Who Is Ryan Schimpf and What the Hell is He Doing?

Ryan Schimpf lives quietly in SoCal anonymity, which is to say he's the third baseman for the San Diego Padres.

You probably haven't heard of him, but he's a revolutionary.

Schimpf last year batted just .217 but earned three wins by smashing 20 home runs in half a season.

It's been the same but more this year. He's hitting .158 with 14 home runs. Those 14 big flies represent more than half his output of hits.

The Launch Angle King
Schimpf is the tip of the spear in the world of launch angles. He has adopted with prejudice the philosophy of swinging hard on an upward plane to produce fly balls that leave the yard. In a world where 11 degrees is an average launch angle, Schimpf is golfing his contact on a 29 degree angle, first in the Majors. That's first, not necessarily best.

At 5'9, 180, and 29 years of age, Ryan Schimpf is neither the biggest nor most pedigreed ballplayer. Aaron Judge, for example, has 11 inches and 100 pounds on him, and Billy Hamilton could beat Schimpf in a race to Schimpf's own hand. Schimpf isn't fast or powerful, so he's pushing all his chips to the middle of the table and betting on an upward swing. It's yielded him two seasons on the MLB roster and 34 home runs in less than a full season's work.

Maybe Hedge His Bets
But Schimpf might want to pull a few of those chips back. The folks at 538 determined that the optimal launch angle for fly balls is about 25 degrees. Anything more yields too many high fly balls and popups.  That's less than Schimpf's average batted ball and it's yielding, well, a lot of high fly balls and popups. Schimpf's 43% fly ball rate is nearly double the league average and pretty certainly more than is ideal.

Suppose he cut his launch angle in half? That would make him Justin Smoak, another guy who might be otherwise employed but for his new approach. Smoak's hit more jacks than Schimpf, and also more of everything else good.

The great philosopher, Mae West, said, "too much of a good thing is . . . wonderful." But in this case, there's a limit to how much a batter should angle his swing. And Ryan Schimpf appears to have found it.