“For months, their front-office executives debated the merits of Ike Davis and Lucas Duda. Davis was a former first-round pick whose career had been stymied by injuries and a plummeting batting average. Duda, a lower-round pick, had worked his way into the lineup but did not have a great batting average, either, or an extensive track record.
“Both were left-handed power hitters, and they were close in age. But one clear advantage Duda had over Davis was better exit velocity when he connected. Given regular playing time, the Mets projected, Duda could develop into an elite slugger.”
Source: New York Times
That’s all well and good. But the really exciting news is taking the raw data on exit speeds and slicing and dicing it a bit. The following is pretty amazing:
Popups are the one batted-ball type in which exit speed matters not one whit; it’s all about frequency. As you might imagine, authority is a much bigger deal with regard to fly balls, as there is a relatively fine line between the ultimate upside, a home run, and a garden variety out. If you take one piece of information out of this article, let it be the following one:
– Fly Balls > 92.5 MPH = .560 AVG-1.884 SLG (7.6% of all batted balls)
– Fly Balls 75-90 MPH = .077 AVG-.148 SLG (11.9%)
Source: FanGraphs
The FG article is packed with great information on combining batted ball types and exit speeds.
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This is a fascinating stat of an aspect of the game I very much wish to learn and understand. Thanks, Brian, for the link…longer articles!
I know you know, Peter, because you read the link. But for others, I just want to say that the FG piece is the first in a series and if the later entries are as good as the first one, that will be a very good thing, indeed.
It will be intereresting to read more on this, especially the relationship of Bat Speed at the Point of Contact, and the Bat Location/Mass at the point of contact. This begs to amswer the question of How to hit more balls with the best combination of bat speed and mass at the point of contact.
This is not going to be easy to measure— Trackman does a good deal of this measurement in Golf. Even with the ball in a set position, their results have been somewhat controversial. They have a measurement known as SMASH FACTOR which has moved into the common parlance with Golf Coaches. This is pretty much all about arriving at higher values for the energy delivered thru the ball—E=MCsquared…. We’ll now know it not only when we see it, but when we measure it—and the path to get it may remain mysterious.
Im curious what any of this has anything to do with a 1-2 count against Max Scherzer? Its fine and all, but reaching a point of analysis for analysis sake. It will not translate to the batters box. Sorry to be such a ludite.
Well…the entire season is not 1-2 versus Max Scherzer.
This provides a measure of quality contact…a confirmation of what may be seen or what may be subtle. Maybe it’s the beginning of a more refined, specific direction in identifying and teaching hitters.
Sorry Eraff, the entire season is “only” 1-2 vs. whomever. The information is anecdotal, interesting from a “post-mortem” perspective. It provides no information that can be acted upon when it matters. Obviously, hit the ball harder is a natural axiom that has been useful since the beginning of time. Can you imagine a hitting coach saying to guy on deck…hit the ball 94 mph and all will be well? What exactly would the guy say? Roger that, I’ll spin the dial up to 94 boss.
The data is fine and interesting to be sure. I think the mistake is somehow attaching some meaning far deeper than what it can possibly mean, particularly when other variables have not been accounted for.
And batting average and ERA help players beforehand?
Chris, to me, the whole point is to understand things better. I get that a lot of people don’t care and just want to enjoy the game at its essential level. And I’m not bagging on anyone who just wants to enjoy a crisp played game – Rock on, to all of those folks.
But me – I want to know what makes a hitter or pitcher successful. I thought this quote from the FG piece was really good.
“One of the four pitchers who posted a lower grounder contact score than Keuchel last season was Johnny Cueto (75). While one can look at pitchers like Felix Hernandez and Clayton Kershaw immediately and identify multiple reasons why they are great, it’s a bit more difficult to do so with Cueto. He does everything in an above average fashion, but the one facet of pitching where he can be considered truly great is in limiting ground ball authority. 59.8% of the grounders allowed by Cueto last season were hit at 70 MPH or less.”
