8 MLB Hitters Who Are Racking Up Home Runs Despite a Ton of Ground Balls

Josh Bell, Pittsburgh Pirates

Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Josh Bell is another player who didn't show a ton of power throughout his minor-league career. From 2012-16, he reached double-digit homers on just two occasions, and his highest single-season ISO was .174 back in Single-A (although he nearly topped that in Triple-A with a .173 mark).

But here we are again, and he's slugged 20 homers with a .229 ISO through 461 plate appearances. Bell consistently had a rather high ground-ball rate as a minor leaguer, and that has continued in the majors, evidenced by his 50.5% ground-ball rate and 31.4% fly-ball rate so far this year. He was always a believer that his power would eventually come despite the overall lack of results, though, and he was certainly right.

His batted-ball profile has stayed rather consistent from month-to-month -- as has his wRC+ and ISO during those times -- but he's seen a gradual change in his quality of contact. While Bell's overall hard-hit rate of 32.9% is around what it was during his 152 plate appearances as a rookie in 2016 (33.0%), that hardly tells the whole story.

It's progressively gotten better with each month of the season, starting with a 27.8% mark in April before continually climbing up to 40.3% mark in July (his hard-hit rate in August is just 25.0%, but he's paired it with a 161 wRC+). The biggest change in how he's hitting fly balls isn't in the hard-hit rate (43.8% in '16, 43.1% so far in '17), but in where they're flying. After pulling just 9.4% of fly balls as a rookie, that number has jumped up to 19.6%.