Miguel Cabrera isn’t buying your launch angle theories

The introduction of launch angle and exit velocity metrics via MLB’s Statcast has been a boon to the understanding and evaluation of players by professionals and amateurs alike in recent years. Unfortunately, it’s also led to a lot of mis-leading babble by lesser analysts on broadcasts around the league. The term “launch angle hitter” is actually being regularly used now, despite it having zero literal meaning to anything regarding baseball. Calling someone a flyball hitter apparently isn’t fancy enough any more.

Of course, every ball that ever left a bat had a launch angle. Even a chopper off home plate had an initial launch angle. What has changed, of course, is that J.D. Martinez’s…