Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports
Surely this is just some piece of cosmic performance art. If you’re looking for proof that we live in a simulation, Isaac Paredes’ spray chart is strong evidence. Sure, you’ve heard of pull hitters. What about only-right-at-the-foul-pole hitters, though? Paredes is doing the same thing he always seems to. Through 259 plate appearances this season, he has the best wRC+ of his career at 147. Think it’s all about his one simple trick for hitting homers? He’s 16th in baseball in on-base percentage. He’s still walking roughly 10% of the time and striking out far less frequently than average. None of it makes sense, and yet it keeps happening.
The “Paredes approach” has been endlessly rehashed at this point. He puts the ball in the air. He pulls the ball in the air. He makes a tremendous amount of contact, and he cuts down on his swing to do so. His bat speed and exit velocity numbers are unimpressive, and he hits a ton of fly balls that would be outs if they went anywhere other than the left field corner. But, well, they keep going to the left field corner, as we’ve already covered.
Here’s a list of pull rate on fly balls for all hitters, from Paredes’ debut in 2020 through the end of last season:
Highest Air Pull Rate, 2020-23
This list features tons of practitioners of lift-and-pull. Ramírez, Arenado, and Altuve are the highest-profile examples of that style, and they’ve made careers out of hitting more homers than you’d expect given their raw power. Every player on this list has done better on aerial contact than you’d expect based on their launch angle/exit velocity combinations, and their pull tendencies have a lot to do with it.
Paredes makes the worst contact of the group, and gets the worst results – but he still gets pretty good results. You just don’t have to hit the ball very hard to coax it out of the park if you can consistently aim for the corners. Speaking of that consistent aim, here’s how our group of 10 hitters have done so far in 2024 (through games on June 10):
Air Pull Rate, 2024, Selected Batters
- Isaac Paredes 135 50.4%
- Danny Jansen 80 48.8%
- Adam Duvall 62 43.5%
- Joey Gallo 53 47.2%
- José Ramírez 147 43.5%
- Nolan Arenado 129 35.7%
- Byron Buxton 69 40.6%
- Cal Raleigh 85 40.0%
- Patrick Wisdom 35 25.7%
- Jose Altuve 128 47.7%
They’re still pulling the ball in the air with great frequency, as you would expect. Arenado has bemoaned his inability to pull the ball, and Wisdom has been bad in a small sample, but even with their performances in the mix, the group looks about the same as always.
From 2020 through 2023, weighted by batted balls, they had an aggregate pull rate of 43.8%. This year, they check in at 43.5%. There’s clearly skill in repeating your swing. These pull tendencies aren’t random. The league average pull rate on balls hit in the air is 30.6%. The odds of this happening by random chance are vanishingly small.
Part of that pulled fly ball skill is identifying which pitches to swing at. The hardest ball to pull is one pitched down and away. Let’s just say that pitchers understand physics when they face Paredes: Bad news for them, though. Paredes isn’t falling for their nonsense. He keeps his swings centrally located.
