Mahomes' Historic Night

            Patrick Mahomes did a lot on Saturday night in Lubbock, Texas against Oklahoma. He did a lot of things that nobody has ever done before in college football and he did a lot of things that very few people have done before. Mahomes amassed a whopping 819 total yards, with 734 of those being passing yards and the remaining 85 coming on the ground. That set the FBS record, per ESPN Stats and Info, previously held by Washington State’s Connor Halliday with 751 (734 of them were passing, coincidentally). Let’s use College Football Reference’s database to take a look at some of the ridiculous things Mahomes did tonight and where those accomplishments stack up in the history of college football. Keep in mind the database only goes back to the year 2000, though some of these numbers are so absurd that they probably stand alone all-time.

•  As mentioned, his 819 total yards are the most ever in a game by an FBS player. His 734 passing yards tied Halliday for the most passing yards in an FBS game since 2000. He and Halliday are the only players since 2000 to even eclipse 700 passing yards.

• He became the third player since 2000 to have over 80 pass attempts, joining Halliday and Eastern Michigan’s Andy Schmitt. His 88 fall one short of Halliday’s 89, which are the most. Only 33 have had more than 70 pass attempts. He became the 12^th player to complete 50 passes, tying Fresno State’s Derek Carr for 7^th-most. His 59.1% completion percentage is the lowest of those players by a good margin (2^nd was 65.2% by Halliday in his 89-attempt game).

• His 12 rushing attempts were the most by a player with 80 pass attempts, though that number falls to 4^th if we lower the threshold to 70 pass attempts. Racking up 85 yards puts him well ahead of the pack in terms of output, however, as nobody else who attempted 70 passes ran for even 50 yards. The previous high was 46 yards on 16 carries by Arizona’s Anu Solomon in a 73-pass-attempt game.

• With 88 pass attempts and 12 rush attempts, Mahomes had the most total touches of any player in the database. The next closest to his 100 came from Northwestern’s Mike Kafka, who had 98 (78 pass, 20 rush). Kafka totaled 562 total yards in that game. Of anyone with more than 80 touches, his 8.19 yards per touch come in well ahead of the next closest, 7.24 by Rice’s Chase Clement (601 total yards on 83 touches).

• Mahomes accounted for 95.9% of Texas Tech’s offense on the night, or 819 out of 854 yards. On the 10 other teams to pile up 800 total yards, the next highest percentage of a team’s total is Halliday’s 751-yard night making up 92.5% of the team’s total. Next after that? Geno Smith getting 687 total yards of his team’s 807 for 85.1%. (Fun side note here: Toledo is the only team to have two 800 yard games and Idaho is the only team to allow two. Both Nevada and West Virginia have gained and allowed 800 yards in separate games, once each for both teams.)

Superlatives fall short of what Mahomes managed on the Sooners’ defense. He was a one-man show, and a spectacular one at that. All of those things, though, come without any mention of the fact that Oklahoma put up 854 yards of their own and won the game. There are no other games in College Football Reference’s database with both teams racking up 800+ yards. While Mahomes did some unprecedented things, the Sooners surely had some of their own to boast. But that’s a story for another time.

Power Surge: Brad Miller is Now a Power Hitter

            Rays shortstop Brad Miller experienced a career renaissance during the 2016 season. Entering this season with just 1111 major-league at-bats, he easily topped his career best 11 home runs from last season by blasting 30 in 548 at-bats this year while only hitting five points below his career batting average. Those 30 round-trippers also eclipsed the total of 29 he had in his career through this season, an impressive feat. With an uptick in production that steep, a deeper dive into just how Miller transformed his game is a worthwhile exercise.

            A look at a player’s batted-ball profile is a good place to start, and in Miller’s case it provides a good picture of how his approach at the plate has changed. Miller increased his fly ball rate more than 5% over last season while dropping his ground ball rate significantly and even his line drive rate a bit. As a result, his ground ball to fly ball ratio is down to 1.22 from 1.54 a year earlier. On top of that, his percentage of balls pulled is up almost 10% with most of that difference coming off of his percentage of balls hit the other way. Trying to pull the ball more and hitting more fly balls are both indicative of a player who is trying to get more pop out of his swing. While his profile last year included him hitting over 30% of balls to each field, similar to Daniel Murphy’s career numbers, his profile this year is much more similar to perennial power threats like David Ortiz or Mark Trumbo.

            As well as trying to pull the ball more and hit fly balls, Miller appears to be swinging harder in the hopes that when he does make contact, the ball will leave the yard. According to Statcast, the technology in each MLB park that tracks the movement of the ball and each player, Miller’s average exit velocity on balls in play this season 92.98 MPH, over 3 MPH higher than the league average. That number is also up significantly from the 88.67 MPH he posted during the 2015 season. Because of that, his hard hit percentage, according to FanGraphs, was a career-high 35.1%, nearly 5% better than 2015’s 30.3%. Oddly enough, though, his medium hit percentage is down almost 10% from last year, leaving the final percentage points to be tacked on to his soft hit percentage. That points to Miller swinging harder but less under control, leaving his misses to be weaker but those that he does hit solidly to fly further than they did before.

Despite Miller’s line drive and ground ball percentages being down, Statcast says that the average launch angle of the ball when he makes contact is actually down a bit from last year, though still higher than league average. This could potentially mean that though Miller is hitting more fly balls, his swing is on a better plane so that when he does get the ball in the air, it is at a more ideal angle to clear the fence rather than falling short for a routine fly out or pop fly. That would certainly support the fact that his exit velocity is up despite hitting less line drives. He has nearly doubled his home run to fly ball ratio (20.4% this year compared to 10.3% last year), so to go with hitting more fly balls, many more of his fly balls than ever are going for homers. All of that indicates that while Miller does seem to be swinging harder and more out of control than ever, his swing is also much better than before for getting the ball out of the park when he does make contact.

Overall, Brad Miller seems to have made a transformation in his swing and overhauled the way he approached at-bats during the last offseason and it paid major dividends on the field. His isolated power jumped 95 points over 2015 with a minimal 15-point dip in batting average that can be largely explained by a 30-point drop in batting average on balls in play. While his new approach at the plate may hurt him in some areas such as hitting the ball weakly more of the time leading to that drop in BABIP, it definitely proved to be a net positive. Entering his age-27 season and being arbitration-eligible this winter, Miller’s huge 2016 is sure to pay off on his bottom line. If he can continue to build on what he did well this season, he could continue to grow and become one of the best power-hitting infielders in the league.