Exit velocity is a new method to evaluate hitters which is gaining widespread popularity around the league according to Tim Rohan of the New York Times.
Exit velocity measures the speed of the ball off the hitter’s bat.
“It’s really just physics,” said John Ricco, the Mets’ assistant general manager. “If you hit the ball hard, at a certain velocity and a certain angle, it’s going to be a home run.”
“It’s a new tool in the toolbox,” he said.
Analysts say that 95 MPH is average, but some of the game’s best hitters can reach up to speeds of over 110 MPH.
“It’s eye-popping when it breaks the 110 threshold,” said John Mozeliak, the St. Louis Cardinals’ general manager.
Exit velocity is part of the Statcast package that was created by a Danish technology company called TrackMan along with the help of Major League Baseball.
“It’s the velocity, the angle, the hang time — those are the factors that all go together in a cocktail of power,” said Joseph Inzerillo, the chief technology officer for Major League Baseball and one of the people who oversaw the creation of the Statcast package.
“It will evolve over time,” Inzerillo added. “People will come up with ratios and formulas to say that’s the power indicator.”
The Mets are one of the first organizations to use this data to their advantage.
When the Mets were faced with the difficult decision of whether to keep Lucas Duda or Ike Davis, New York ultimately chose Duda because of his significantly higher exit velocity.
The Mets coaches were also extremely excited by the exit velocity of Kevin Plawecki‘s first MLB home run.
“Did you see what that was?” Geren asked Ricco, the assistant general manager. The answer: 111.3 m.p.h.
Despite its popularity around the league, not everyone is ecstatic about this new trend. One one these players is Marlin’s superstar Giancarlo Stanton
“I don’t care about it at all, to be honest,” Stanton said recently. “There are enough things to worry about: Where’s he going to throw the ball? How are we going to win the game? Not ‘If I square this up, I’m going to get it 105 miles per hour off my bat.’ I don’t care.
“I understand it. It’s cool to see after the fact. But I don’t follow it at all.”
Phillies General Manager, Ruben Amaro Jr. also said that he prefers an old school approach to see if a player is swinging well. Amaro likes to stand close to the batting cage and hearing the sound of the ball off the bat and seeing its trajectory.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that,” he said.
