Why you don't need to look like Judge or Ohtani to slug HRs

As Mookie Betts came to bat in the fourth inning on March 28 -- his second game back from the illness that cost him 20 pounds and forced him to miss the Tokyo Series -- the Dodgers television broadcast relayed an interesting nugget.

"He's measuring 'getting better' [by] more than just stepping on the scale," said SportsNet LA's Joe Davis. "He's measuring it with bat speed as well."

In Spring Training, Betts had been reaching swing speeds of up to 74 mph. At his weakest during his illness and weight loss, he was only able to max out at 68 mph. The Major League average bat speed is just under 72 mph -- and every mph of bat speed translates to about six extra feet of distance on a fly ball.

For a hitter like Betts, Davis and partner Orel Hershiser explained, every last mph of bat speed makes a difference. Betts has never been one of the league's fastest swingers, but he has elite bat control. Still, he needed to be generating enough bat speed to put that bat control to work.

"That's what makes him [a great hitter]," Davis said. "It's not the bat speed -- it's not elite, it's good enough, with the bat accuracy you're talking about. And he just hits the ball correctly. … He gets a lot of home runs that are just gone enough."

That is the key: Hits the ball correctly. It gets at an important concept about power hitting in baseball today, and why Betts -- and other undersized hitters like him -- can still swat home runs in bunches without standing as tall or swinging as fast as Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani.

Mookie Betts doesn't have elite bat speed. Mookie Betts is an elite hitter. It's his elite bat control … and what he does with it: He pulls the ball in the air.

Pull power, of course, is not a new phenomenon in baseball. But it is something that modern-age sluggers target more than ever. Not everyone can be an all-fields home run hitter. "Pulled air contact" is a skill that can be acquired, and developing that approach can make a home run threat out of a player who would've never become one by focusing on staying up the middle or going the other way.

With the wealth of bat speed data that's now tracked across Major League Baseball -- and considering the top of that leaderboard is littered with the names of slugging giants like Judge, Ohtani, Giancarlo Stanton and Yordan Alvarez -- looking at pulled airballs helps explain how sluggers like Betts, José Ramírez, Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman and Francisco Lindor are still sluggers even without prototypical size and bat speed.

Those five are an All-Star quintet whose stardom is intertwined with their ability to pull the ball in the air. All five rank in the top 10 in pulled home runs in the Statcast era. All five have over 150 pulled home runs over the last decade. And all five have hit at least 75% of their home runs to the pull side.

Baseball Savant now has a batted ball profile leaderboard where you can track the tendencies of any hitter going back to the start of the Statcast era in 2015. For hitters like Betts, Ramírez, Altuve, Bregman and Lindor, it's especially revealing.

All five stars are listed at under 6 feet tall and under 200 pounds -- Betts at 5-foot-10, 180 pounds; Ramírez at 5-foot-8, 190 pounds; Altuve at 5-foot-6, 167 pounds; Bregman at 5-foot-11, 190 pounds; Lindor at 5-foot-10, 190 pounds. They don't have the build of a typical Major League slugger, yet all have had multiple 30-homer seasons.

Similarly, none rank near the top tier in bat speed. Last season, Lindor had the highest bat speed in the group at 72.4 mph, which is at least above MLB average, but far from the likes of his slugging Mets teammate Pete Alonso, for example (75.2 mph). Ramírez had the next-highest bat speed at 71.5 mph, then Bregman at 71.3 mph, Altuve at 69.4 mph and Betts at 69.0 mph.

And still Lindor (33) had just one fewer home run than Alonso (34) in 2024. Ramírez almost joined the 40-40 club, finishing with 39 dingers. Betts outhomered Ohtani in the postseason, and has averaged 37 home runs per 162 games since he arrived in L.A. And Altuve and Bregman finished with 20-plus home runs in the same season for the third time as Astros teammates, before Bregman departed for the Red Sox in the winter.

That home run power is explained by pulled airballs. That's the leaderboard you do tend to find Betts, Ramírez, Altuve, Bregman and Lindor near the top of.

The Major League-wide rate of pulled air contact (including fly balls, line drives and popups) has increased steadily over the last decade. For the full Statcast era, 16.6% of batted balls are pulled airballs. Since 2020, it's 17.3% of batted balls. And in 2024, it was 17.8%. But undersized power hitters like Betts and Co. stay ahead of the curve.

• Since Betts joined the Dodgers in 2020, nearly a quarter of his batted balls have been pulled in the air. That puts him right around the top 10% of qualifying hitters over that time. In 2023, when he hit a career-high 39 homers, Betts' pulled airball rate was also at a career-high 28.4%, a top-10 mark in the Majors that year.

