From Batting Leader to Bomber

DJ LeMahieu started his career at the Chicago Cubs, making his MLB debut on May 30, 2011. He was traded to the Rockies in December 2011. In the 7 seasons with the Rockies, he was selected to the All-Star game twice (2015 & 2017) and won the batting title in 2016, hitting .348. However, he was not a home run hitter and collected only 49 homers when he played for the Rockies. LeMahieu signed the contract with the New York Yankees, a two-year deal, in early 2019. In his first season in pinstripes, he set new career highs in hits, doubles, home runs, RBIs and runs scored. In particular, he hit 26 homers and it was his first season to hit more than 20 home runs. What adjustments did LeMahieu do to hit more home runs?

Looking back at LeMahieu’s career, he hit 31 doubles on average from 2016 to 2019. And we see a huge jump on his number of home runs last season. It’s also interesting to note that LeMahieu only hit 21 home runs (1738 ABs) at the Coors field and 19 homers (293 ABs) at the Yankee stadium. 

Last season, LeMahieu exactly hit the same number of home runs against fastballs as he did in 2018. However, he did hit more home runs against breaking pitches and offspeed pitches. Is he much better against these types of pitches?

Against fastballs, LeMahieu’s swing % remains quite stable, around 40%, from 2015 to 2019. Against breaking pitches and offspeed pitches, he chose to swing more in 2019.

LeMahieu swung more against breaking and offspeed pitches, however, he didn’t miss that much. 

 

LeMahieu swung more when facing against breaking and offspeed pitches. Did he make some changes on his swing as well? His launch angle was actually lower than 10 degrees against each type of pitches. 

Meanwhile, compared to 2018, his average exit velocity did go up. Slightly.

Compared to 2018, LeMahieu’s hard hit rate against fastballs went up slightly in 2019. At the same time, he hit much better against breaking and offspeed pitches, hard hit rate against these 2 types of pitches jumped to over 40%. His hard hit rate against fastballs and breaking pitches were career high since the statcast data available in 2015.

In 2016, LeMahieu won the batting title. That season, his xwOBA against fastballs and offpseed pitches was over .400. Last season, his xwOBA against breaking pitches reached to .362, that was also career high since the statcast data available in 2015.

 

DJ LeMahieu’s hard hit rate (47.2%) was almost the same as the hard hit rate (47.5%) in 2016. His xwOBA .379 ranked 25th in 2019 and in 2016 his xwOBA .397 ranked 11th. Thus, we can see that LeMahieu hit very well last season. Statcast numbers showed that LeMahieu’s hitting performance was very close to the performance in 2016, a year that he was the batting champion. Meanwhile, his average exit velocity 91.7 mph ranked 19th last season. Thus, LeMahieu improved his performance against breaking and offspeed pitches and made him a very important role in the Yankees lineup last season. If LeMahieu can replicate his performance while Stanton and Judge stay healthy, the Yankees lineup will be one of the toughest lineups to face if baseball returns in 2020. Besides, LeMahieu will become a free agent after this season, it’s also a big year for him to earn his next big contract.