Exit Velocity - is it important?

[Docwaukee]

2.  Trout - 93.5

3.  Upton - 93.2

9.  Pujols - 90.2

11. Simmons - 89.5

ranks above are for all of baseball for 2018 so far by avg exit velo.  

what are your thoughts?

[tdawg87]

What is the average?

[arch stanton]

I guess it’s better than not hitting it hard in the long run but if you’re hitting it directly into a shift or right at an outfielder it’s just another out 

[Angels#1Fan]

Someone once said "keep your eye on the ball and hit em where they ain't".

[HaloMilliVanilli]

I do think it's important.  I'd rather be squaring balls up than not.  There is more luck in BABIP, but you give yourself a better chance of coming out of a "slump" if you are locked in and hitting the ball hard.

[Ohtaniland]

I think the players speed exiting the batters box is just as or maybe even more important. 

[Docwaukee]

1 minute ago, OHTANILAND said:

I think the players speed exiting the batters box is just as or maybe even more important. 

why?

[Second Base]

Exit velocity if a fun stat of little importance. There's been one HR hit in the statcast era that hit the 120 mph mark. You know what it looked like? 

The same as any other HR.

As evidenced by Ohtani's ground out to 1B yesterday, exit velocity only tells a small part of the story. It was a shot! It was also a run of the mill 3-unassisted.

[Ace-Of-Diamonds]

2 minutes ago, Scotty@AW said:

Exit velocity if a fun stat of little importance. There's been one HR hit in the statcast era that hit the 120 mph mark. You know what it looked like? 

The same as any other HR.

As evidenced by Ohtani's ground out to 1B yesterday, exit velocity only tells a small part of the story. It was a shot! It was also a run of the mill 3-unassisted.

A ground ball hit at 100 mph has a better shot at clearing the IF than say a 50 mph ground ball hit to the exact same spot with the exact same defensive setup, I'm betting.

[Second Base]

10 minutes ago, Ace-Of-Diamonds said:

A ground ball hit at 100 mph has a better shot at clearing the IF than say a 50 mph ground ball hit to the exact same spot with the exact same defensive setup, I'm betting.

Hit placement is just as important as exit velocity in that case. 

[jordan]

It’s definitely a good sign when a hitter hits it hard.  Means they are squaring it up and seeing the ball well.  Trumbo was one guy who always seems to hit it hard, but his lifetime .249 avg isn’t anything to write home about.  

[Ace-Of-Diamonds]

17 minutes ago, Scotty@AW said:

Hit placement is just as important as exit velocity in that case. 

In my scenario everything was equal except for velocity.

[Stradling]

49 minutes ago, OHTANILAND said:

I think the players speed exiting the batters box is just as or maybe even more important. 

Not even close.   

[wopphil]

What's Ohtani's average exit velo?

[Ace-Of-Diamonds]

9 minutes ago, wopphil said:

What's Ohtani's average exit velo?

112 mph on is third HR. 110 mph on his ground ball to 1B yesterday. No idea what his average is, since he's had a few weak ground balls in Oakland.

[UndertheHalo]

seems like an instructive stat more then anything.  high exit velocity i would presume would be indicative of good bat to ball contact.  which is of course sort of the point of the game from a batters perspective. 

fun for us fans also.

[Second Base]

22 minutes ago, Ace-Of-Diamonds said:

In my scenario everything was equal except for velocity.

Which is good in theory. 

[Ace-Of-Diamonds]

Just now, Scotty@AW said:

Which is good in theory. 

And in practice.

[Inside Pitch]

Exit velocity is proving to be as important to future performance for hitters as K rate is for SPs.....   

[Warfarin]

1 hour ago, Ace-Of-Diamonds said:

A ground ball hit at 100 mph has a better shot at clearing the IF than say a 50 mph ground ball hit to the exact same spot with the exact same defensive setup, I'm betting.

Absolutely agree.  The harder you hit the ball, the better your chances of getting a hit, as it means less time for the fielder to react to the ball.  Yes, if a hitter can "hit it where they aren't," then that's cool, but I think that hitters have more control over how hard they hit the ball than they do in hitting it to a precise, small location between two fielders.

I absolutely believe in exit velocity.  It isn't the end all be all, but it is a useful stat, and all things considered, you'd rather have someone who routinely blasts then ball than one who just generates modest contact.

[Second Base]

12 minutes ago, Ace-Of-Diamonds said:

And in practice.

In the real world, all things aren't equal. You might want them to be, but they aren't. So 110 mph off the bat can be an out and 30 can be a hit.

Exit velocity is a limited scope.  It's fun to look at, just like the radar gun is fun to read. It can tell you some things. But at the end of the day, it doesn't tell you much.

[Second Base]

18 minutes ago, Ace-Of-Diamonds said:

And in practice.

And if a good old fashioned spray chart wasn't more useful than exit velocity, then no team in baseball would bother with the shift.

[Ace-Of-Diamonds]

3 minutes ago, Scotty@AW said:

In the real world, all things aren't equal. You might want them to be, but they aren't. So 110 mph off the bat can be an out and 30 can be a hit.

Exit velocity is a limited scope.  It's fun to look at, just like the radar gun is fun to read. It can tell you some things. But at the end of the day, it doesn't tell you much.

If a player has twice as much time to get to a ball, it makes perfect sense that he will make the play more often than he would if he had half that time to react. Just like driving a car at 100 mph you'd have less time to react to an emergency than at 50 mph.

[Ace-Of-Diamonds]

10 minutes ago, Scotty@AW said:

In the real world, all things aren't equal. You might want them to be, but they aren't. So 110 mph off the bat can be an out and 30 can be a hit.

Sure, but if the ball is hit to the exact same spot at 110 mph, it will get thru the IF way more often than at 30 mph and that's a fact Jack.

[tdawg87]

You guys just wasted my Cialis.