Yesterday’s Tides game was a “business special”, a weekday game that started at 12:15 PM. Hence, I was unable to attend the game to score it and could only listen to the radio broadcast at my office. Late in the game, the Tides broadcasters mentioned that it seemed that Tides outfielder Jamie Hoffmann hit a lot of fly balls and not very many ground balls. Broadcasters in general are focused on the immediate and their memories aren’t necessarily the most accurate, so I thought I’d look at my scoresheets from this year and see if Hoffman did, in fact, hit more fly balls than ground balls.

Before I present my results, I have a couple of notes. I have scored nine Tides games so far this year, and interestingly Hoffmann has played in every one of them. I’m basing this survey on those nine games plus yesterday’s game. Second, I’m following the general Baseball Info Solutions definition of “ground ball”, which is any ball which did or would have hit the ground before an infielder could have fielded it. So, some hard-hit balls which may have hit the ground deep in the infield dirt would be counted as a fly ball while some observers would count it as a ground ball. I’m also counting line drives as fly balls, although for some other reviews I would count line drives separately.

In the ten games I’m tracking, Hoffmann had 44 plate appearances. That may seem a little high, but the ten games include the 14-inning game vs. Charlotte and the 12-inning game vs. Louisville. Of those 44 plate appearances, the results are as follows:

So, of the balls Hoffmann puts in play, 8 have been ground balls and 23 — almost three times as many — have been fly balls — 74.2% have been fly balls. He’s significantly more likely to get a hit on a fly ball than on a ground ball. So, the Tides radio broadcasters were right — Jamie Hoffmann has hit significantly more fly balls than ground balls.