Swings at the speed of sound

The new Statcast data is here! The new Statcast data is here!

The Statcast team dropped their latest batch of data on Monday, one that I’ve personally been waiting for for a couple of years—bat speed info. Naturally, because this is Statcast and Statcast is awesome, it’s not just actual bat speed numbers that they released, but they’ve also been tracking data such as Squared-Up Rates, what they call Blasts and Average Swing Length. There’s a ton to unpack and frankly, I’m not smart enough, nor am I inside the data enough to provide any kind of a primer. You can find that at the link above and in a couple other spots I’ll note throughout today’s newsletter.

I can, however, parse the data and try to explain it in some simple, hopefully easy-to-understand terms as to how it applies to the Royals.

If I’m veering too close to nerd territory, skim to the bottom where I provide a bit of analysis on Brady Singer and his start in Monday’s defeat to the Mariners and recap the rest of the AL Central. There’s something for everyone!

Bat speed is important because bat speed equals power. This seems obvious. But like all metrics we’ve been presented over the years, there’s no one path to success. Yes, bat speed is important, but it’s not everything. Think of pitching and velocity. Sure, the ability to throw smoke at 100 MPH is great, but if you can’t locate, you’re not going to last long on the mound. It’s the same for hitters.

Let’s begin with this chart that has the average bat speed and the fast swing percentage on the axis. A “Fast Swing” is a bat that travels at 75 MPH or faster through the zone. The “Fast Swing %” is the percentage of the batter’s swings that are faster than 75 MPH.

The averages range from around 62 MPH to 80 MPH. Those are the extreme outliers as most of the league lands between 67 and 76 MPH. As for those outliers, Giancarlo Stanton is maximum effort all the time. When he squares the pitch up, like he did over the other day when he hit a baseball that scraped the ozone layer, it’s a sight to behold. At the other end of the spectrum, you have a pair of notorious contact hitters in Luis Arraez and Steven Kwan. Neither generate any kind of bat speed, but they are specialists at bat control and squaring up the pitch. Through Sunday, Stanton had a 106 OPS+, Arraez was at a 132 OPS+ and Kwan, who is currently on the IL, owns a 161 OPS+. See? High bat speed means power, but it doesn’t guarantee success.

I thought Jeff Passan summed it up incredibly well:

The fastest swings typically belong to the most productive players -- but not always. The average bat speed for the best hitter in the major leagues this season, Shohei Ohtani: 75.4 mph. The average bat speed for the worst hitter in the major leagues this season, Javier Báez: 75.4 mph.

These metrics are components. Pieces of the puzzle. There are other factors at play in making a successful hitter. Average bat speed is one, but as I’ll explore in a moment, there are plenty of other important metrics that go along.

This is what the same chart with Average Bat Speed and Fast Swing % looks like when I highlight only the Royals:

It’s not surprising to see Bobby Witt Jr. at the top of this spectrum with an average bat speed of 75.2 MPH and a Fast Swing % of 52.9 percent. He’s the only Royal whose Fast Swing % is above 50 percent.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have Adam Frazier. Again, a slow bat doesn’t necessarily spell doom for a particular hitter. Yet in Frazier’s case…it does. He’s squaring the ball up just under 30 percent of the time compared to Arraez (43.5 percent, highest in the majors) and Kwan (37.1 percent.) The argument could be made that with a .219 BABIP, Frazier has run into a bit of poor luck when putting the ball in play. His expected batting average according to Statcast is .238 which isn’t great, but better than his current .188 batting average.

The league average bat speed is currently 71.5 MPH. It’s not surprising to see Salvador Perez on the above-average side of that line. He’s joined by MJ Melendez and Nelson Velázquez which also isn’t a surprise given that those are three of the boppers on this club. (Or given the lengthy dry spells of both Melendez and Velázquez, perhaps I should quantify that with potential boppers.) I am quite surprised to see Hunter Renfroe with the second-fastest average bat speed on the Royals, along with the second-highest percentage of fast swing hacks. His squared-up rate is only 22 percent, well below the league average of 25.6 percent. More alarming is Velázquez’s squared-up rate of only 19.2 percent. He ranks 202 out of 220 qualified hitters.

