I wish this statistic existed

[Mashed Potatoes]

The velocity at which the ball leaves the bat. I want to know how hard batters hit the ball and how hard pitchers are hit. I think this can be more informative than GB/LD/FB rate and could help explain why some pitchers (Johnson provoked this thought) might be able to maintain a lower than normal BABIP.

There are times when a pitcher is clearly getting lucky with rockets being hit directly at a fielder. You would think there would be a direct correlation between a low average velocity against and a low ERA and vice versa. Similarly you would think there would be a correlation between high average velocity and high BABIP for a hitter.

These are only a few of the ways average velocity might be illuminating.

What do you all think? Would this be helpful? Is it realistically calculable?

[Malike]

According to the Hyperphysics website, the terminal velocity of a baseball is about 73 mph. According to baseball bat manufacturers the maximum speed off of a high tech bat is up to 115 mph! This means that the energu of a basebal leaving a bat can contain up to 2.5x as much energy as a freefalling baseball!

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/airfri2.html

I dont know if this will help at all, or even be interesting but you can kind of get an idea from this physics site linked above.

[Migrant Redbird]

... What do you all think? Would this be helpful? Is it realistically calculable?

I don't think that it would help much. The location where a ball is hit probably affects BABIP far more than absolute velocity does, and that's pretty difficult to evaluate too.

It wouldn't be practical to calculate the velocity off the bat from the distance/angle; you'd need to measure it using radar or a laser. That might be difficult to segregate from the reading for bat velocity or the velocity of the player's hands. I suspect it's technically possible, but no one is likely to invest much effort into doing it, because it's not as interesting to fans as knowing the velocity of the pitched ball.

[TGO]

Find the site that tracks all of the home runs. I believe it provides the data you're looking for, at least on home run balls.

Yes, it does, but only for homers. http://www.hittrackeronline.com/

[Mashed Potatoes]

I don't think that it would help much. The location where a ball is hit probably affects BABIP far more than absolute velocity does, and that's pretty difficult to evaluate too.

It wouldn't be practical to calculate the velocity off the bat from the distance/angle; you'd need to measure it using radar or a laser. That might be difficult to segregate from the reading for bat velocity or the velocity of the player's hands. I suspect it's technically possible, but no one is likely to invest much effort into doing it, because it's not as interesting to fans as knowing the velocity of the pitched ball.

It may not be interesting to the casual fan, but for anyone who's interested in breaking down the game in more meaningful ways this might be interesting, not to mention teams trying to get max value out of the players they sign.

Yes, it does, but only for homers. http://www.hittrackeronline.com/

That's cool I'd never seen that, thank you.

I guess the real point of the calculating the velocity would be to separate balls in play into more telling categories. For example a bloop single that lands over an infielders head for a single isn't necessarily as good of a hit as a ground ball that was smoked but right at a fielder. Someone who gives up a few of the former is unlucky while someone who gets away with a few of the latter is lucky.

However when we just look at GB/LD/FB the bloop single is a LD while the smoked grounder is a GB, but obviously every hit within these categories are not created equal. To me this would provide an objective answer to a couple of simple questions like is the pitcher getting hit hard but getting lucky and is the hitter making great contact but getting unlucky.

Ideally one day we could have a hitter f/x that gives us every hit's trajectory and velocity. I'm sure there would be plenty of room for people smarter than myself to give their team a competitive edge analyzing such data.

[Migrant Redbird]

Yes, it does, but only for homers. http://www.hittrackeronline.com/

That site does provide an "initial speed off bat", but it fails to explain how the SOB is determined. It does state that it's a calculated value, refined from an initial "guess".

Using a proprietary method, Hit Tracker rapidly adjusts the three inputs (SOB, VLA, HLA) until the Hit Tracker trajectory point ... matches the actual observation point.

They also use known atmospheric data, such as temperature and wind. Since winds can vary rapidly, I suspect the value used may be off quite a bit.

I suspect that their calculated SOB values are pretty close to the real value, except when their wind data is incorrect, but it's difficult to put too much faith in a "proprietary" calculation method.

