Launch angles Happ 9.4 Bote 10.2 Heyward 7.6 Wisdom 19.2 Ortega 18.5 Schwindel 18.1 I don’t think this is quite that simple. Just taking the top 50 hitters in wOBA as a proxy, 8 of them have sub-11 launch angles, and 8 have 18+. Bote’s launch angle is a career high and Heyward has never been higher than 11.3 while still having strong offensive seasons. Plus, even if we accept launch angle as decisive it’s still a symptom of something else which is unlikely to be universal across 3 or 6+ guys. You're right, the issues are aplenty. The line drives all but disappeared, we are 28th. Only Bryant (24.5) out of our regulars (not including Nico because of all the time missed, but kudos to him for his LD%) was above average (20.5%), Rizzo was right about average, and the rest below. Too many GB; Heyward and Willy are both at freaking 50%. Just God awful. We are also top 10 in IFFB%. To me it just spells out a lot of crappy contact just about throughout the roster. The sweet spot is classified as a BBE between 8-32 degrees. Huge chasm, really. But you see those guys' LA were right there on the low end of the spectrum. Meanwhile the AAAA group is much more in the meat. The xwobas on this team are mostly horrific because they have such crappy launch angles, no?