What Does MLB’s New Statcast Bat Tracking Say About the Minnesota Twins?

The name of the game on Monday was all about bat tracking. BaseballSavant.com now includes information on hitters like bat speed, swing length and competitive swings. They’re all trying to measure what happens at the point of contact. What makes the ball go boom.

With these new metrics, Statcast has introduced new categories they’ve coined as “Squared-Up” and “Blasts” in an effort to quantify what players are producing the best of both of those outcomes.

“Here are the basics. The average major league swing is 71.5 mph. The average length of the bat’s path on a swing, start to finish, is 7.3 feet. Hitters square up the ball on one-third of batted balls. 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 Baez: 75.4 mph.”

Evaluating which players can generate the quickest whip with the lumber often coincides with exit velocities. Finding out who can get to pitches in the most direct swing plane often coincides with contact rates.

There is very clearly an opportunity to be successful on either end of the spectrum. When considering bat speed, it’s not surprising that the Yankees Giancarlo Stanton would be in a league of his own given the ridiculous exit velocities he often produces.

On the flip side, the modern day Tony Gwynn or Rod Carew comes in the form of Luis Arraez, and his ability to put the ball in play has helped him to thrive.

Bat tracking isn’t something new for Major League Baseball even if it’s just being released on the Statcast platform. The model has been tested for more than two years, and it utilizes the Hawk-eye tracking system which includes 12 cameras positioned around each stadium, five of which can run at 300 frames per second. ESPN’s Jeff Passan described the intent in the simplest terms on Monday,

What does Statcast say about the Minnesota Twins?

While Arraez and his unique approach are no longer on the Twins, they also don’t employ a Stanton-type of hitter. It’s a good thing to have all players avoiding the negative side of the equation, even if there isn’t anyone at the top of the leaderboard either.

Right now only six Twins players have enough swings to qualify for data tracking. Of those with a minimum 25 competitive swings this season, Byron Buxton (26) leads the team with an average bat speed of 74.7 MPH. Carlos correa comes in right behind him at 74.3 MPH.

Technically though, they do not have enough competitive swings to qualify for the official MLB leaderboard , which requires at least 30 competitive swings. Of the qualified Twins, Ryan Jeffers leads the team. Alex Kirilloff and Max Kepler both have above-average bat speeds too.

How this continues to track throughout the rest of the season will be interesting. The game isn’t played by spreadsheets at any level, but being able to evaluate and tweak processes based on outcomes is something that separates the good players from the great ones.