Eight MLB hitters who racked up home runs despite many ground balls

Nomar Mazara, Texas Rangers

Homers: 20

Ground-Ball Rate: 55.1%

Fly-Ball Rate: 26.6%

The one thing that really stands out about Nomar Mazara’s first three big-league seasons is that the dude is incredibly consistent. Outside of a huge RBI spike in 2017, he’s produced nearly identical numbers each season.

Although his ground-ball rate has risen to a single-season career-high mark, he paired with with personal bests in both soft-hit rate (18.4%) and hard-hit rate (37.5%), which is on a three-year upward trend. For players who don’t lift the ball as often as other power hitters, it’s important to take advantage of the times it actually happens.

When looking specifically at his performance on fly balls, we see more career-best numbers for Mazara. This includes his home-run-to-fly-ball rate (17.0%), soft-hit rate (14.0%), and hard-hit rate (43.0%). An interesting wrinkle is that he only pulled 18.0% of the fly balls he hit, with 40.0% going toward center field and 42.0% going the opposite way.