, it is shaping up to be a subpar power output with fewer steals and on the lower range of outcomes for his batting average.
