Could Schwarber have become the 45-plus home run hitter he’s been in recent years earlier in his career? What if he was training with Trajekt in 2016? Or is there no substitute for game experience?
I asked Driveline assistant hitting director Andrew Aydt if hitters earlier in their careers can pull forward the pull-air spike we see later in careers.
“I think it can definitely be accelerated,” Aydt said. “That’s definitely something that we worked on with hitters is to be able to learn to pull the ball in the air and more consistently and correctly and know when to take your shots in certain situations and counts.”
Every hitter who takes a swing at Driveline almost always has a target they are tasked with trying to hit. And that target is often in the air, to the pull side.
Training has changed a lot in recent years and will have a great impact on development trends.
“When you’re growing up, most times you do not really ever have any coaches telling you to pull the ball in the air,” Aydt said. “It’s always, you know, ‘Hit line drives up the middle’.”
Few players came to realize the benefits of a pull-air approach on their own pre-Statcast like J.D. Martinez did, which led him to a major swing change and remarkable 2014 breakout. Martinez told me this back in 2017: “You still talk to coaches ‘Oh, you want a line drive right up the middle? Right off the back of the [L-screen in batting practice]?’ OK, well that’s a fucking single.”
It’s different now.
While many players were perhaps not sure what to do with Statcast data when it debuted in 2015, everyone is now aware of where batted-ball flight is optimized.
There were 5,532 pulled fly balls in the 2015 season compared to 9,198 this season, a 66% increase. Average launch angle has improved from 11 degrees in 2015 to 13 degrees this season.
So perhaps the pull-air aging curve will look different a decade from now.
If that is true it would seem to place older players at an even greater disadvantage, and further stress that cohort of players.
But we also don’t want to assume that skills must remain static, that a player cannot empower himself through different training approaches to better stave off Father Time.
Older players can improve bat speed and exit velocities – it can be especially impactful if such players are new to such training regimens.
Consider the cases of Mookie Betts and Nolan Arenado, both of whom trained at Driveline.
In late August of 2021, Arenado singled against the Reds and had a few moments to chat with Joey Votto at first base. Arenado was curious how the Reds’ then 37-year-old first baseman had a late-career resurgence. Not only did Votto slug 36 homers that year after years of power decline but Arenado noticed his exit velocities had spiked, too.
“I was like, ‘Dude, what’s going on? You’re hitting the ball ridiculously hard,’” Arenado told me in 2022. “He was hitting 117-mph bullets last year, and he was 37.”
Votto told him his secret, his fountain of youth: bat-speed training.
Arenado traveled to Driveline after the season and posted a 149 wRC+ and 7.2 fWAR in the following campaign, his age 31 season – the best marks of his career.
Recently, Arenado had a motion capture at Driveline’s Arizona complex and intends to train with us again this offseason.
Stokey worked closely with Betts in 2023 when Betts enjoyed a two-mph spike in exit velocity that year, averaging a career-best 92.4 mph at age 30. It was key to his success as he launched a career-best 39 homers and produced a 165 wRC+.
Betts’ resurgence this season began with a renewed focus on bat speed training in mid-August.
They prove a player can improve bat-speed and underlying power skills in their 30s.
Stokey said bat speed training ideally begins earlier in careers but that it’s “important for all ages.”
That leads us to an interesting question: what would power aging curves look like if every player employed bat-speed training their entire careers? After all, the future is going to include such regimens becoming increasingly commonplace.
“My best guess is the starting point is going to be higher,” said Stokey of bat speed. “The baseline is going to be higher, and (bat speed) probably won’t fall off as drastically. Maybe the point of when it falls off moves back from like 29 to 31, to like 32, 33, 34. … It’s going to start to taper off in a similar fashion, but it might get pushed back a couple years until it really falls off a cliff.”
That’s likely what the future will look like.
Youth will always be an advantage but if hitters can flatten the aging curves, and push back dramatic fall off, that has major implications for how players can fare in arbitration and free agency.
It’s possible that the next decade of data will create evolving aging curves but what we do now is that players who are not increasing bat speed, that are not focused optimizing batted-ball flight, are more likely to be left behind.