Mariner Hitters Batted Ball Speeds, April 2009
by Matthew on Jun 6, 2009 7:00 PM PDT
in Seattle Mariners Stats
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PrintYou might have already seen the first trickle, but HIT f/x data is starting to leak out, first to those of us who were privileged enough to attend last year's PITCH f/x conference in San Francisco. The age of HIT f/x is going to usher in a whole new slew of advancement in evaluation metrics so expect the next year or so to see just as much, and likely more, change in the sabr crowd as the past has seen with the widespread adoption of PITCH f/x.
| SURNAME | SPEED |
| Balentien | 88.9 |
| Sweeney | 84.4 |
| Cedeno | 82.2 |
| Branyan | 81.9 |
| Betancourt | 81.5 |
| Griffey | 80.9 |
| MLB AVERAGE | 80.8 |
| Burke | 80.8 |
| Lopez | 80.1 |
| Beltre | 79.6 |
| Johnson | 77.6 |
| Gutierrez | 75.4 |
| Johjima | 75.3 |
| Chavez | 74.8 |
| Suzuki | 72.0 |
That being said, the data that we have available to us now is not all that much. The sample is only that of April 2009 which presents a small sample size issue. Also giving that we do not have retro data from 2008, it is impossible to do the sort of comparison analysis that I bet many of us are interested in. Is Adrian Beltre hitting the ball with less authority this year than last? No idea.
Still, it is something and it is neat. So let us work with what we do have instead of dwelling on what we do not yet. Here, then, are the initial batted ball speeds for Mariner hitters over the month of April.
Beyond the sample size issue, there are a couple other things at work here. For one, bunts are certainly going to drag down a hitter's average speed off the bat. I have not yet figured out Sportvision's DB schema enough to see if I can remove bunted balls from the data set. Even so, looking at this table, here is what stands out to me:
Balentien, boy how does he punish the ball when he makes contact. Rather than a case of his improved discipline this season preventing his power, I am now mildly more in the camp that the power is certainly going to show up. 88.9 is somewhere around 20th in all of baseball. Wlad has power. It's not gone. Give it time.
We do not have prior years to compare to, but just given his raw power previously, I certainly am concerned about Beltre here. He should not be below average. That being said, that was April's set. Hopefully we will get May's somewhat soon and then we can run a month to month comparison and I hypothesize that we will see Beltre's number rise.
It is pretty funny that Ichiro is so low.
That is all for now, but rest assured, much more to come.
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This is VERY cool
No matter if this is SSS or not, it’s really neat to look at.
(And soon…it WON’T be small sample sized…..)
Where's other teams?
I want to see where Pujols falls.
Who is "Jarrod"?
Right between JJ Hardy and Fred Lewis (~89 mph)
I will smash your face into a jelly.
by Phil Hatzenbuehler on Jun 8, 2009 10:04 AM PDT up reply actions
Saltalamacchia?
I will smash your face into a jelly.
by Phil Hatzenbuehler on Jun 8, 2009 10:04 AM PDT up reply actions
It's salty
Not sure why Excel truncated his name
by Harry Pavlidis on Jun 8, 2009 4:39 PM PDT up reply actions
Excel has a character limit.
JS’s name, however, does not.
It's hard to convince people to let you eat them if you're an asshole. - Thingray
Great stuff
thanks for posting something on this so quickly. Something I would love to see is a graph like one posted on the Cubs/fx blog, which gives not only the averages but the percentage of batted balls per 10mph range (ie 0-0, 10-19, 20-29 etc). Which is useful, I think.
"Even the stupidest of men, by some instinct of nature, is convinced on his own that with more observations his risk of failure is diminished."
-Jacques Bernoulli Ars conjectandi 1713
by Bearskin Rugburn on Jun 6, 2009 8:17 PM PDT reply actions
Wow...
This data is going to be amazing when it starts being mined. Beyond just standard player evaluation, I can see all sorts of interesting things people might do with it. For instance, notoriously streaky hitters. Are they actually hitting the ball differently during periods of feast and famine, is there some sort of hitting pattern that leads to larger variance in success, or what? Identification of players hiding nagging injuries (although that one is always going to be full of propaganda and uncertainty).
But what I really want to see is a refining in “groundball vs flyball” pitchers. I think people are going to discover there are things pitchers (seem to) have some control over that nobody even considered, and “skills” that turn out to be complete sample size noise.
Wow, what an appetizer.
This HIT f/x has so much incredible potential. I can’t wait to see what other nuggets can be dug up from it.
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel, or the headlights of an oncoming train?
Cool.
I actually understood this and also find it amusing. Thanks for making it easier on us retards.
Im also surprised about Sweeney a bit.
Who was #1?
Howard
Cabrera was up there, Pujols, and get this, Cammy.
"Even the stupidest of men, by some instinct of nature, is convinced on his own that with more observations his risk of failure is diminished."
-Jacques Bernoulli Ars conjectandi 1713
by Bearskin Rugburn on Jun 7, 2009 11:28 AM PDT up reply actions
So for us retards?
Is this the speed that the ball leaves the bat when contact is made? If so, how is that information used in evaluating a player?
