Like any stat, Exit Value isn’t perfect. But it’s nice to know how hard the ball is being hit. And when you combine it with Launch Angle to get xBA, which looks at how often a ball hit that hard and with that launch angle results in a hit, you get something that’s really interesting to me.
It’s not like this is something that I check each game. But in those sporadic times where it happens, it seems to me that the Mets have consistently ended with worse results than xBA would predict, at least from an eyeball measure. Say if the Mets had four balls hit with an xBA between .400 and .600 – you would expect two hits. Seemingly the Mets get one or none the times it’s investigated by me.
And that’s what makes Sunday’s results stand out. A hard-hit ball is one with an Exit Velocity of 95 and above. Rounding up, the Mets had 12 balls that reached that threshold Sunday. Here are the results:
| Player | Exit Velocity | xBA | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brandon Nimmo | 105.8 | .470 | Single |
| Pete Alonso | 103.5 | .310 | Sac Fly |
| Francisco Lindor | 103.2 | .730 | Home Run |
| Francisco Lindor | 101.8 | .190 | Ground Out |
| Jeff McNeil | 101.2 | .350 | Triple |
| Pete Alonso | 100.8 | .160 | Single |
| Mark Canha | 100.3 | .370 | Single |
| Francisco Lindor | 100.1 | .430 | Double |
| Daniel Vogelbach | 99.8 | .440 | Ground Out |
| Francisco Lindor | 98.6 | .630 | Single |
| Omar Narvaez | 98.2 | .310 | Sac Fly |
| Danny Mendick | 94.9 | .240 | Double |
On these 12 hard-hit balls, the Mets went 8-10 with two SF. Here’s how it breaks down by xBA:
.000-.200: 1-2
.201-.399: 3-3, 2 SF
.400-.600: 2-3
.601 and up: 2-2
It’s not a big surprise that the Mets won as their hard-hit balls landed for hits the great majority of the time.
You can find this information at Baseball Savant and it updates live during the game, just a few moments after the event happens in real life. We criticize MLB for a bunch of things that they screw up. But having this Statcast info in the public domain is terrific and something for which they deserve big kudos. Here’s the link for Sunday’s game:
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/gamefeed?gamePk=717203
Not really a stat cast geek, but thank you for putting it out there.
As Bob Dylan once sang:
“Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interesting right about now”
Mississippi – Love it!
I’m debating about writing a post about how after trading Robertson & Scherzer they go on to make the playoffs, anyway.
The sad part of this is the amount of losses piling up beciase of the dreadful low exit velocity. The amount of 6-3 and 4-3 weak hit ground outs and shallow pop fly’s is severely irritating (yes, Im looking right in your eyes Jeff McNeil).