On the cusp of turning 30-years old, DJ LeMahieu has crossed the half decade threshold of holding down the 2B position in the Mile High (heh heh) city. The 2016 & 2017 campaigns looked promising for LeMahieu, carrying a .328 batting average over the past two seasons while flirting with 200 hits in each of those seasons. Carrying a high BABIP in both ‘17 &’18 (.388 & .351 respectively) suggests he was getting quite lucky on some balls in play, but the elite contact percentage has been there and seems to only be improving. It’s no secret that LeMahieu could hit for average and be depended on to be a guy who scores a lot of runs. As the first month of the season dwindles down to its final days, we see some of our pre-season predictions come true, and we smugly remind our friends and colleagues who had opposing pre-season opinions how wrong they were, and pat ourselves on the back until it welts up. Of course when our pre-season predictions go up in flames, we can just chalk it up “Baseball, man. Crazy, unpredictable game.” So who am I hoping to be able to pat myself on the back about? I truly believe that DJ LeMahieu is showing us that his ceiling is higher than most initially anticipated it to be, particularly in the power department.

A few things catch my eye when looking at what he’s doing this year that he doesn’t done in years past. He has shown that he is .300 hitter, and if any of his April 2018 batted ball data is indicative of the type of hitter he will be this year, then Rockies fans are in for a treat. So far, he is sporting a BABIP of .299, which has been slowly creeping up the past week or so, however it does seem it’s coming back down to earth after two seasons with a BABIP over .350. However, it’s important to note that BABIP does not take HR into consideration, so that .299 figure might be a tad misleading. Trying to get a more legitimate idea of his performance, I looked into his xStats (explained very well here by PitcherList) and saw his xBacon sitting at .342, which wouldn’t quite put him in elite territory. However, his OUTs score of .150 DOES have him entering excellent territory, which could be indicative of a big turnaround, considering he finished with an abysmal OUTs score of .017 last year.

What were we talking about again? Oh yeah: dingers. This was supposed to be about how LeMahieu will treat the fine fans of Denver to more dingers. Everybody loves dingers. I think he has a very good chance at breaking his season high record of a whopping 11 HR- thanks in part to this more fly-ball oriented approach he is taking at the plate, his Zcontact% going up (#2 in the MLB with 96.6%) paired with a declining SwingO% , he is a prime candidate to hit at least 15 homers for the first time in his career.

Let’s look at a couple things – he is hitting more fly balls, and way more of those fly balls are clearing the fence. Like WAY more. 10.2% HR/FB in 2016, followed by a dip down to 7.8% last year. As April closes out, his HR/FB has skyrocketed, sitting at 18.5%. It’s actually such a big jump, it’s almost perplexing, because it’s obvious that like many hitters around the league, he has shifted his approach to hitting more fly balls (LAUNCH ANGLES BABY) but it’s hard to say if his approach is sustainable. LeMahieu has always been around 55% when it comes to his GB%, and while his GB% has stayed roughly the same, it’s all the more obvious that this increase in FB% has come directly at the expense of his LD%.