Thanks to the excellent baseballsavant.com, some Statcast data is finally starting to accumulate. Go over there, look through their stats. It’s good stuff. I’m focusing on their batted ball leaderboard. Looking at players which Statcast has seen for at least 20 at-bats, here are Braves hitters ranked by the average speed of the ball when leaving the bat.
| Player | Average Speed (MPH) | Max | Min |
| Freddie Freeman | 92.08 | 109 | 31 |
| Cameron Maybin | 91.97 | 109 | 61 |
| A.J. Pierzynski | 91.07 | 109 | 61 |
| Jonny Gomes | 89.73 | 106 | 64 |
| Kelly Johnson | 89.58 | 107 | 45 |
| Christian Bethancourt | 88.00 | 106 | 69 |
| Andrelton Simmons | 87.43 | 109 | 41 |
| Nick Markakis | 87.23 | 105 | 36 |
| Chris Johnson | 86.77 | 111 | 61 |
| Jace Peterson | 85.23 | 103 | 54 |
| Eric Young Jr. | 84.47 | 111 | 41 |
| Alberto Callaspo | 81.45 | 100 | 37 |
It’s sorted by average speed off the bat, which tells you more about how consistently a player can mesh bad speed with good contact. Seeing Freeman at the top is no surprise there. I think a better measure of pure bat speed might be the max column, which sees Chris Johnson and Eric Young Jr at the top. Young’s might be a bit of an outlier, but CJ is no surprise.
As more data continues to trickle in from Statcast, the more we can learn about the players and the process that leads to the results. It’s an exciting time to be a baseball fan, and data such as batted ball exit speed might just be the tip of the iceberg.
All data courtesy of www.baseballsavant.com
Leave a Reply