I like to research what’s occurring with particular person batters as a solution to have a broader dialogue about hitting. The story I wrote about Oneil Cruz again in January additionally lined how uncommon it’s for long-limbed hitters to crush excessive pitches. Digging into Brent Rooker’s glorious 2024 marketing campaign in December provided me a chance to take a look at how batters could make delicate changes to command the highest of the zone. And at this time’s piece on Brewers second baseman Brice Turang doubles as a primer on one of the best ways to make bat velocity good points.
It’s nearly at all times factor for hitters to extend their bat velocity. That sounds apparent, proper? If you happen to swing sooner, you may hit the ball tougher, get to extra pitches, and have extra time to react. No arguments there.
However when coaching to extend your bat velocity, you don’t simply swing some weighted bats round and magically turn out to be a greater hitter. Your objective ought to be to swing sooner whereas preserving the strengths of your swing. Typically higher-effort hacks can have unintended penalties, so hitters and their coaches want to concentrate to how particular person swing parts work together with all of the others. For Turang particularly, this meant he had to determine the best way to swing tougher whereas sustaining his elite contact expertise, which come from his bat angle variability and quick stroke. With bat velocity, intercept, and swing size information now within the public sphere, we will higher perceive how Turang is doing this. However first, let’s check out how significantly better Turang has been this season than he was in 2024:
Brice Turang’s Development
| Season | xwOBA | xwOBACON | Candy-Spot% | Barrel% | Arduous-Hit% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | .297 | .322 | 32.0 | 2.4 | 29.7 |
| 2025 | .364 | .426 | 36.2 | 9.6 | 48.9 |
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Sure, in some way, this is similar hitter. Turang’s Barrel% has jumped from the third percentile to the 56th, whereas his Arduous-Hit% surged from the ninth percentile to the eightieth. That’s ridiculous. Turang was basically a bottom-decile man throughout the board when it got here to contact high quality. Now, he’s nicely above common, and he’s improved with out compromising the opposite elements of his recreation, which I’ll get into later. He’s additionally elevated his energy ceiling, together with his max exit velocity climbing from the thirty third to the sixty fourth percentile.
All these enhancements are resulting from the truth that Turang is swinging considerably sooner. No certified hitter has elevated his common bat velocity greater than the two.8 mph that Turang has added, from 66.2 mph final 12 months to 69.0 mph in 2025. That’s vital when you think about that final 12 months batters posted a .164 xwOBA on swings beneath 66 mph. Taking a look at how the distribution of Turang’s swing speeds has modified additional demonstrates why it was particularly essential for him to take tougher hacks:
This visualization particularly focuses on swings when Turang made contact. In 2024, a few tenth of his swings have been at or beneath 60 mph, and people swings yielded a .165 xwOBA. Now, practically all of his swings have a velocity above that threshold. He has raised his flooring a ton by minimizing how typically he swings that slowly. The midpoint of his swing velocity distribution has shifted past 70 mph – as a rule he’s giving himself an opportunity to do actual injury, and that simply wasn’t the case prior to now.
Going again to what I discussed earlier, Turang has stored different parts of his swing nearly precisely the identical at the same time as he’s made these good points. His level of contact relative to his physique is similar. Final 12 months, his intercept level (which additionally contains swings with out contact) was 31 inches versus his middle of mass. This 12 months, that’s shifted, however barely, 30.6. That is improbable. To grasp why, I must get just a little nerdy and herald some extra context. There are methods to cheat bat velocity good points that may really be detrimental to a hitter. Sure, I do know that’s a bit opposite to my earlier level, nevertheless, it may be true! If a hitter does every little thing the identical and shifts his level of contact additional out in entrance of his physique (even when that creates suboptimal contact) his bat velocity will enhance!
It comes all the way down to physics. One element of measuring bat velocity is the space from the bat’s knob (assuming that’s the reference level) to the purpose of impression. If that radius will increase, so will your bat velocity, although clearly there’s a restrict right here. Which means that you may maintain your angular velocity (how rapidly the bat rotates) the identical whereas lengthening your radius to extend your bat velocity. There’s a candy spot for that radius enhance to be helpful. If you happen to exceed it, you’ll begin to yank all of your stable contact foul, and if you wish to maintain the ball truthful, you’ll have to change your bat angles, which results in suboptimal contact. Like with each a part of baseball, stability is required.
Based mostly on this calculation of bat velocity, we will deduce that Turang is creating extra angular velocity with a purpose to enhance his general bat velocity with out altering his common intercept level a lot. Superb! Together with that, Turang’s swing size remains to be elite (ninetieth percentile this 12 months in comparison with a centesimal final 12 months), and he’s now standing extra towards the again of the field. The previous means his swing remains to be quick and candy, and the latter adjustment would possibly imply that when he does shift his level of contact farther out in entrance, he has extra wiggle room to maintain the ball truthful. All this mixed results in the kind of enhancements we’ve seen thus far.
Lastly, I’ll go away with you some video highlighting how Turang has drastically modified his setup in comparison with final 12 months, which doubtless is likely one of the principal components driving his bat velocity good points:
2024
2025
He stands extra slender together with his palms greater and begins his load with an enormous leg kick. This has helped him swing the bat sooner on common by reducing down on his slower, non-A swings whereas additionally sustaining his earlier level of contact. For a lot of hitters, the leg kick is a timing mechanism and never only a solution to arrange their rotation. I believe that is the case for Turang. And to ensure this alteration wouldn’t go away him off stability, he has paired it with greater palms to maintain his higher and decrease halves linked. Actually good course of choices right here.
Turang has at all times been an important baserunner and a very good fielder, however due to the good points he made in the course of the offseason, he has elevated each his ceiling and his flooring. And because of this, he’s now rising as a worthwhile on a regular basis participant for Milwaukee.