• Going back to Ramírez's breakout 2017 season, the Guardians star has a 28.2% pulled airball percentage -- third highest of any hitter behind only Joey Gallo and Adam Duvall. Whether he's batting left-handed (29.0%) or right-handed (26.5%), Ramírez excels at pulling the ball in the air. Many switch-hitters favor one side for their power, but Ramírez can slug from both -- he has a career slugging percentage over .500 as both a right- and left-handed hitter.

• Altuve has become much more of a pull power hitter in the latter half of his Astros career. Over the past four seasons from 2021-24, while averaging 24 homers a year, Altuve was one of 11 qualifying hitters who pulled the ball in the air at least 25% of the time. He especially takes advantage of the short left-field Crawford Boxes in Houston, with a pulled airball rate of 26.7% at home, among the Majors' highest.

• Bregman, Altuve's longtime teammate in Houston, has been one of the most consistent pulled airball hitters in baseball over his career. He's pulled at least 20% of his contact in the air nine times in 10 big league seasons, including in 2025 so far with Boston. Bregman's peak was from 2018-22, when he averaged 30 homers per 162 games and over 25% of his contact was pulled airballs in every full season (excluding 2020). Bregman's career pulled airball rate of 23.4% is one of the highest of the Statcast era.

• In Lindor's first two seasons with the Mets, he "only" hit 20 and 26 home runs. But he's followed that with back-to-back seasons of over 30 in 2023 and '24. That was driven by an increase in Lindor's pulled airball rate from 18.3% in the first two seasons to 24.0% over the last two seasons. And because Lindor puts a lot of balls in play in general, and gets those balls in the air to the pull side, that combination of quality and quantity of contact results in a bunch of extra homers.

The easiest way to pull the ball in the air is to hit it "out front" -- that is, to make contact with the pitch out in front of your body, and often in front of home plate.

Contacting the ball out in front gives the barrel of the bat more time to reach a higher bat speed over the course of the swing, and also means the bat is more likely to be moving on the upward plane needed to lift the ball in the air. This is the hitting approach that fueled the launch angle revolution and is prevalent today. Statcast's new contact point data confirms it: Hitters do the most damage, and hit the most home runs, when they hit the ball out front.

For a smaller power hitter like Betts or Altuve, this can be especially important. An all-fields power hitter like Judge or Ohtani can let the pitch travel deep, make contact closer to their own body, and still generate the bat speed necessary to go deep. But a pull-power hitter like Betts needs to hit the pitch out front to drive it over the fence.

Since Statcast bat tracking was introduced at the 2023 All-Star break, Betts has made contact almost nine inches in front of home plate. Altuve, who stands farther up in the batter's box, makes contact almost 15 inches in front of the plate. They have to catch the ball farther out front than most big league hitters.

And when any one of Betts, Altuve, Ramírez, Bregman or Lindor get ahold of a pitch and launch a home run, chances are, they did so well out ahead of their bodies.

Avg. contact point on HR, since 2023 All-Star break

• Betts: 36.7 inches in front of center of mass
• Bregman: 35.4 inches in front of center of mass
• Ramírez: 34.5 inches in front of center of mass
• Lindor: 32.8 inches in front of center of mass
• Altuve: 30.4 inches in front of center of mass

(To illustrate the contrast: Ohtani, who is 6-foot-4, makes contact with his home runs just 28.9 inches in front of his own center of mass. Mike Trout, at 6-foot-2, makes contact on his home runs just 28.6 inches in front of his own center of mass. Juan Soto, at 6-foot-1, makes contact on his home runs just 27.3 inches in front of his own center of mass.)

Now, there are plenty of other hitters across baseball who also fit this mold -- "catch the ball out in front" has become a widely emphasized mantra by many modern-day power hitters, of all shapes and sizes and bat speeds. The focus here on Betts, Ramírez, Altuve, Bregman and Lindor is simply to highlight the marquee stars of the "undersized slugger" archetype.

Later in that same game where the Dodgers broadcast was discussing Betts' bat speed, he belted his first two home runs of the 2025 season -- a go-ahead homer in the eighth inning and a walk-off home run in the 10th. A few days later, he took reigning National League Cy Young winner Chris Sale deep for his third long ball.

Betts' bat speed on all three home runs was well below Statcast's "fast swing" threshold of 75-plus mph. On the first homer, it was 73.8 mph. On the second, it was only 65.5 mph. And on the third, it was 68.8 mph.

All three fly balls barely cleared the fence, but wallscrapers count the same as any other home run. And all three balls were dead pull to left field, where Betts' home runs almost always go. And J-Ram's, and Altuve's, and Bregman's, and Lindor's. That's what makes them who they are.