Batting Success Tied To Launch Angle ... In 1885

A base ball should be struck at the angle of twenty-three degrees in order to send it to the greatest possible distance. If you can't strike it in twenty three degrees give it a boost in ten, five, or even one, but be sure to bat it in some degree.

(From John Thorn, "The Changing Game")

This is not a new or isolated case.

What Bill James referred to as "Range Factor" in the 1980s was actually used more than 100 years earlier. As Thorn wrote, in 2012:

The fielding stats of 1876 were combined to form an average, the "percentage of chances accepted," or fielding percentage. A "missing link" variant, devised by Al Wright in 1875, was to ... divide putouts plus assists by games to get "fielding…