Yes
And it’s useful because, hey, best possible measure of how hard a guy is hitting the ball.
by Jeff Sullivan on Jun 7, 2009 2:36 PM PDT up reply actions
More data
Here are the top 10 speeds, and who they were against:
name, against, speed
Ken Griffey, Francisco Liriano, 112.03
Russell Branyan, Russ Springer, 108.52
Wladimir Balentien, Anthony Ortega, 108.05
Russell Branyan, Josh Outman, 107.48
Russell Branyan, D.J. Carrasco, 106.23
Yuniesky Betancourt, Craig Breslow, 105.33
Russell Branyan, Rafael Rodriguez, 104.81
Adrian Beltre, Edwin Jackson, 103.94
Ronny Cedeno, Trevor Cahill, 103.84
Ken Griffey, Shane Loux, 103.66
Some expansion on the data in the main post:
name, avg, min, max, count, >90, >100
Wladimir Balentien, 88.93, 66.97, 108.05, 24, 13, 2
Mike Sweeney, 84.42, 37.06, 103.64, 27, 13, 2
Ronny Cedeno, 82.2, 13.34, 103.84, 15, 8, 2
Russell Branyan, 82.05, 49.49, 108.52, 34, 11, 8
Yuniesky Betancourt, 81.38, 17.76, 105.33, 48, 19, 4
Ken Griffey, 80.94, 24.91, 112.03, 39, 14, 3
Jamie Burke, 80.82, 64.37, 95.24, 5, 2, 0
Jose Lopez, 80.06, 36.94, 102.44, 51, 16, 2
Adrian Beltre, 79.64, 27.19, 103.94, 61, 23, 7
Rob Johnson, 77.64, 28.88, 96.6, 27, 6, 0
Franklin Gutierrez, 75.48, 22.05, 99.01, 44, 15, 0
Kenji Johjima, 75.29, 15.85, 100.17, 22, 6, 1
Endy Chavez, 74.71, 13.97, 101.36, 61, 19, 3
Ichiro Suzuki, 72, 17.1, 100.07, 41, 10, 1
I also posted an expanded / more readable version of the same data:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rX-Mty0yLsUP47lq61npWOg&output=html
by derekslager on Jun 7, 2009 1:02 AM PDT reply actions 2 recs
Obviously very small sample, but Beltre with 7 battles balls over 100, second on the team.
This is going to be awesome once we get more and more data.
Cedeno.
Continuing to baffle us all.
Fans are typically idiots.
by The Typical Idiot Fan on Jun 7, 2009 3:18 AM PDT up reply actions
Beltre leads the team with 23 balls over 90 MPH, and is second to Branyan with 7 balls over 100 MPH
SSS, but that says to me that he’s fooled into making bad contact often. But his good contact is frequently very good. I think this just helps confirm that if he had a little better pitch recognition, he’d be an absolute monster.
Yesterday's Pants
A blog-thingy about the Mariners and stuff.
Is the >90 category 90<x with no limit
In other words, are the >100 balls counted in the >90 category?
by Robert Lintott on Jun 7, 2009 8:03 AM PDT up reply actions
Not to be a debbie downer
But I would have more faith in Wlad’s power resurfacing based off of this if Cedeno and Sweeney weren’t also near the top of the list. Especially since he didn’t get a lot of playing time in April while Endy was off to such a crazy start. Maybe he just never hit a breaking ball or something in the few times he did play.
Are the speeds that of the ball off the bat or the bat through the zone?
Bye, Jeffie!
Preserved In All His Greatness - R.I.P. The Reignman 1989 to 1997
ball off bat.
If that was bat through zone, that would certainly explain why our offense sucks so much. The average MLB swing is around 95 mph or so and I believe a touch higher than that through the zone.
I remember seeing Bryce Harper get readings of 113mph off the (metal) bat at Tropicana.
In this article and video. I’m no good with physics, but since metal bats give about a 10% boost in distance traveled by the ball, would they also give a 10% boost in speed off the bat (assuming the bat and ball are the same weight for both)?
Also, where do you find information about MLB swing speeds? That would be fascinating to see.
Where do you think the extra distance the ball travels comes from?
It’s from faster swing speeds and, by consequence, faster speeds off the bat.
As far as I know, you don’t find information about MLB swing speeds. I’ve never seen it readily published online.
I sort of assumed it wasn't so much about swing speed
since you can swing a 27 oz bat the same speed whether it’s made of metal or wood… but because of the “quality of the collision” between ball and bat. A wood bat dents… absorbing some of the energy. A metal bat won’t… imparting all the force into the ball. Metal bats might also have a bit more “elasticity” that allows them to bend and then snap back into shape (imparting even more force.)
There's also the balance to put in there.
Wooden bats tend to have heavier ends than metal ones, which will give you a slower swing.
It's hard to convince people to let you eat them if you're an asshole. - Thingray
Good point
and I only have experience with softball bats… I don’t know about the variance in balance in baseball bats.
If you have both older and newer SB bats, you can tell as well (almost as much).
The old aluminum bats have much “worse” balance than newer composite bats, even at the same weight. I have an old 32oz/33in aluminum barrel and a 32oz/34in doublewall composite, and the balance points are about 3 inches apart. Even without knowing balance, the composite just feels so much lighter swinging.
I have played on a couple rec baseball leagues where they had both types of bats, and swinging one then the other you feel like the wood one is moving underwater.
It's hard to convince people to let you eat them if you're an asshole. - Thingray
Decatur didn't say swing speed
he said speed off bat.
Awesome stff in the threat at BtB
Felix with the 8th least hard hit balls.
I'd be interested in the effects
pitch speed has with this. What kind of difference in batted ball speed is there between fastballs and change ups for example.
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