If you watched any baseball, read any Tweeters, or Fan and Graphs, you probably heard about the new Baseball Savant stat they are tracking.
Bat Speed. Gotta confess my initial apathy for the metric. How many different stats do we need? We have xOBA, WRC+, WOBA, and all sorts of other things to not understand, and that aren’t fantasy categories. I’m old enough to see OPS as a new stat for pity’s sake. But then this little nugget was dropped on the Marquee broadcast of the Cubs/Braves matchup last night.
Guys with over 80 mph bat speed have a .321 BA with .665 SLG
Guys under 70 have a .202 BA with .254 SLG.
Clearly, this metric has a little significance. It’s also trendy, so I thought I’d jump in the trend. After all, bat speed apparently leads to special players. Special players lead to special teams. And also some special plays. Here we go, let’s look at some leaders from the corners. First the full board: HERE
Matt Chapman: 76.9 bat speed. Whomp whomp, bro hitting .209 and does have 5 HR. When you watch Chapman, he always looks like he’s swinging for the moon. Maybe chill a little bit, maybe some more contact and not selling out for power?
Christopher Morel: 76.7 bat speed. Man, this metric is losing steam fast. There’s another, somewhat related one here called “swing length.” Morel’s is the third longest in the league (Javy Baez is the longest, then Aaron Judge, Morel tied with Jorge Soler). So he’s a clear example of a guy who’s swinging off his heels, and guesses some pitches correctly. I see him as a mistake hitter more than a potential middle of the order bat. He’s my poster boy for Misleading Statcast Syndrome. He’s still in the bottom quarter of the league for whiff rate, but when he hits it the guy does hit it hard. That’s what happens when you swing as hard as you can every pitch. I’m not expecting much more from him than he’s already doing.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: 75.6 bat speed.
| G | PA | AB | H | R | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | BB% | K% | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | BABIP | $ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Last 7 Days | 6 | 27 | 22 | 11 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 18.5 | 7.4 | 0.500 | 0.593 | 0.500 | 1.093 | 0.550 | 16.8 |
OOOOOOKAY, I see you Vlad! He’s good again!
Ryan Mountcastle: 75.3 bat speed: Okay, another reason to buy into the breakout. Buy buy buy buy buy
Looking down the list, it just seems like guys who swing harder are a list of the best players of the game, plus some guys like Baez who are just swinging as hard as they can all the time. Interesting. Yes, I’m writing this in real time. No, I’m not focused very well.
Now I’m looking at the swing length metric.
Nolan Arenado stands out here with an 8.2 feet, which admittedly I don’t really know what that means, but it seems bad to have a longer swing if you’re Arenado and that might explain why he’s been bad this year. Age comes at you kids. See, his average swing is way down to 69.3, so he’s got a long slow swing according to the metrics. Might be something, might not be, but notable. If you divide the two, you get 8.45. So a bad hitter is at 8.45 swing quality. But Baez is at 8.67, Chapman is 10.53 and they’re worse than Arenado.
Luis Arraez conversely has the slowest bat speed in the majors. 62.4, that’s like the average speed of a middle school fastball! How on earth does he hit like this then? You guessed it. Well, I don’t know that for sure that you did, but I’ll give you credit. The swing length is 5.9, best in the league. So we can expect a solid average because his approach is clearly contact above anything else. Cool little stat there, huh?
Guys I’m even further down on due to slow swing speeds:
Nolan Schanuel, Jeimer Candelario, Michael Busch (long, slow swing, they’re busting him constantly inside)
Guys whose value increases to me, anyway. You do you!
Austin Riley (in case you were worried, don’t be), Rowdy Tellez for a cheap power sellout source if you can stream him, Josh Naylor continues to check all the good fun boxes.
There are several articles about this that can explain more https://www.mlb.com/news/william-contreras-mlb-leader-blast-swings or https://www.mlb.com/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-statcast-bat-tracking
I’m just a guy on a site trying to get by on it. My summary is that there’s a lot of confirmation bias to be had here, and while it’s useful it might not be the be all end all. Good tool.
