Lee's Power Loss

July 5, 2007 by cubsnet

We were treated to a trio of articles this morning in the Chicago dailies on Derrek Lee's month-long home run drought, and the fact that he has just six on the season. (D-H; S-T; Trib.) Not that the power drought has hurt his overall production much. Lee is sixth in the National League in Batting Runs Above Average.

Lee blames his relative lack of power on a lack of fly balls: "Overall I haven't hit a lot of fly balls. Sometimes you get on that streak where you hit a lot of fly balls, and some of them you hit well enough to go out of the ballpark. This year I just haven't hit fly balls in general. That's the main reason my home runs are down."

It is true that Lee's fly ball rate has fallen from previous seasons, but only slightly:

(Graph courtesy of FanGraphs.)

In 2005, Lee hit 39.4% of his balls in play in the air. This season he is at 38.1%. The bigger issue has been a large drop in his home runs per fly ball rate. In every year of his career until this one, Lee hit at least 15% of his fly balls out of the park; twice, in 2003 and 2005, he was over 21%. This year he is at 6.6%. That ranks 67th in the league out of 88 qualifying batters. Lee is hitting enough fly balls to be a home run hitter (though at not near the rate that other home run hitters hit fly balls). For whatever reason, however, his fly balls are not leaving the yard.

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