If it helps put some of the simplistic BABIP and FIP nonsense to rest, I guess it’s okay. Basically, we are now able to compile data about balls that are hit hard and balls that are hit weakly. Hopefully hitting coaches have been encouraging hitters to “hit the ball hard” since the game began.
I am with Chris F on this. It’s the data explosion. The mistake is to think that more numbers means greater understanding. And the worst part of it, for me, is how some people will think, “I have more numbers, I know more than you,” and that’s something we’ve seen for years with SABR types, etc.
Hey, I’ve been reading Bill James since the 80s. I’ve read Voros McCracken and all of that stuff. Some is good, much is meh. Most of it is driven by the fantasy marketplace, a billion-dollar industry (actually, no idea there, but it’s a big number), where everybody seeks “proprietary statistics.” A lot of the statistics explosion is driven by that. VORP, GORP, SLORP, etc.
On the other hand, it will be cool to know, scientifically, who hits the ball the hardest, who hits it hard most consistently, and so on. Then we can divide it by BABIP or whatever and come up with the magic formula for measuring luck. As it happened, but with still no idea how it will play out in the future. The data will be interesting, but i doubt it will be meaningful or enlightening.
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You don’t have to like it. There’s no “right” way to enjoy the game.
But to claim that the information presented in the FanGraphs piece doesn’t mean greater understanding – that’s just a demonstrably false statement.
If you want to make fun of the people who can’t enjoy the game without looking at a spreadsheet – go right ahead. If you want to mock the people who know someone’s esoteric stats but have no idea if the guy bats righty or lefty – don’t let me stop you. If you think the fantasy element is miles over the top – preach away.
My issue is that there’s a huge difference between something not being “meaningful or enlightening” to you versus not being meaningful or enlightening at all. And the fact that we know every team in MLB has an analytics department (even the Phillies!) and that we know that Mets executives are excited about batted ball exit speeds in particular – well, let’s just say that it’s more than fantasy people who find this stuff useful.
One last thought on the luck issue. I think that some guys have natural swings that tend to give them more “lucky” hits than other guys. For example, we see how Juan Lagares consistently manages to stick his butt out, and his bat out, off-balance, to cover an outside slider and dump it into short RF for a hit. Murphy does this too, in the opposite direction, but I think Murphy is a little more intentional about that approach of “hit ’em where they ain’t.” OTOH, I don’t think Mike Piazza ever swung that way; a truly balanced power hitter never does. So he might have had less “luck,” but because he hit the ball harder, more consistently, he might have had better “luck” too. Or was that skill? And which is which? At this point I think I’ll leave the lecture hall to wander out under the night sky, gazing at the stars . . .
Editor’s Note – Please do not capitalize words in your post, as it is a violation of our Comment Policy.
Most stats in baseball are capitalized acronyms, which is what I was doing with luck. I understand and follow the policy. Btw, I didn’t mock anyone, I just gave my opinion that it’s not meaningful; I personally see it as data overload. I Pologi e I you or anyone else feels mocked by my skepticism about this new wonderful measurement tool.
I get the idea of collecting data. And with all the Gizmo-tron2000’s in every stadium, Id be shocked of we didnt get player live-time heart rates, or “batter’s eye dilation response time” values for 3-2 sliders on games between 2-4 pm before too long. Like James, I see data overload. Describing the system with a number looks quantitative, and therefore of elevated value, but the number itself is not typically linked to a singular causality. The problem with baseball stats is that most have such a high degree of dependency on variables that are not known, understood, or held constant, that most give only a broad picture of the system, but little else. I also believe the “fantasy” aspect utilizes a lot of this, and treats players as little more than numeric assessments despite the fact that each individual is part of a team and any individual production is constantly linked to those around them in dynamic ways. As for the batted ball speed thing, it is interesting to me from more a wonderment perspective. I can hear a loud or soft hit ball and get about the same level of understanding from it. That said, knowing the value is interesting. If all this numeric analysis actually had predictive value in a big way, Las Vegas would be out of business. In only a month of play, I cant believe there would be anyone who could have predicted the 6 division leaders using all the number crunching in the world. Too many variables, too many unknowns.