As I alluded to earlier, it’s not enough to have a rapid bat. Selling out for speed can mean losing control. That’s going to be a swing and a miss for the most part. Or poor contact. The goal, as Eno Sarris noted in his breakdown of the new metrics, is to have a short, fast swing. Wouldn’t you know that Statcast measures swing length? Here are the qualified hitters arranged by bat speed and swing length.

I’m going to plant the flag right now that Bobby Witt Jr. has the most efficient swing in baseball. It’s the perfect blend of speed and length. Texas’ Wyatt Langford, Baltimore’s Colton Cowser and Arizona’s Corbin Carroll are in the same area code as Witt, but nobody combines the two metrics like the Royals’ shortstop.

Again, this isn’t a surprise to those of us who have been watching Witt develop as a hitter these last two-plus seasons. That’s a lot of what these bat swing metrics have done—they confirm what you’ve been seeing with your eyes.

This is how Witt compares with the rest of the league on bat speed and percentage of swings at that particular velocity:

After seeing where Witt lands in the universe of the majors for average bat speed and swing length, let’s narrow it down specifically for the Royals:

Again, that lower left quadrant is where you want to live. Unfortunately, right now, that’s the sole possession of Witt. I simply cannot get over how perfect the guy is at what he does. He’s amazing. The cluster around the center is Vinnie Pasquantino, Maikel Garcia, Kyle Isbel and Michael Massey. Good potential, yet prone to extended stretches of struggle.

Salvy has a long swing, but you knew that. It comes with chasing those sliders off the outer edge. Even though he’s cut his chase rate by about three percent this year (which is honestly astounding), the swing is the swing, and for Perez, it’s always going to be long. That’s how he generates that speed.

After looking at a couple of these charts for the Royals, let’s have some fun and compare some guys.

When I look at something like this, I can only marvel at the wonder that is Salvy Perez. Witt may have a perfect swing that’s a blend of speed and length, but Perez is still whipping the bat through the zone like a young man. Pasquantino, as noted is about as league-average as you can get with his bat speed. And Frazier is bringing up the rear. Hey, somebody has to be last.

Something that should be clear from the charts and tables above: The Royals as a team have some elite bat speed. Most of their guys are right at the league average or above when it comes to velocity with the bat. The team numbers bear this out. They’re also among the best at making that solid contact that is so valuable.

While the Royals do seem to be feast or famine when it comes to putting runs on the board, they are averaging 4.5 runs per game, which is about .2 better than league average. That’s something we haven’t seen from this organization in quite some time. I’d say they’re combining their scouting to identify players with speedy bats while drafting and while pursuing free agents like Hunter Renfroe. Once in the org, they’re being coached up to increase swing velocity. Witt and Perez are obviously huge parts of this. The others are playing their role as well. As a team, the Royals are faring quite positively in these new metrics.

One thing we’re missing from these new metrics is context. That’s because they’re…new. As the data piles up, it will illuminate things such as a hitter’s decline phase for example. Remember back when Alex Gordon was struggling toward the end of his career? Of course you do. And you probably recall that his bat just looked like it had slowed down by a significant amount. I’d love to see the career arc for Gordon’s bat speed.

It will also be useful for when someone shortens their swing. I mentioned Perez earlier and how he’s not chasing as much as he has in previous seasons. Is his bat path a little shorter because he’s staying within a bit more? That would certainly explain how he’s been on a heater at the plate since the start of the season.

It would also be interesting to see how a hitter rebounds from injury, especially a shoulder injury like Pasquantino suffered last year. Is he back to where he was in his rookie season? Or is that something that is still improving as he returns to regular game action?

