DJ Gladney’s Success: The Analytics Match the Eye Test

“Go DJ” by Lil Wayne is a little more than DJ Gladney’s walkup song. It’s an alarm for opposing pitchers they need to proceed with caution. If they don’t, their next pitch might just be clobbered 474 feet for a home run.

That’s exactly what Gladney did in mid-June, pummeling his 12th home run of the season off New York Mets No. 8 Prospect Jonathan Santucci. Now up to 13 HR and 46 RBI while batting .278/.335/.528 in 56 games for Somerset, Gladney continues to display his potential during his first season with the Yankees organization. Yet the analytics behind his game are somehow louder than that moonshot smacked 111.6 mph off his bat against the Rumble Ponies.

ISO (Isolated Power) measures the amount of raw power a player has with higher values being better. It’s calculated by taking a player’s slugging percentage and subtracting their batting average, essentially isolating the portion of a player’s SLG made entirely of extra base hits. Any ISO above .200 signifies a legitimate slugger.

Meanwhile BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) measures a player’s batting average on batted balls that aren’t home runs (as homers are hit out of play). Over a small sample size, high BABIP can indicate a player is making consistently hard contact that evades defenders or is simply getting lucky. Over a large sample size, BABIP becomes increasingly reflective of contact quality and batted ball profile.

Good news is 56 games and 240 plate appearances is a healthy sample to evaluate Gladney’s .362 BABIP (fifth among active Eastern League hitters) and .250 ISO (ninth among active Eastern League hitters). Well above the Double-A average in both metrics, the cautious eye might ask if a BABIP that high is sustainable. Gladney’s elite contact indicates it is.

LD% (line-drive rate), GB% (ground-ball rate) and FB% (fly-ball rate) measure the percentage of batted balls a hitter puts into play that are deemed line drives, ground balls or fly balls. Line drives are the gold standard of contact, so a high line-drive rate is what to search for. That’s because line drives are not easily-fielded ground balls that an infielder has a play on, nor high-arcing flyouts that outfielder defenders can camp underneath.

The key to Gladney’s success is his Double-A leading 31.7% line-drive rate, which is higher than any MLB hitter. To put that into perspective, he’s got the same ground-ball rate as Yankees slugger Ben Rice, but a line-drive rate 11.8% higher. Meanwhile, his line-drive rate bests Yordan Alvarez by 7.2% who is the current odds-on favorite to win the American League MVP crown.

From an offensive perspective, Jac Caglianone is an interesting comparable for Gladney. Kansas City’s first round selection in 2024 has mustered an .816 OPS, 12 HR and 27 RBI in a strong sophomore campaign and ranks second in MLB with a 28.1% line-drive rate. They’ve got nearly identical batted ball profiles in terms of LD%, GB% and FB%. However, Caglianone pulls the ball 44.3% of the time and goes to the opposite field just 16.8% of the time.

Gladney’s 38.2% pull percentage, 30.1% center percentage and 31.3% opposite field percentage signals a balanced approach that sprays the ball everywhere. He doesn’t sell out for power to one side of the field, allowing him to attack left-handers and right-handers with equal success. Of his 13 home runs, seven have come against righties while six have come against left-handers, tied for second-most in Double-A.

It’s valid to wonder if a fly ball rate of 28.1% might be too low to generate enough homers. But Gladney’s HR/FB ratio strongly disagrees.

HR/FB ratio gauges what percentage of a player’s fly balls result in home runs. Gladney’s 33.3% HR/FB ranks second in Double-A and among MLB hitters only trails the White Sox’s Munetaka Murakami and Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber. For reference, Gladney’s mark nearly triples the MLB average this season at 11.5%.

Paired with the elite BABIP, ISO, batted ball rates and dispersion pattern, the analytics behind Gladney’s game signal that his underlying profile is built for sustained success. And all of that has completely ignored the fact he simply gets on base.

Gladney is the only Eastern League batter this season with two individual on-base streaks of more than 15 games. And after taking nearly a month to hit his first home run of the season, has posted an .892 OPS with 20 XBH, 33 RBI and nine multi-hit games since. His 13 HR in that span are tied for third in Double-A.

Originally drafted in the 16th round out of Illiana Christian High School by the Chicago White Sox in 2019, Gladney played six seasons in the White Sox organization before signing a MiLB free agent contract with New York in December. By the time he signed with the Yankees, he’d already played 140 Double-A games, hammered 79 MiLB homers and put together four consecutive seasons with 10-plus home runs.

After the 2024 season, the White Sox sent Gladney to the Arizona Fall League where he powered a 468-foot blast that came off his bat at 117.2 mph. During the 2024 MLB season, only Aaron Judge hit a home run that traveled farther and at a comparable speed (477 feet at 117.5 mph).

So the 474-foot moonshot he hammered against Binghamton was nothing new. The only difference this season is nobody in MLB has topped 474 feet.

Adam Beck | Somerset Patriots Broadcasting and Media Relations Assistant

Adam Beck is in his first season with the Somerset Patriots as the team’s Broadcasting and Media Relations Assistant. In addition to broadcasting play-by-play for home games, he assists with the team’s creative content, media relations and social media output. In March 2026, Adam graduated from Northwestern University, where he served as the Sports Director of WNUR Sports and Editor-in-chief of Inside NU.