The Phillies were quite inept offensively in 2018. The source of their struggles likely stems from their inability to generate hard contact.
As you probably know if you watched the Phillies at all this season, they were quite bad offensively. I don’t need to rehash all of their poor offensive statistics, but they are there for you to balk at. When looking for the source of their offensive issues, one underlying statistic could tell the story: hard contact rate.
This statistic from Baseball Info Solutions factors in a batted ball’s hang time, trajectory, and landing spot. While there is no one ideal batted ball profile, you ideally want to hit the ball hard as much as possible.
Among all 30 teams, Philadelphia ranked dead-last in hard contact rate and have the highest soft contact rate. As pointed out by Jayson Stark of the Athletic, no qualifying Phillie ranked in the top 100 for hard contact.
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Cesar Hernandez and Odubel Herrera, two players who had down years, ranked third and fourth-worst in hard contact rate. Herrera’s hard contact rate fell from 29.4% in 2017 to 24.9% in 2018. His soft contact rate rose from 24.4% to 27.2%, which was the highest among qualified hitters.
Hernandez’s shift in batted ball profile is a bit more interesting. His hard contact rate is actually somewhat up compared to last year, although it was still among the worst in the league. After hitting ground balls over half the time his entire career, he hit fewer ground balls and line drives and more fly balls this year. Even though he was hitting the ball hard slightly more often, it didn’t help him succeed.
Hernandez and Hernandez also did not have high average exit velocities. The two ranked 24th and 69th in average exit velocity among 332 players with 150 or more batted balls this season.
Rhys Hoskins finished the year with the fourth-highest average launch angle of 22.4°. He was above average in exit velocity and ranked 53rd in barrels per plate appearance, but his hard contact rate was still not great.
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As a whole, the league average for hard contact rate was 35.3%. Only two Phils with 200 or more plate appearances (Aaron Altherr and Jorge Alfaro) finished the year above that mark.
While hitting the ball hard is good, that is not the end all be all. Altherr is a prime example of that, hitting just .181 this season. The fact that he was still hitting the ball hard is a good sign moving forward, but he still has other issues going on.
Avoiding weak contact should be a priority for the Phillies offense in 2019. Their offense has to make significant improvements to contend, and this is one of those improvements.