The team data will be valuable as well. I wonder how it would look for the Royals if we had data from the Mike Matheny era and the last couple of years with Ned Yost at the helm. This can also be useful to identify hitting coaches who know their stuff. Like with the Braves and Kevin Seitzer and his staff.

There’s so much we are going to learn from this data, but it’s going to be a handful of years before that information really comes to light. It’s exciting.

The last thing I’d like to mention today is what Statcast calls “Blasts.” A Blast is defined as the most valuable swing. It’s the perfect confluence of squaring up the pitch with a high-velocity bat speed. Here are the current leaders in Blasts:

William Contreras - 58
Juan Soto - 50
Shohei Ohtani - 46
Bobby Witt Jr. - 46
Salvador Perez - 45

Witt is entering his prime, hitting rockets and generally kicking ass. He currently has a 2.7 fWAR which trails only Mookie Betts at 2.8 fWAR. Perez has dipped his bat into the fountain of youth and is mashing the baseball. His 161 wRC+ is the 12th-highest in the majors. With these two anchoring the top of the lineup, the Royals have a chance to do something special this season. JJ Picollo and the scouting department better be prepared to make some moves over the next couple of months because if Perez’s start in particular is sustainable, the Royals are going to need to make some moves as the deadline approaches.

Aaron Judge, Julio Rodríguez, Yandy Díaz and Gunnar Henderson are also in the mix of hitters with the most blasts and the highest percentage of Blasts Per Swing. But after five on the leaderboard above and the other four, there’s quite a separation. It’s an interesting visual. William Contreras is just destroying the baseball this year.

Watching Monday’s series opener in Seattle wasn’t the best way to spend an evening. Brady Singer has pretty much abandoned his four-seamer that he worked on in spring training which is supposed to be a pitch he can work up in the zone with. Except he hasn’t truly elevated that offering with consistency, and now he’s basically given up on that pitch. And you knew he wouldn’t throw the change much.

He offered his four-seamer five percent of the time on Monday, the lowest amount of the season. He threw two changeups. You know the Mariners have had the advance scouts roaming and noting that he’s generally reverted to form, meaning he’s back to being a two-pitch pitcher. And as I’ve noted with frequency, when one (or both) of his pitches aren’t working, it’s going to be a long night.

Singer was filling up the zone and not in a good way. I’m surprised a fight didn’t break out in the Mariners dugout among the bench players wanting to get in the lineup to take their hacks. How Singer lasted five innings is a mystery. He entered the game with a 55 percent ground ball rate and got just two ground ball outs all evening. Live in the middle like he was and there’s going to be some elevation.

Nine balls were hard-hit against Singer, coming off the bat with an exit velocity greater than 95 MPH. Seven of those topped 100 MPH. He picked up one whiff on his sinker all night.

Meanwhile, the Royals bats couldn’t get anything going against Seattle starter George Kirby, managing just three hits against him. They finally got on the board against reliever Ryne Stanek in the eighth but Andrés Muñoz closed it out with a four-out save.

Yes, the strike zone was some kind of garbage all night, but with Singer spinning cement mixers and fat two-seamers, I’m not sure it was going to matter all that much.

Central Issues

Marlins 5, Tigers 6

Otto Lopez hit a go-ahead two-run home run in the top of the eighth but the Marlins couldn’t hold the lead. Andy Ibáñez singled home run and Spencer Torkelson followed his second home run of the season as the Tigers immediately answered. Jason Foley pitched a clean ninth for his 10th save of the season.

Guardians 7, Rangers 0

This was scoreless until the eighth when the Guardians’ bats came alive. José Ramírez singled home a pair in the eighth and did it again in the ninth. Tanner Bibee pitched 5.1 innings of three-hit ball and the Cleveland bullpen allowed just one baserunner the rest of the way.

Nationals at White Sox, postponed

The teams will play a doubleheader on Tuesday.