It’s been a enjoyable couple of weeks seeing all of the work that has been finished because of Statcast’s increasing into bat monitoring. The beauty of this sport is that there’s at all times extra to be taught. With the addition of bat pace and swing size, we now have a greater thought of telling the story of a participant’s swing, however there may be nonetheless a lot extra to faucet into.
Again once I was utilizing a Blast Movement bat sensor every day, I used to be uncovered to each part of the swing that you may consider. Bat pace was certainly one of them, however that solely scratched the floor. There have been items explaining my path at completely different factors within the swing, how lengthy it took my barrel to satisfy the aircraft of the ball, the place in area that occurred, and a lot extra. For some time, the general public knowledge out there was centered on the end result. What was the pitch? What was the consequence? What was the exit velocity and/or launch angle? With this new replace, we’re progressing towards the how. How briskly did the participant swing? How lengthy was their swing? We are able to now tie that in with the consequence, however there are further particulars wanted to know the complete scope of how outcomes occurred. That’ll be the main target of this piece.
First, it’s vital to focus on the good work that has already been finished explaining the brand new knowledge we’ve got and what the data tells (and doesn’t inform) us in regards to the swing. Ben Clemens defined some functions of the brand new metrics and what their relationship with efficiency is on a macro scale. One factor Ben talked about that resonated with me is considering the brand new (and outdated) data as inputs for us to make use of to know efficiency moderately than the solutions themselves. Each bit works collectively to inform a narrative, whether or not that be league huge or participant particular. Principally, these are items of knowledge that want further context.
Relatedly, Patrick Dubuque and Stephen Sutton-Brown from Baseball Prospectus, offered an excellent evaluation of how one can put bat pace into the context of pitch counts, from the attitude of each the hitter and pitcher. And there may be extra past simply these two, together with Noah Woodward’s Substack publish about bat pace, swing size, and understanding what they imply and the way they contribute to the swing.
Woodward touched on just a few elements of the swing that I’ve talked about in earlier work that we nonetheless don’t have complete knowledge on from Statcast: contact level and assault angle. Swing variability, swing adjustability, having A and B swings, and so forth. are all extraordinarily vital to being profitable on the large league stage. If in case you have a gap in your swing, typically talking, pitchers will expose you, so having a number of high-quality swings goes to set you as much as have constant success, simply ask Triston Casas. Swing-by-swing knowledge on assault angle, vertical and horizontal bat angle, and level of contact will all assist the general public understanding of swing variability, or when and the way the swing adjustments typically.
Let’s begin with assault angle. That is the angle of the bat path at contact, relative to the bottom. As your bat travels by the zone, it creates a trajectory. To optimize your possibilities of hitting the ball within the air, the bat ought to be on an upward trajectory at contact, which means you must have a optimistic assault angle. One part of swing variability is making a optimistic assault angle at completely different heights, widths, and depths. You just about simply need to have the ability to manipulate your barrel to maneuver upward irrespective of the place the pitch is. To get a greater thought of what assault angle appears like, let’s take a look at a video from David Adler outlining a swing from Oneil Cruz:
Bat path monitoring — Oneil Cruz 120.4 mph single (hardest-hit ball in MLB this yr)
84.5 mph bat pace (75+ mph is the “quick swing” threshold) pic.twitter.com/FO9gA6fqva
— David Adler (@_dadler) Could 21, 2024
Whereas assault angle is formally measured because the angle of the trail at contact, seeing the trail main as much as contact can inform us what sort of depth the hitter creates. On this clip, the angle of the trail adjustments because it strikes from behind Cruz’s physique to in entrance of it. This illuminates how assault angle relies on level of contact. Basically, the farther in entrance of the plate your bat is, the better it’s to create a optimistic assault angle. Nonetheless, this thread from Driveline’s Director of Hitting, Tanner Stokey, discusses the significance of making bat pace deep within the zone. The perfect hitters create their peak speeds in tight home windows. Like all aspects of baseball, swinging is about putting a steadiness of making excessive ranges of bat pace and optimistic assault angles. You don’t need to have a one dimensional swing that’s centered on excessive bat pace whereas ignoring the necessity to create very best bat angles each deep within the zone and in entrance of the plate.
Relying on the way you begin your swing and enter the zone, it takes time to show your barrel over into an upward slope. For a lot of hitters, the bat must journey a better distance to create the optimistic assault angle that results in optimum contact. This, after all, takes extra time. However, as Robert Orr identified final week in his piece on the connection between pulled fly balls and swing size, a protracted swing isn’t essentially a nasty factor; it’s actually simply one other knowledge level. With entry to assault angle, we might higher inform the story of how a hitter like Isaac Paredes creates depth in his swing whereas typically making very best contact far out in entrance of the plate, versus a hitter who makes contact out in entrance with out creating the required depth of their swing to keep away from main holes.
On the similar time, it’s nonetheless doable to create a optimistic assault angle deeper within the hitting zone. To get there, you might want to make actions that aren’t straightforward to do whereas producing bat pace and controlling your physique. Some hitters with nice mobility use lateral torso bend — they lean towards their again leg proper earlier than contact — to get their barrel on an upward slope deep within the hitting zone. Consider Shohei Ohtani or Edouard Julien:
These two have unorthodox abilities that permit them to launch pitches excessive within the air to the alternative discipline. With level of contact and assault angle, we’d be capable of quantify how completely different they are surely from their friends on high of the visible evaluation.
Then there are hitters who create flatter (however nonetheless optimistic) assault angles with a path that stays on an identical aircraft all through their swing. They get on aircraft with the ball early and don’t do a lot to alter their path all through the swing. It’s almost unattainable to do that with a steep swing. Juan Soto is a good instance of this, even when he’s extra highly effective than the opposite hitters with this swing model. Right here is a good angle that illustrates what I’m referencing:
Bat path monitoring — Juan Soto 112.0 mph line-drive single off Justin Verlander
Staying on high of a dangling curveball on the high of the zone pic.twitter.com/IRhdzHVMy8
— David Adler (@_dadler) Could 8, 2024
Soto’s vertical entry angle (angle of the bat relative to the bottom at first of the downswing) isn’t far off from his assault angle. You’ll be able to see how a lot this swing contrasts with that of Cruz, who’s an enormous dude with a slim stance. Due to that, his bat path is vertically oriented, and his bat must journey a better distance to get on aircraft with the ball. With extra detailed data of barrel angles at completely different factors within the swing, we might know extra about how hitters like Soto and Cruz differ from each other in the case of getting and staying on aircraft.
This has been a ton of knowledge all of sudden, so I’ll depart you with one final tidbit. Relying on the hitter, the angle of the trail at contact might be very completely different from the angle of the barrel at contact (relative to the bottom), referred to as vertical bat angle. Whereas I’ve cited common vertical bat angle from SwingGraphs on a number of events, I’ve at all times centered on placing the metric into context as a result of it varies based mostly on a number of components. Luis Arraez and Aaron Decide can have comparable common vertical bat angles, however that doesn’t inform us something about how completely different their swings are. We all know the metric is dependent upon pitch top, however even that alone isn’t sufficient to elucidate why Decide is a launcher and Arraez is a sprayer. As we discovered earlier, every knowledge level is an enter and isn’t meant for use alone.
There is no such thing as a query groups have been utilizing, monitoring, and making use of these knowledge to scout and develop gamers for years now, however regardless of all of the metrics that we’ve got, the data on the general public aspect remains to be lagging. Ideally, in future years, we’ll achieve entry to extra swing knowledge in order that we are able to higher perceive the sport we love.