It can mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing
Bat speed is great, but it isn’t all-important
Back in the day when Americans read newspapers, there was a terrific Chicago-based nationally-syndicated columnist named Sydney J. Harris who would occasionally depart from normal column style for something he titled “Things I Learned En Route to Looking Up Other Things,” full of interesting little tidbits. Harris died in 1986, so he was looking up things on paper, not in the ether, so he would have found many, many more things to learn these days.
I mention Harris because this piece was originally supposed to be about speed, but in the sense of the difference in speed of all types between the minors and majors, using an anecdote about someone I knew way back when to get into the number of White Sox players who end up being of the AAAA persuasion. Instead, that will save for another day because of where in Statcast Google happened to lead me.
No backtracking on bat tracking
It will come as no surprise that the White Sox don’t fare well in Statcast’s list of fastest MLB bat speeds. It may be more of a surprise that they fare at all. The speeds are measured at the sweet spot of the bat at time of impact, with the major league average coming in just faster than 71.5 mph.
Tops on the list, with a bullet, as Billboard would put it, is Giancarlo Stanton at 81.1 mph, an amazing 2.7 mph beyond second-place Oneil Cruz. After Cruz things tend to be pretty tightly packed, with a bunch of people you’d expect included in the Top 10 like Kyle Schwarber, Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Gunnar Henderson and Yordan Alvarez.
The list includes 207 batters for whom Statcast has sufficient data, and it indicates that bat speed is nice, especially for power, but it isn’t everything. Dead last, No. 207, is Luis Arráez, one of the best hitters in the game and the current NL batting leader. Just two spots better, No. 205, is Stephen Kwan, also one of the best in the game. In between them? Nicky Lopez. The three have different skill levels — Kwan actually has 13 HRs this year — but they don’t generally need big bat speed because they follow the philosophy of Wee Willie Keeler and endeavor to hit ’em where they ain’t.
Hey, isn’t this a White Sox site?
Sure, and we’re getting there. With 30 teams, the average best speed on a team would be about 15th, right? And then the average would come in around 45, 75, 105 and on down the line.
Other teams, maybe. White Sox, no.
Tops, as you’d expect (the stats are post-trade deadline), is Luis Robert, Jr., at 74.5 mph, which places him 34th (he’d have been tied with Eloy Jiménez, but, uh, well ... ). Next is Gavin Sheets, 76th at 72.7, and then it’s into below-average speeds: Korey Lee 121st at 71.4, Andrew Vaughn at No. 142 and Andrew Benintendi close to the bottom at No. 194.
But you said bat speed isn’t all-important, didn’t you?
Absolutely, and Statcast puts that together with what they call a “squared-up rate.” They have some fancy formula based on the speed of the incoming pitch and the speed of the swing. To qualify as squared-up, the exit velocity has to be at least 80% of what the maximum swing vs. pitch EV would be according to their data.
That’s hardly a measure of overall skill, because it doesn’t account for striking out or even for ground-ball rate (where Eloy would fall way down). But it does give a picture of bat vs. ball oomph. Speaking of pictures, at team level, they have this one, from before the trade deadline:
On that chart, the higher the better the squared-up rate, and the more to the right, the greater the bat speed. The faces are tough to make out, but the top left, lowest bat speed but highest percentage of squaring up the pitch, is Lopez. In the bottom right, highest speed, lowest solid contact, is Robert (and that doesn’t even consider his 122 strikeouts in 336 at-bats).
Way down at the bottom with Robert on squaring pitches up are Lee and Paul DeJong, who may well have improved his numbers since being traded and remembering how to hit. Next to Lopez up top is Benintendi, followed by the departed Tommy Pham and Vaughn. All by himself in the middle is Sheets.
Obviously, a lot of hitters are missing, but most of them just haven’t had all that many trips to the plate.
Couldn’t we have guessed this?
Probably, but isn’t it nice to have your guesses verified by good old math?
So what does it all mean?
No doubt Chris Getz would have some cover story, but it sure appears to mean any big improvement in White Sox offense is a long, long way off.