Memo to batters: Hit it high and let it fly

On MLB Network yesterday, there was an interesting discussion about hitting. It is simplistic, but one analyst suggested that hitting the ball on the ground is generally not a good idea.

While ground balls do get through the infield, they are often gobbled up by fielders who not only may have good range, but are now positioned most often, through shifts, where the hitters actually hit the ball most often. Hitting the ball in the air obviously produces more damage and there is one fewer fielder in the outfield, they tell me.

If you drive the ball, you can get extra-base hits. Some of those balls may go over the fence and you can't defend that. The harder you hit the ball, the better the chance it will not be caught. Fielders catch line drives, of course, but plenty of them find grass, as well. Or the outfield wall or the bullpen.

In this age of Statcast numbers, hitters, like the rest of us, can find out exactly how hard they hit the ball and how they compare to other batters. Mark Trumbo took some of this knowledge and worked to improve his game last offseason.

In this May interview, he told me that he went to a facility with HitTrax technology last winter to specifically work on improving his exit velocity and launch angles.

"You know, that is obviously a pretty technical way of talking about hitting the ball hard," Trumbo said. "You know, if you can combine hitting line drives and some fly balls, but having that high exit velocity, too, that is where the damage is done in this game: in the air with some miles per hour behind it. I don't know how else to put it, other than hitting it high and hard is going to be good for a hitter."

The difference for Trumbo was striking. A look at his at-bats per every homer the last three years:

2014: a homer every 23.4 at-bats.
2015: a homer every 23.1 at-bats.
2016: a homer every 13.0 at-bats.

He was the major league homer leader with 47 and also led the American League in at-bats per homer, ahead of Khris Davis of Oakland at 13.2, Nelson Cruz of Seattle at 13.7, David Ortiz of Boston at 14.1 and Edwin Encarnacion of Toronto at 14.3.

Trumbo's 47 homers last year are 13 more than he had ever hit and his slugging percentage jumped from .449 in 2015 to .533 in 2016.

Trumbo improved his exit velocity from 93.4 mph in 2015 to 95.0 mph last year, and that tied for fifth in the majors with Detroit's Miguel Cabrera. The O's Pedro Alvarez was eighth at 94.8 mph.

A look at exit velocities for other Orioles in 2016:
92.3 - Chris Davis
92.2 - Manny Machado and Hyun Soo Kim
91.5 - J.J. Hardy
89.9 - Adam Jones
89.1 - Matt Wieters
88.8 - Jonathan Schoop

The major league average for exit velocity is 89.6 mph. Schoop hits so many long homers that his number here surprised me. Meanwhile, in a very small sample size, Trey Mancini had an average exit velocity of 95.8 mph.

Trumbo set out to make specific improvements and did, leading to easily his best power season. In October, he looked back on his strong season.

"I'm obviously very happy with it," he said. "I think this was a year where some of the goals I had in the offseason were really able to materialize. I think, coming into this year, I wanted to really focus on driving the ball, doing it consistently and keeping that approach through the entire season. Fortunately, I was able to see that through."

While Trumbo is not a good defensive outfielder and doesn't produce a high OBP, he can bring some team a lot of homers. The improvements he made could mean that his big 2016 homer season is less of an outlier and more of the exact hitter he can be moving forward.

Now we wait to find out how big that will pay off for the free agent, and when and where he will sign for 2017 and beyond.

With so much data, statistics and technology now available to all of us in baseball, Trumbo is one player that put the information to good use in 2016 to take his game to another level. It led to his best season.