Statcast unveiled an all-new bat-tracking leaderboard on Baseball Savant. It can measure hitter’s bat speed, swing length, fast-swing rate, squared-up rate, blasts, and swords. While there are new stats available on Statcast, the key metric is bat speed, which measures how fast the sweet spot of the bat is moving at the point of contact with the baseball. Bat speed is epsecially important for power.
“Bat speed afeects exit velocity,” physicist Alan Nathan said to Eno Sarris of The Atheltic. “For a squared-up impact at the sweet spot, each mph additional of bat speed increases exit velocity by about 1.2 mph. For a ball hit at the optimum launch angle of 25-30 degrees and around 100 mph, the corresponding increase in fly-ball distance is about six feet.”
Six feet is the difference betweent he warning track fly ball to a home run.
Statcast’s Newest Metric: Bat-Tracking
Of all the players who lead in average bat speed this season, among is a former National League MVP turned slugger for the New York Yankees, Giancarlo Stanton. Not only is Stanton baseball’s leader in average swing speed, but he’s the only hitter with an average swing speed over 80 mph at 80.6 mph. The MLB average swing speed is 72 mph and what’s considered a “fast swing” is 75-plus mph. 98 percent of Stanton’s competitive swings qualify as fast swings. In fact, not one hitter is even close to that percentile. Stanton has a bat speed of 80 mph or higher in 121 of his 199 competitive swings this season. It’s nearly double to Oneil Cruz, who is next with 66 swings at 80-mph.
Giancarlo Stanton leads the league in Statcast’s new Average Bat Speed metric! ? pic.twitter.com/wV1tUrZ1CH
— MLB (@MLB) May 13, 2024
Stanton and Statcast Go Well Together
This isn’t the only Statcast category that Stanton leads. He hit two of the hardest home runs of the 2024 season last week. First was the 119.9 mph homer on Wednesday that had a swing speed of 83.7 mph. On his 118.8 mph homer the previous day, he had a swing speed of 85.1 mph. Overall, Stanton is the all-time leader with the hardest-hit home run at 121.7 mph against the Texas Rangers on August 9, 2018.
Stanton’s Polar Opposite from Bat-Tracking Data
The opposite of Stanton’s success with Statcast comes from Luis Arráez of the San Diego Padres. Arráez has the slowest bat in baseball with a bat speed of 62.4 mph. It’s two mph behind the second-slowest, Cleveland Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan. Despite the slow bat speeds, Arráez and Kwan are known for having a controlled, short swing that gets squared up with plenty of regularity. Arráez’s swing is 5.9 feet to Kwan’s 6.4. The group of sub-68-mph bat speed and sub-6.4-foot swing length belong to Brice Turang, Alex Verdugo and Justin Turner.
Main Photo: © Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports
