Using Line Drive Rate To Find Bounce-Back and Breakout Candidates

Seven hitters to target in trades who could see considerable spikes in production, and soon.

Line drives are, generally speaking, statistically a preferable outcome.

Hitting the ball in the air certainly helps from a power production standpoint, but looking at things purely from a batted ball data standpoint and less so an approach standpoint, line drives tend to produce the best results.

Last season, batters hit .701 on line drives. Hitters’ respective wOBAs on line drives in the National League and American League were .686 and .687, respectively. The respective wRC numbers were 367 and 351 for each league.

American League hitters batted .210 with a .337 wOBA (and a 122 wRC+) on fly balls last year.

National League batters hit .223 with a .357 wOBA (and a 129 wRC+) on fly balls in 2024.

In terms of grounders, those numbers drop considerably (and unsurprisingly so), at least in terms of ground balls.

American League hitters in 2024 on grounders: .241 average, .221 wOBA, 40 wRC+

National League hitters in 2024 on grounders: .248 average, .228 wOBA, 42 wRC+

The obvious caveat here is that not all players’ total batted ball percentages are created equal. The quality of that contact matters. How often (or not that) they’re hitting the ball on the ground matters.

With that in mind, too many line drives and not enough fly balls probably take away from the power production. None of the top five hitters in line drive rate last year eclipsed 20 home runs.

Still, you expand those parameters to the top 30 in line drive rate and you find plenty of power hitters, including Marcell Ozuna (39 home runs), Bryce Harper (30 home runs), Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (30 home runs), Shohei Ohtani (54 home runs), Manny Machado (29 home runs), Eugenio Suarez (30 home runs) and Francisco Lindor (33 home runs).

We also have data in the past few years about where line drive rates finish over the course of a season. Last year, Christopher Morel had the lowest line drive rate in baseball among qualified hitters with a 17.6% number. Just six batters had a line drive rate lower than 20%.

Dating back to the start of the 2021 season, only 28 times in a season has a batter finished with a line drive rate under 20%.

Combining those bits of data, along with the caveat of small sample sizes so far during the 2025 season, we can find bounce-back candidates who look poised to heat up at the plate after slow starts. Again, the quality of contact numbers matter here, but players also just don’t often post low line drive rates. In other words, said line drive rates are bound to increase, and the players’ surface-level and underlying metrics should improve with them.

Put slightly differently, only five times in the last four seasons has a qualified batter logged a line drive rate south of 18.0%.

So far this season, as of the beginning of play on Friday, 40 different hitters have a line drive rate south of 18.0%.

One other note, a player’s batted ball track record matters here, too. Where their current line drive rate lines up compared to league-wide data the past few years and where their line drive rates have ended up in their careers is key. In other words, if a player had a low line drive rate in his career and has one again this season, it’s reasonably unlikely to expect that number to increase considerably in the coming weeks and months. It gives us a bit of a road map of what to expect, ballpark-wise.

Diving into the line drive data, there are a number of hitters that stand out in terms of upside potential.

Corey Seager

Corey Seager’s recent produciton is really the best proof of concept here.

He was covered recently in the Top 500 update as someone to trade for due to a low line drive rate and the potential for an increase in produciton.

As of 10 days ago, Corey Seager was hitting .220 with a .273 on-base percentage, three home runs, a .303 xwOBA, a .196 xBA and a 39.3% hard-hit rate.

Not so good.

He did have a 14.3% barrel rate, a .402 xwOBAcon and a .459 xSLG, all promising power numbers, however.

It’s just that the line drives were not there. At the time, Seager had just a 3.6% line drive rate, the lowest among qualified batters. For reference, from 2020 through 2024, just 32 batters had a higher collective line drive rate than Seager (25.9%) during that span.

Fast forward to Friday, and Seager’s line drive rate for the season is all the way up to 14.3%. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his production has increased considerably across the board.

In 24 plate appearances since April 10, Seager is hitting .476 with a .542 on-base percentage, a .667 slugging percentage, a home run, a .518 wOBA and a 249 wRC+. He hasn’t struck out during that span and is now hitting .306 with a .411 xwOBA (92^nd percentile) on the season.

The slugging numbers: a .622 xSLG (95^th percentile) and a 16.3% barrel rate (87^th percentile) are still really good. And Seager’s .306 average, a .368 on-base percentage, .516 slugging percentage and .884 OPS are fairly in line with what the veteran has done recently. They’re actually eerily similar to the numbers he posted last season when he hit 30 home runs in 533 plate appearances.

• Corey Seager in 2024: .278 average, .353 on-base percentage, .512 slugging percentage, .865 OPS

• Corey Seager in 2025*: .306 average, .368 on-base percentage, .516 slugging percentage, .884 OPS

*All stats in this column as of the beginning of play on Friday.

And considering where Seager’s line drive rate is now compared to what it usually has been, we can probably expect even better production moving forward. At least if his line drive rate evens out to the ballpark of numbers to where it’s been his entire career:

Corey Seager’s Line Drive Rate By Season:

• 2015: 30.4%

• 2016: 29.8%

• 2017: 30.7%

• 2018: 31.8%

• 2019: 26.6%

• 2020: 27.1%

• 2021: 25.2%

• 2022: 25.9%

• 2023: 27.1%

• 2024: 24.7%

• 2025: 14.3%

Back in 2023, Seager hit .327 with a .390 on-base percentage, 33 home runs and a pair of stolen bases in 536 plate appearances, fishing 71% better than league average from a wRC+ standpoint and registering a .412 xwOBA.

An overall season like that could be on the cards here if the line drive rate continues to rise and maintains over a larger sample size for the veteran slugger.

Read on for six more bounce-back candidates who could see similar, line-drive induced hot streaks at the plate to get their production back to what we’re used to seeing.