Baseball Savant Expands Statistical Offerings:

[Jason Ross]

Hey statheads! Just wanted to let everyone know Baseball Savant has a host of new statistics dropping May 13th all around the idea of bat tracking. Figure this is only for the dorkiest of the dorkiest of us. but I know my birds of a feather are here and wanted to pass along the cool new information.

Kind of excited to see how Cubs hitters stack up on bat speed myself. Any guesses on who has the fastest speed?

[Transmogrified Tiger]

7 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Kind of excited to see how Cubs hitters stack up on bat speed myself. Any guesses on who has the fastest speed?

I'm likely just overcompensating for the visual aesthetics of the swings, but I'm going to guess Bellinger. 

Watch it be Madrigal because the bat only has to go half as far as a normal person, like comparing a pitcher's velo from the mound vs. long tossing

[mul21]

24 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

 

Kind of excited to see how Cubs hitters stack up on bat speed myself. Any guesses on who has the fastest speed?

I'll be mildly shocked if it's not Morel.

[Bertz]

I'm curious how much some of this stuff matters.  Like is bat speed not going to correlate pretty strongly to top end exit velos?  Are attack angles not going to correlate pretty strongly to launch angles?

Maybe they don't, or it's one of those things where they usually do but the cases where they don't are fascinating.  But I tend to think this stuff is going to be most useful year over year (to more or less quantify aging), so I'm excited for it but not sure how much can be wrung from it right away next week.

[Jason Ross]

17 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I'm curious how much some of this stuff matters.  Like is bat speed not going to correlate pretty strongly to top end exit velos?  Are attack angles not going to correlate pretty strongly to launch angles?

Maybe they don't, or it's one of those things where they usually do but the cases where they don't are fascinating.  But I tend to think this stuff is going to be most useful year over year (to more or less quantify aging), so I'm excited for it but not sure how much can be wrung from it right away next week.

Yeah I do wonder how much it'll matter immediately. I think it's going to start as anecdotal fun. With that said, the more data we have, I suspect things will come out of it. Like it was cool to see spin rate, but now we know that we can also track tilt (observable and relative) and we can figure out how those things interplay with each other to create seam shifted wake. Which is truly where my excitement is in; what someone is going to be able to do with that information now that we have it down the road.

[CubinNY]

48 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Hey statheads! Just wanted to let everyone know Baseball Savant has a host of new statistics dropping May 13th all around the idea of bat tracking. Figure this is only for the dorkiest of the dorkiest of us. but I know my birds of a feather are here and wanted to pass along the cool new information.

Kind of excited to see how Cubs hitters stack up on bat speed myself. Any guesses on who has the fastest speed?

Morel, Nico, PCA.

[PackLandVA]

For a "little guy", NIco seems to have a pretty quick hack.

[UMFan83]

28 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I'm curious how much some of this stuff matters.  Like is bat speed not going to correlate pretty strongly to top end exit velos?  Are attack angles not going to correlate pretty strongly to launch angles?

Maybe they don't, or it's one of those things where they usually do but the cases where they don't are fascinating.  But I tend to think this stuff is going to be most useful year over year (to more or less quantify aging), so I'm excited for it but not sure how much can be wrung from it right away next week.

Yeah as I was reading your post, the bold was exactly what I was thinking in terms of where this is useful.  Also just another data point when trying to figure out why a player is hitting better/worse than expected.  I'm not sure how much bat speed varies from week to week but its possible a slower bat speed hints at an injury or maybe a mechanical issue or a higher bat speed as evidence that the hitter has made tweaks to their swing/approach. 

[KCCub]

Excellent! This has been one of the missing pieces of data imo. Also, you guys might like to checkout the SwingGraphs twitter account. They analyze Vertical Bat Angle and Attack Angle to come up with swing path scores. 

 

 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I'm pretty sure I just heard Boog say on tonight's broadcast that Morel is 6th in MLB in swing speed, between Acuña and Judge IIRC.

[Stratos]

On 5/8/2024 at 1:59 PM, Bertz said:

I'm curious how much some of this stuff matters.  Like is bat speed not going to correlate pretty strongly to top end exit velos?  Are attack angles not going to correlate pretty strongly to launch angles?

Maybe they don't, or it's one of those things where they usually do but the cases where they don't are fascinating.  But I tend to think this stuff is going to be most useful year over year (to more or less quantify aging), so I'm excited for it but not sure how much can be wrung from it right away next week.

Right.   Bat speed doesn't directly correlate to power for instance.  Bat mass also matters.

Maybe someone like Nico might have the fastest bat speed but lacks power.

I wish they published bat specs of players

[sneakypower]

16 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

I'm pretty sure I just heard Boog say on tonight's broadcast that Morel is 6th in MLB in swing speed, between Acuña and Judge IIRC.

he said the #6 bit a couple of times, yeah

[Bertz]

There's a ton on this flying around and this certainly isn't the best place to start, but the bat tracking data provides some additional suppiort for the the Isaac Paredes/Cody Bellinger xwOBA overperformance not being luck.

 

 

[LBiittner]

On 5/10/2024 at 8:31 PM, Transmogrified Tiger said:

I'm pretty sure I just heard Boog say on tonight's broadcast that Morel is 6th in MLB in swing speed, between Acuña and Judge IIRC.

When looking up morels stats, I noticed he is listed at 145#s. How the heck does a 145# individual generate this much power? Perhaps he is using his age 16 weight? I don't know

[Tim]

On 5/8/2024 at 12:54 PM, mul21 said:

I'll be mildly shocked if it's not Morel.

Depends on how many PA you use as a cutoff. Morel is the fastest of the regulars, but he's not the fastest Cub overall.

Canario has him beat.

[sneakypower]

32 minutes ago, LBiittner said:

When looking up morels stats, I noticed he is listed at 145#s. How the heck does a 145# individual generate this much power? Perhaps he is using his age 16 weight? I don't know

yeah, not a chance that's even remotely current data

[LBiittner]

19 minutes ago, sneakypower said:

yeah, not a chance that's even remotely current data

He should play jersey-less, he'd scare most pitchers

[Rcal10]

2 hours ago, LBiittner said:

When looking up morels stats, I noticed he is listed at 145#s. How the heck does a 145# individual generate this much power? Perhaps he is using his age 16 weight? I don't know

That is definitely his weight when they signed him. I think he is listed much higher than that now. I think maybe even 200 lbs. 

[LBiittner]

2 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

That is definitely his weight when they signed him. I think he is listed much higher than that now. I think maybe even 200 lbs. 

Yep. You're right. If I recall, schwarber was listed at 162 (in 5th grade)