Baseball Savant just released bat tracking data for the first time. Bat speed, "squared-up" percentage, swing length and other information about hitters. This unlocks a whole new understanding of how hitters are creating the contact-point data that we already have eyes on (like exit velocity and launch angle).
This is the first rollout of this info, there's more to come, including information about the path hitters' bat are take and things like attack angle.
But for now, let's digest this info and dive into bat speed and "squared-up" percentage or sweet-spot percentage in this video.
Baseball Savant's website can be found here: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/
All the information I use within this video can be found here:
My substack can be found here: https://lancebroz.substack.com/
A massive thanks to the folks at MLB for giving me early access to the bat tracking data so I could make this video ahead of time. Mike Petriello, Alex Fast, Tom Tango, and others I'm likely missing. Hopefully I didn't mess anything up in my explanations.
Video and images via MLB, MLB.tv, USAToday
0:00 Baseball Savant's Bat Tracking Rollout
0:39 Bat Speed
1:14 Bat Speed Distribution Graphics
2:05 Two-Strike Adjusments?
2:53 Fastball vs Slider Bat Speed
4:04 Pitcher Bat Speed
4:46 Team Bat Speed
5:45 What is Squared-Up Rate?
7:49 Bat Speed + Squared-Up Plot
10:00 Bat Speed + Squared-Up for Pitchers
11:09 Swing Length
11:38 What's Next?!