We have seen that there are more balls hit in the air. However, ground balls still exist in baseball games. And, this season, there are several players who have lots of hits by hitting ground balls.
After checking on the statcast website, here’s what I found.
Amed Rosario now hits .282/.315/.405 with 11 home runs and 67 RBI in 141 games. Rosario is not a home run hitter, by far in his career, he never finished a season with 20+ home runs. But, he can collect many hits. In 2022, Rosario has 166 hits thus far, more than 70 of them are ground balls.
Xander Bogaerts has been hitting well this season. By far, Bogaerts bats .315/.384/.471 with 14 home runs and 68 RBI. His batting average of .315 is now second in the AL. Now, Bogaerts has 162 hits, among those 162 hits, 68 of them are ground balls. He can opt out of his current contract after the 2022 season. It will be worth watching what his decision will be.
Meanwhile, another shortstop Trea Turner will become a free agent after the 2022 season. Trea Turner was selected to the 2022 All-Star game and it’s his second time to be an All-Star. By far this season, Trea Turner slashes .304/.348/.481 with 20 home runs and 97 RBI. If he collects 100+ RBI, it will be Turner’s first time to collect at least 100 RBI in a single season. Moreover, he now has 182 hits, second most among MLB batters. Among those 182 hits, 36% of them are ground balls. Furthermore, Trea Turner never finished a season with at least 200 hits. It’s highly possible to see Turner collect at least 200 hits this year. He will surely draw a lot of attention from several teams after this season.
In addition, Brandon Nimmo now has 143 hits this season. Among those 143 hits, 66 hits are ground balls. It’s Nimmo’s second season with 100+ hits. He collected 114 hits in 2018 and now he has a career-high 143 hits. With a couple of weeks remaining in the regular season, is it possible to see him collect at least 160 hits this season?
Finally, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. crushed 48 home runs last season. But, he only has 29 home runs now. A possible reason why the number goes down is that his ground-ball rate increases from 45.6% to 52.1%. Guerrero Jr. has 164 hits thus far and 63 of them are ground balls. At the same time, Yandy Diaz has a hard hit rate over 45% this season. By far, he has 136 hits and 62 of those hits are ground balls. Additionally, Tommy Edman and Steven Kwan each have 62 hits that are ground balls.
Even though players tend to hit baseballs in the air, we can still see players collect hits by hitting ground balls. Moreover, MLB already announced defensive shift limits. Hence, it’s possible to see the increase in batting average on balls in play. Well, it will surely be interesting to see whether there will be more hits from ground balls in the next season. Additionally, will some of these players on the chart collect more hits from ground balls?
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