How often do hitters pull flyballs?

Last week we saw that hitters pull grounders 72% of the time. But what about flyballs?

We talked about the big infield shifts being put on hitters like Jim Thome, Barry Bonds, David Ortiz, and Ryan Howard. Based on the fact that they all hit grounders around 80% of the time or better, it's the right strategy. Do these guys hit flyballs as often? What's your guess?

Let's just look at these four players to start with. Are they pulling flyballs as often? You can certainly see that they pull many a home run over the right field fence. However, for purposes of our study, we excluded home runs for the simple reason that you can't defend a home run. We're looking at pull percentage to help us with defensive positioning.

It turns out that none of the four players pull balls hit in the air to the outfield (excluding home runs) over 51% of the time. Here are the flyball pull percentages for these guys from 2006:

The major league pull percentage as a whole on balls hit in the air to the outfield is 45%. This will come as a surprise to many people, I'm sure. Especially for big boppers like these four guys -- it seems like the best defense is to shift the infield and play your outfield deep and to pull. But the reality is, for most hitters, play your outfield the opposite way, or at least, straight away.

Here are the top and bottom five hitters in baseball in 2006 in pulling balls hit in the air to the outfield:

Note: minimum of 100 balls hit into the outfield in the air (excluding home runs)