[bird watcher]

It may not be interesting to the casual fan, but for anyone who's interested in breaking down the game in more meaningful ways this might be interesting, not to mention teams trying to get max value out of the players they sign.

That's cool I'd never seen that, thank you.

I guess the real point of the calculating the velocity would be to separate balls in play into more telling categories. For example a bloop single that lands over an infielders head for a single isn't necessarily as good of a hit as a ground ball that was smoked but right at a fielder. Someone who gives up a few of the former is unlucky while someone who gets away with a few of the latter is lucky.

However when we just look at GB/LD/FB the bloop single is a LD while the smoked grounder is a GB, but obviously every hit within these categories are not created equal. To me this would provide an objective answer to a couple of simple questions like is the pitcher getting hit hard but getting lucky and is the hitter making great contact but getting unlucky.

Ideally one day we could have a hitter f/x that gives us every hit's trajectory and velocity. I'm sure there would be plenty of room for people smarter than myself to give their team a competitive edge analyzing such data.

I have a suspicion that in a large enough sample size you wont find much variation in bloop hits per fly out. I doubt many pitchers would allow statistically more bloop singles than any other as a percentage of their fly balls. I think it would be safe to say that over a large enough sample a pitcher with a higher ERA and WHIP is getting hit harder AND more often than one with a lower ERA and WHIP.

It is an interesting thought. Once you take GO/FO, and BABIP into consideration I would doubt the "velocity from bat" stat would be a particularly telling variable. JMHO

[Mashed Potatoes]

I have a suspicion that in a large enough sample size you wont find much variation in bloop hits per fly out. I doubt many pitchers would allow statistically more bloop singles than any other as a percentage of their fly balls. I think it would be safe to say that over a large enough sample a pitcher with a higher ERA and WHIP is getting hit harder AND more often than one with a lower ERA and WHIP.

It is an interesting thought. Once you take GO/FO, and BABIP into consideration I would doubt the "velocity from bat" stat would be a particularly telling variable. JMHO

Over a large enough sample size as you say we're likely to reach the obvious conclusion that pitchers who get hit hard have a high ERA, and those that don't have a low ERA. However within a single season I think it might be one more tool in addition to BABIP and other peripherals to determine luck.

The Hit f/x data on the other hand would be enormously helpful. Imagine when scouting a hitter if you had all of his traditional measures of performance broken down by the type of pitch thrown against, where it was thrown, and when in the count.

[mweb]

Yeah, I've mentioned this before, and think it would do wonders for figuring out "luck" of pitchers along with advancing the measuring of defense when combining the velocity of the ball with the location.

[FollyFollyToo]

I think it would be a great stat to have, not only from the pitcher's perspective, but from the hitter's. Because, by and large, hitters can't control exactly where they're hitting the ball, but they can control how good a swing they get on it. Sure, they can try and pull it, or go the other way, or even shoot for major gaps in the infield and/or outfield. But, if this stat existed for all batted balls, it would tell us, with near certainty, who the best hitters in baseball are. In fact, I think that it would soon become a more important stat than AVG (although perhaps not as important as OBP or OPS).

[Migrant Redbird]

It's kind of a moot question if the statistic is only available as a derived calculation for home runs. To have it available for all balls hit into play, you'd need to convince the MLB powers that be (and their sponsors) that it's worth adding the software to their radar equipment to measure and report the velocity of balls as they leave the bat. I don't know; fans get inundated with all kinds of weird statistics during broadcasts right now; maybe the networks would like yet another one with which they could wow their viewers?

One complicating factor is that it's relatively easy to calculate the velocity on a pitch because they all approach the plate at nearly the same vector; however, balls come off the bat at all kinds of different vectors and the radar would only measure the component of that velocity which is along the vector towards the radar gun. It would be pretty easy to determine the ball's vector through post game analysis (the Fielding Bible folks are already doing this), but I doubt if MLB is willing to commit the resources to do this analysis on a real time basis so that broadcasters would have it available immediately for their viewers. There needs to be an economic incentive to develop the capability to record and distribute this data, and I don't see that incentive existing.