Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Josh Bell has a chance to set the record for home runs by a switch-hitting rookie.
Josh Bell hit his 20th home run yesterday. That may not be exciting in 2017, a year in which fly balls are leaving the yard at a record pace. There are 59 players who have hit at least 20 home runs this year, so Bell isn’t exactly in elite company among his 2017 peers.
Historically, though, Bell has a chance to make history. First, he’s a rookie. Second, he’s a switch-hitter. The list of switch-hitting rookies with 20 home runs in a season now sits at 13, with Bell being the most recent member of this small club. He’s now tied with Orestes Destrade (1993) and Tom Tresh (1962).
Of course, Bell’s Pittsburgh Pirates team still has 47 games to play. He shouldn’t stay tied with Destrada and Tresh for long. Soon enough, he will join switch-hitters Danny Espinosa, Nick Swisher and Lance Berkman, all with 21 home runs as rookies, then Carlos Beltran, who hit 22. If/when Bell hits his 23rd home run, he will pull into a tie with Chipper Jones for the National League home run record for switch-hitting rookies.
Josh Bell has 20 home runs. MLB record for home runs by a switch-hitting rookie is 27, held by Eddie Murray (1977) and Tony Clark (1996).
— Stephen J. Nesbitt (@stephenjnesbitt) August 10, 2017
From there, it will be a quest for the all-time record, with Devon White (24), Jose Cruz, Jr. (26) and Mark Teixeira (26) sitting between Bell and the two men who currently share the all-time mark: Tony Clark and Eddie Murray, both with 27 long balls in their switch-hitting rookie seasons.
Bell wasn’t supposed to hit this many home runs. Most of the projection systems (Steamer, CBS, Clay Davenport, ZiPS) had Bell with 10-15 home runs in around 500 plate appearances. Last year, he hit three big flies in 152 plate-appearances (he’s still considered a rookie because he was two at-bat short of exceeding his rookie eligibility last season). His career high in the minor leagues is 14 home runs in 114 games in Triple-A last year. Twenty home runs is uncharted territory for Bell, a guy who took up yoga in the offseason.
Bell is projected by the FanGraphs Depth Charts to hit another five home runs, which would give him 25 on the season. That would move him past Chipper Jones for the most ever hit by a switch-hitting rookie in the National League, but leave him two short of Clark and Murray for the overall mark. If he stays hot and pops another few homers, the overall mark will be his. He would also significantly beat his preseason projection for home runs.
How is Bell doing this? Where has the increased power coming from? In this home run heavy year, many players have talked about getting more balls in the air by adjusting their swings to hit fly balls. Bell hasn’t done that. Last year, 29 percent of the balls he hit were in the air. This year, the number is just 31 percent. That’s not a big difference and the increase in fly balls has come at the expense of line drives. Bell is hitting more ground balls this year than last (51 percent to 50 percent). His ground ball rate is 18th out of the 156 hitters who qualify for the batting title.
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The big difference for Bell is that his fly balls are more likely to be home runs this year than previously. Even though his hard hit percentage has only increased very slightly, from 33 percent to 34 percent, his home runs per fly ball rate has increased from nine percent to 20 percent. He hasn’t become an extreme fly ball hitter, he’s just seen his fly balls land on the other side of the fence more often than before.
A closer look reveals that Bell has hit eight home runs classified as “just enough,” meaning they barely made it over the fence. He’s tied for 19th in baseball in “just enough” home runs. This suggests that there has been some luck involved in Bell’s big home run season.
Then again, it could be the ball. People smarter than I have pointed to the ball as being at least one part of the big increase in home runs since the middle of the 2015 season. MLB denies it, of course, because why wouldn’t they? They don’t want fans to think they changed the ball to increase home runs. That might offend traditionalists.
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Whatever the reason, Josh Bell has a chance to put his name atop the home run leaderboard for switch-hitting rookies. His monthly totals from April to July were four, five, six and four. If he hits four more in August and another four in September, the record will be his.