The rise of Red Sox prospect Ryan Fitzgerald: An analytical success story
Red Sox Prospect Ryan Fitzgerald went from undrafted to fan favorite
“Fitzy! Fitzy! To the streets, Fitzy!” shouted World Series Champion and NESN Boston Red Sox broadcaster, Kevin Youkilis, after Ryan Fitzgerald hit a towering 400-foot home run this past Spring. Fitzy, now a top 20 prospect in the Red Sox organization, quickly became a household nickname for Fitzgerald after he finished second on the team to Rafael Devers in total Spring Training home runs this year.
Come for the Ryan Fitzgerald home run for the @RedSox...
— Mike Monaco (@MikeMonaco_) March 19, 2022
...stay for the Youk home run call in the @NESN booth. pic.twitter.com/lWv2PiCfhE
But six years before Fitzgerald took Red Sox Nation by storm with his luscious flow and tremendous display of power, his path to playing professional baseball was unclear. Fitzgerald, a four-year letterman and three-year starting shortstop who was molded into a slap hitter at Creighton University, went undrafted in the 2016 MLB First-Year Player Draft.
Fitzgerald quickly realized the hitting approach he was told to use in college might not translate well at the next level. And after several independent league tryouts over the course of that summer, he received little attention.
“I would always get the same answer (from Indy Ball teams),” Fitzgerald said, when I had the chance to talk with him about his career thus far. “You can really play, but you don’t have any professional experience… so we can’t sign you.”
It was a classic chicken-or-the-egg situation. Independent league baseball teams prefer to sign players with professional experience, but how was Fitzgerald supposed to get professional experience if no one would give him a chance?
But to Fitzgerald, that didn’t matter. He was determined to make his dreams of playing professional – and eventually major league – baseball come true. Later that September, through connections his parents had made at a showcase for his younger brother, Fitzgerald received an invitation to take batting practice with the Gary SouthShore RailCats of the American Association of Professional Baseball. And no less than two months later, the RailCats finally offered him a contract.
Fitzgerald’s professional baseball career began in the Spring of 2017, and so did a new approach for him at the plate.
“Once I got the handcuffs taken off me from college and I got into Indy Ball, I was like ‘Okay, now I can do what I want. I have nothing to lose.’ So, I was trying to hit a home run every at bat,” said Fitzgerald.
Transitioning from a slap hitter during his college years to a left-handed power hitter, Fitzgerald tapped into raw potential that saw him total more home runs in one year of independent baseball than he did in four years of college ball. But while his results were real, there was still something missing that he knew he could improve upon.
“I didn’t really know how to do it,” Fitzgerald said. “I was just like, ‘I’m going to try to hit a home run every time,’ but I didn’t understand what I was doing and how it was going to happen. But once I started learning why things are happening, and what to correct when things aren’t going right, that’s when the analytics took over.”
Analytics. It’s a buzz word in baseball these days, and it has a different connotation depending on who you talk to. Analytics regarding when a pitcher should be pulled from a game, or where to shift defensive players against certain hitters are one part of the equation. But the analytics of hitting a baseball are entirely different. And, depending on who you are, they are fascinating.
Ted Williams was one of the first people to granularly analyze the baseball swing. Similarly to how Napoleon Hill analyzed the 13 principles of success in the renowned book Think and Grow Rich, Williams analyzed the principles of the baseball swing in The Science of Hitting. But what Williams didn’t have the luxury of during his playing days was the technology that exists around the game today. Not only can hitters today study proper mechanics, but they can also physically measure where they stand compared to other professionals.
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.
Red Sox prospect Ryan Fitzgerald learns to hit for power
He had proven to himself that he was great at matching the plane of the pitch. Now he just needed to hone in on his power, which could be done through two primary changes: Increasing the speed at which the bat moves on plane with the pitch, and tinkering with the size, shape, and weight of the bat he was swinging.
“Mass times velocity squared equals force,” Fitzgerald said. “So, I experimented with the tool (his bat) I was using, and then being able to swing it fast really helps.”
To increase his bat speed, Fitzgerald began using two specific training tools. The first is a crane scale, which is used to measure his rotational iso power. With a sawed-off handle of a baseball bat attached to the scale using a carabiner, it can be used to measure how much poundage an individual can turn with the motions of a baseball swing. For Fitzgerald, he knows he wants to be at 130 pounds. If he checks in lower than that, then he knows he’s not turning as much power as he should be, and an adjustment may need to be made.
The second tool Fitzgerald uses is something his current teammates are calling the Hammer of Thor. It’s a “hammer club” which he created himself by sawing off a bat handle and taping a donut weight to the end of it. The club weighs about two to three pounds and can hold two additional 2.5 pound weights to bring its total weight to about eight pounds. With the club gripped like a bat, Fitzgerald goes through the motion of his baseball swing and throws it as hard as he can into a net. The drill is executed similarly to a med ball toss, but it better replicates a true baseball swing.
Now, over the past two years, Fitzgerald has been able to put it all together. From maximizing the speed of his pelvis and the force being driven by his back heel, to swinging on plane with the pitch at the right time, he has learned exactly what he needs to do and how he needs to do it.
“As long as my bat is moving at the angles that I want it to, then I just have to worry about making sure the barrel is in the zone at the same time as the ball,” he said. “If your barrel can be moving on plane with the pitch at the time it’s crossing the plate, then you’re gonna be a Hall of Famer.”
Ryan Fitzgerald’s climb through the Red Sox minor league system
Since the Red Sox purchased his contract from the RailCats ahead of the 2018 season, Fitzgerald has made a jump in professional levels each year. He’s coming off his best season of professional baseball after batting .270 with an .862 OPS, 16 home runs, 32 doubles and 58 RBI in 108 games between Double-A Portland and Triple-A Worcester last year.
Fitzgerald has been relentless in the pursuit of his dream of making the major leagues. And the transformation that technology and analytics have helped him achieve with his swing now has him knocking on the door of making his dreams come true. He’s currently a mainstay in the middle of the WooSox lineup, positioning himself to be called up to the big-league club in the (hopefully) near future.
But there is just one last hurtle in Fitzgerlad’s way – he needs to be added to the organization’s 40-man roster to be eligible to be promoted to Boston. And there are two likely reasons for the delay in doing so.
The first is that to add him to the 40-man roster, someone currently on it will need be placed on waivers, which risks losing that player from the organization. The second is, as an undrafted independent league player, there is less of a financial commitment into Fitzgerald’s services than there is for a lot of other guys in the organization. And often is the case, the players with more money invested in them by the organization are the ones that receive priority in getting their first chance in the big leagues.
If the Red Sox don’t add Fitzgerald to the 40-man roster by December, then he will be eligible to be selected in the Rule 5 Draft this year. Like how the Red Sox obtained Garrett Whitlock in the Rule 5 Draft from the Yankees in 2020, this would guarantee Fitzgerald a spot on his new team’s Opening Day roster. For Red Sox fans, this would be a sad time as it means Fitzy would be making his MLB debut with another team. But for Fitzgerald, this would mean his lifelong dream would finally become a reality.
Regardless of how it happens, Fitzgerald’s MLB debut looks to be on the horizon, and Red Sox Nation is pleading for the front office to make sure it happens in Boston. And when the time does come, maybe Fitzgerald’s hitting analogy of having a Lamborghini engine will soon have a bigger meaning to it.
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