We have officially entered a new age of baseball fan appreciation, as Baseball Savant has released its new bat-tracking numbers to the public, and boy, are they interesting. You can go to these new leaderboards by clicking here and you can read some insightful articles about what these new stats mean here and here, but I wanted to take you through this new compendium through the lens of my favorite baseball team. Yes, being a Yankee-centric baseball writer has baggage, but the Yanks are a pretty interesting team when it comes to this bat speed stuff, especially when you consider how good they are as a collective lineup.
The main thing that caught my attention with the new bat speed metrics is that there is no singular definition of a good swing. You can have a slow average swing speed, a high squared-up rate, and be considered a good hitter, a la Luis Arraez, or you can have a fast average swing speed, a low squared-up rate, and be considered a good hitter, a la Mike Trout. Perhaps this is most reflected with the Yanks because their swing stats are all over the place, but in a good way. First, the old stuff. The Yankees rank in the top ten in almost every offensive category this year, from batting average to OBP to slugging to homers to hits per game to runs per game and everything else in between. It’s been a revelation to watch this team with a healthy Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo, along with the new additions of Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo. In other words, everything is going well in the Bronx, and the lineup has been without Jasson Dominguez, who is still recovering from Tommy John surgery.
Naturally, the three big Yankee sluggers, Judge, Soto, and Giancarlo Stanton, have fast, powerful swings that get the job done upon contact. Judge and Soto have similar bat speeds (76.5mph vs. 76mph) and fast swing rates, while Soto’s squared-up rate, the rate at which actual exit velocity matches 80% of expected exit velocity, is second in all of baseball, while Judge sits at 50th in the category (again, this is out of swings that hitters make contact with the ball, not out of all pitches swung at). Judge makes up for this by being 3rd in the Majors in blast rate, the rate at which squared-up swings are over 75mph (or fast swings), with Soto and Stanton right behind him, and the three of them only behind Shohei Ohtani and Brewers breakout catcher William Contreras. Stanton, however, in terms of bat speed, is in a category all by himself. His average bat speed of 80.6mph is in first place by almost a full 3mph over second-place Oneil Cruz, and his fast swing rate is 98.1%. Kyle Schwarber is in second place in that category as well at 74.6%. Holy moly, Giancarlo.
So Big G swings out of his shoes, Soto is the best all-around hitter on the planet, and Judge rips the cover off the baseball whenever he doesn’t get called out on strikes on a ball at his ankles. But what about the rest of the lineup? Anthony Volpe is 29th in baseball in number of squared-up hits. Alex Verdugo is 16th in squared-up rate on contacted swings and 11th on all swings, while Oswaldo Cabrera ranks 37th in the metric. Anthony Rizzo has one of baseball’s slowest swings, but has only recorded one sword this year (when a batter swings and misses so uncomfortably that it looks like a sword). All of these hitters are having solid seasons so far, yet their swings look and feel very different.
On the flip side, Gleyber Torres has a very slow swing, low swing metrics, and seven swords this year, which is tied for 15th-most. Perhaps his slow start to 2024 lies in his swing mechanics, which fans can now see. With this data publicly available, it’ll be interesting to see how these stats change over the coming months, but especially over the coming years, as players try to right their swings to keep themselves in The Show.
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