MLB
How Edwin Encarnacion Is Hitting so Many Home Runs in May
How good is Edwin Encarnacion's insane month of May compared to the greatest power months of all time?

Brooks Baseball:

Here is his spray chart for May:

As you can see, in the first month of the season, Encarnacion was spraying the ball all over the field, and making a lot more outs in the process. But in May, he's abandoned going the other way with the ball, and is instead yanking everything to the left side of the diamond, with tremendous results. And it hasn't mattered what the pitch has been - he's pulling all of them.

In April, about 65.6% of all the pitches Encarnacion saw were fastballs and cutters, while he saw 24.5% breaking pitches and 10% off-speed pitches. In May, those numbers stayed relatively flat: 66.9% hard stuff, 25.5% breaking stuff, and 7.6% off-speed. But what Encarnacion has done with those pitches has changed dramatically.

In April, Encarnacion's line-drive rate (LD%) was 20.3%, his groundball rate (GB%) was 35.4% and his fly ball rate (FB%) was 44.3%. His HR/FB rate was 5.7%, meaning just under 6% of all fly balls he was hitting were leaving the yard, which isn't much.

However, in May, his LD% is just 11%, his GB% is about the same at 32.9%, but his FB% has exploded, up to 56.2% this month. And a staggering 26.8% of every fly ball he's hit this month has cleared the fences.

In other words, try to get the guy to hit the ball on the ground, pitchers.

Simply put, Encarnacion is simply in one of those zones right now. Eventually, these May tendencies will normalize themselves a bit and he'll settle into a groove that is probably somewhere in between his April power drought and his other-worldly homer binge in May.

Until then, just sit back and enjoy the show.

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