Bat speed and the O's

[Moose Milligan]

1 minute ago, deward said:

I can't help but wonder if Adley has deliberately slowed things down this year in search of more consistent hard contact. His exit velocities and hard hit rates are fine. I'd be curious what his max bat speed has been, but I don't see that tracked. I suspect he could hit a bunch of home runs if he really wanted to sell out for power, but doesn't want to make that trade off.

These are good thoughts and I think hitting #2 might have something to do with that if there's any truth to this.  He knows his job is to get on base more so that might mean not selling out for power and just focusing on making solid contact instead of trying for launch angles.  

 

[Spy Fox]

31 minutes ago, orioles119 said:

Paralysis by over-analysis.

What paralysis do you see? 

[Just Regular]

8 minutes ago, Frobby said:

My guess is that Sig has had this stuff for years.  

I think it will be interesting to track players’ career arc on this stuff.   You figure that players’ bats get slower as they age.  But do they compensate with shorter swings?  How does square up percentage change with age?  

Now Fangraphs has something to do.

There might be a technological constraint as the five Hawkeyes infrastructure may not have been around for very many years, but I can picture scout Mike Elias setting up his equipment looking at 17 year old Carlos Correa or 14 year old Yordan Alvarez.

One part of the rabbit hole might also be if the league has any obligation to share this data with Boras Corp, etc.     No doubt Sigbot's modeling of the stuff you said factors into those every day contract offers.

[Spy Fox]

16 minutes ago, Frobby said:

My guess is that Sig has had this stuff for years.  

I think it will be interesting to track players’ career arc on this stuff.   You figure that players’ bats get slower as they age.  But do they compensate with shorter swings?  How does square up percentage change with age?  

Now Fangraphs has something to do.

I think, similar to pitcher velocity, these will be a data point for moments where we ask "Is that guy getting unlucky? Or is injury/age diminishing their game?"

[LGOrioles]

2 hours ago, deward said:

Westburg is at 70.8. Like Adley though, he squares up a ton of balls. 

His swing is also very short. IIRC it’s under 7 feet, shortest I could see on the O’s.

[deward]

1 minute ago, LGOrioles said:

His swing is also very short. IIRC it’s under 7 feet, shortest I could see on the O’s.

Good call, I should have brought that up as well. He's evidently very direct to the ball. 15th shortest swing on the leaderboard.

[DrungoHazewood]

On 5/13/2024 at 10:09 AM, Frobby said:

Fine with me.  

Re Cobb: he didn’t hit many homers, but he’s 2nd all time in triples and 4th all time in doubles.  And, his ISO was .156, fairly modest compared to most guys with a .500.+ SLG.
 

Cobb didn't hit many homers compared to today. But up until Babe Ruth (who debuted when Cobb was 27) the all-time home run leader was Roger Connor with 138. Cobb retired with 117. The day Cobb retired he was tied for 16th on the all time home run list. He was also 1st in singles and 2nd in doubles and triples.

[Malike]

On 5/13/2024 at 9:56 AM, deward said:

Westburg is at 70.8. Like Adley though, he squares up a ton of balls. 

He also said he's using a heavier bat this year.

[emmett16]

On 5/13/2024 at 10:00 AM, Frobby said:

My guess is that Sig has had this stuff for years.  

I think it will be interesting to track players’ career arc on this stuff.   You figure that players’ bats get slower as they age.  But do they compensate with shorter swings?  How does square up percentage change with age?  

Now Fangraphs has something to do.

 

No doubt.  It's been available to any recruiters or scouts through PG for close to 6 years now.  Just go to the site and look through rankings of any player that's been in a showcase or played in a PG event.  The better orgs have been using this data for at least 7+ years and likely a lot longer.  Diamond Kinetics was founded in 2013 and I imagine progressive teams were using the tech shortly there after.

There is a direct correlation between bat speed and xwOBACON.  It's not the end all be all, but it's ~40% of the equation (ability to square up balls "smash factor" and swing decisions being the other two components to hitting).  

[turtlebowl]

The thing about Adley is he does cut down on his swing on occasions.  I love when he is early on a pitch but keeps his hands back and serves the ball into the opposite field.  I guess my question is, do they account for every swing to get an average?  If so, I bet Adleys normal swing would be much closer to the guys on the top of the list.

[baltfan]

On the Rates and Barrels podcast they noted that the Orioles as a team are 3rd in bate speed and 3rd in shortest swing.  They said that’s the best combo of any team and a credit to our development. 

[Hallas]

On 5/13/2024 at 7:06 AM, Moose Milligan said:

Luiz Arraez?  Batting champ, high average hitter with practically no power?  Who cares about guys like that?  Grumble grumble grumble @DrungoHazewood-like quote about batting average leaders grumble grumble grumble.

It does feel that there have been more rib injuries/obliques in recent years.  Thankfully they're not as severe as a TJ surgery to recover from but they are a pain in the ass, that's for sure.

The difference between Arraez and Rutschman over the past copule years is mostly in positional adjustments + Rutschman being a better defender.  They've produced a similar number of batting runs over 2022 and 2023.

 

Ichiro kind of broke the rules too, but stats guys never thought he was overrated.  He's probably the only guy to be worth more defensively as a left fielder than an average-defender CF.

[Just Regular]

Sig in the booth shared the teams had this data starting with 2023.

Hawkeye 300 frames/second the tech requirement.

Investigations as ever in progress for forecasting, etc.

Sig shared it also gives the teams skeletal movement patterns of everyone on the field, interesting mainly for pitchers, but Brown and Palmer also had followups around defense, with Sig sharing they can tell pitch-by-pitch if defenders are airborne, on balls of feet, etc., and their times following contact to cover 3 feet, 8 feet, etc.

Coincidentally around then a Vlad sharp groundball up the middle almost precisely between Gunnar and Mateo was stopped.