A few weeks ago, I read an article about a player’s batted ball profile. He’s one of the most dangerous hitters in the majors. However, he actually hit several balls on the ground. Nonetheless, those balls were hit hard.
After reading the article, I began to think about a question. Are there many players who had a lot of hard-hit ground balls as that player did?
To solve my doubt, I decided to check on the statcast website.
From 2022 to 2024, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. finished 2 seasons with 30+ home runs. And he had 2 seasons with a hard-hit rate over 50%. In particular, his OPS was over .900 in 2024 and his hard-hit rate was 54.9%. However, he did hit several balls on the ground. His ground-ball rate was over 52.3% in 2022. Over the last 2 seasons, his GB% was over 40%. In the last 3 years, he hit 376 ground balls with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher and 125 of them became hits.
Nonetheless, Yandy Diaz is an interesting case. Over the last 3 years, he owned a batting average over .280 each season and his hard-hit rate was over 48% each year. But most of the time, those batted balls were hit on the ground. From 2022 to 2024, his ground-ball rate was at least 50% each season. And more than 300+ ground balls were hit with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher. More than 130 of those hard-hit ground balls became hits.
In addition, from 2022 to 2024, Alec Bohm finished each season with a batting average of .274 or higher. Last season, he was selected to the All-Star game for the first time in his career. His hard-hit rate was over 40% in each of the last 3 seasons. And his ground-ball percentage was over 40% in each of the last 3 seasons. He had 270+ ground balls which were hard hits.
Without doubt, Juan Soto can hit the ball hard. His hard-hit rate was 47.4% in 2022. Moreover, his hard-hit rate was over 55% in each of the last 2 seasons. But not all the balls were hit in the air. From 2022 to 2024, he had 272 ground balls which were hard hits. At the same time, Ketel Marte had 272 hard-hit ground balls as well. From 2022 to 2024, his ground-ball percentage grew from 43.2% to 48.9%. But his hard-hit rate increased from 41.9% to 53.8%.
Finally, there were 4 players who had 260+ ground balls with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher.
Looking back at the last 3 seasons, it’s quite interesting to see that only 2 players had 300+ ground balls, which were hard hits. Nonetheless, they are 2 very different players. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. can blast 30+ home runs in a single season. Nevertheless, Yandy Diaz has never finished a season with 25 home runs or more thus far in his career. In the 2025 season, we can keep watching if they still hit a lot of balls on the ground. Perhaps, they will make some adjustments?
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