Tommy La Stella, Los Angeles Angels
For whatever reason, La Stella’s journey out west has come with a tremendous power surge. Through his first 947 big-league plate appearances, the infielder slugged 10 home runs. In his first 154 plate appearances with the Angels, he’s hit 11 dingers. His previous single-season career high was five, which he passed on April 21st.
Heck, he’s even already had three different multi-homer performances.
While his 33.6% fly-ball rate is more than 10 percentage points higher than last year, it’s not much different from his career rate (30.7%). The difference has been in his quality of contact — La Stella’s 44.4% hard-hit rate is much higher than his career number (31.4%), and a drop in soft-hit rate (16.3% career vs. 12.9% so far in ’19) doesn’t hurt, either.
He’s also taking a page out of the Mike Trout school of hitting, as he’s swinging less often than ever before (39.9%) but making more contact than ever before (91.4%). Combine that with a huge lift in hard-hit rate and good things are bound to happen.
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