The rise of Red Sox prospect Ryan Fitzgerald: An analytical success story
By Jeff Runnals
Red Sox prospect Ryan Fitzgerald receives pivotal advice
The following offseason (2017-18), Fitzgerald met the first of three individuals who would become pivotal pieces in his ensuing ascent through the ranks of professional baseball.
Devin DeYoung, currently a hitting coach in the White Sox organization, was the hitting coach for the Windy City Thunderbolts of the Frontier League at the time. He introduced Fitzgerald to the technology behind the analytics of the baseball swing – things like a KVEST, bat sensor, force plates, and Rapsodo, which are all used to gather various data pertaining to making optimum contact when hitting a baseball. DeYoung shared access to these devices and more, and Fitzgerald quickly took a liking to it.
Shortly after meeting DeYoung, he introduced Fitzgerald to Justin Stone. Stone is currently the Director of Hitting for the Chicago Cubs. He also runs Elite Baseball Training, a premier baseball training facility dedicated to utilizing the latest technology to help hitters learn their swing and improve upon it as effectively and efficiently as possible. Stone was hired into his current position with the Cubs as an organizational initiative to overhaul their approach to data integration. With Stone’s help, Fitzgerald began tracking measurables like how fast his pelvis was turning, how much force he was putting into his back heel, and how much force his front foot could accept.
"“We put on the KVEST, which is the motion capture for your body,” Fitzgerald said. “And we found that my pelvis was turning 200 degrees per second slower than the pro average. So, then everything up the chain – torso, arms, hands – has to try to compensate for what’s moving slower underneath. If we can increase the pelvis speed, everything up the chain should move faster and more efficiently.”"
As his pelvis speed increased, Fitzgerald’s other numbers began to jump as well. And once those measurables reached their goals, it was time to move on to the next phase: training with Bertec Force Plates. Utilizing force plates allows Fitzgerald to measure how long his heel is staying on the ground and how much force was being put into the back foot.
"“Power comes from the heels,” Fitzgerald explained. “But you can only produce as much force (with your back foot) as your front leg can accept. It’s like a car. Say you have a Prius, and you put a Lamborghini engine in it… those breaks are not going to stop that engine. I always say I want to be a Lamborghini, and if I need to drive the Lambo slower (to stay back on an off-speed pitch), I’ll drive the Lambo slower. That’s my whole analogy to hitting – I have the Lamborghini engine when I need it, but if I need to drive a Lamborghini like a Prius, I can also do that.”"
After the rotational speed of the pelvis and the driving force of the back heel, the final pieces for Fitzgerald were swing plane and bat speed. But it wasn’t until before the 2019 season, after he had completed his first year within the Red Sox organization, when Fitzgerald realized their importance.
That offseason is when he met Ryan Johansen, the Assistant Hitting Coordinator on the White Sox Player Development Staff and founder of Johansen Baseball Inc., a baseball training facility that focuses on uncovering the cause and effect of outcomes specific to performance. Johansen helped Fitzgerald to understand that to hit a line drive the batter needed to swing on the same plane as the pitch. As Ted Williams said in The Science of Hitting, a level swing, or swinging down on the ball, is one of the biggest myths in the sport of baseball.
"“The average fastball comes in at negative eight degrees,” Fitzgerald explained. “So, if you match that with a perfect attack angle of positive eight degrees, you’re probably going to hit a low line drive. If you can get your attack angle to 15 degrees, you’re probably going to hit a double or a home run.”"
After learning to match his swing plane to the pitch, Fitzgerald went on to produce a line drive rate of 33.3% over 461 at-bats in 2019. In comparison, the highest line drive rate in the Statcast era over the course of one season in MLB is 32.3% by Freddie Freeman in 2018. But while Fitzgerald had developed himself into a line drive machine, his power numbers declined from eight home runs in 80 games the previous year, to just three home runs in 127 games in 2019.