Exit velocity proves pitchers provide minimal power to long balls

A commonly held belief, reiterated from youth ball on up to the majors, is that the harder a pitch comes in, the harder it goes out.

“I always say that when someone throws hard,” New York Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud said.

Another variant, courtesy of Boston Red Sox catcher Blake Swihart, says of pitchers, “Let them supply the power.”

That’s all fine and dandy, except for this caveat: it’s not really all that true.

The hardest-hit ball this season came off the bat of the Miami Marlins’ Giancarlo Stanton at 120.3 mph, as measured by the radar-tracking technology of Statcast.

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The pitch? A 79-mph curveball from the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Mike Bolsinger.

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In fact, six of the eight fastest exit velocities this season came on pitches that were 88 mph or slower; the average and median of the 50 hardest-hit balls this year are only 90.3. and 90.6, respectively.

Alan Nathan, physics professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, has studied baseball extensively and estimates that, when a hitter squares up a ball on the sweet spot, only about 15% of exit velocity is attributable to the pitch’s speed at contact — often 3-4 mph slower than as measured at release point — while the remaining 85% is generated by the hitter. Lowering pitch speed by 20 mph, he says, only reduces exit velocity by about 4 mph.

“All of the evidence you need is to look at batting practice and the Home Run Derby,” said John Olshan, general manager of TrackMan Baseball, whose radars power Statcast. “Those pitches are 65 miles per hour, and they crush them.

“We look at power as a competition-independent hitting statistic. You’re either able to hit the ball harder or you’re not, and it really doesn’t depend on the speed of the pitch. It’s a very small correlation. It really is, ‘Can you square up the ball and hit it with good contact?’”

Some clubs turn on their TrackMan system to scout an opponent’s batting practice because that information is deemed viable. Olshan said that, from measuring just 35 contacts’ worth of exit speeds and launch angles, it is possible to reliably estimate a player’s isolated power, which measures the rate at which a batter slugs extra-base hits.

Ask Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson — who is tied for fourth in the majors with 39 home runs — what ball he has hit hardest this season, and he has an immediate answer: an April 23 home run off Baltimore Orioles starter Chris Tillman. Donaldson says he read somewhere that the ball traveled 120.5 mph off his bat, noted by one site as the hardest any player has hit a baseball in a major league game this season, for a distance of 469 feet.

That figure was tabulated by the ESPN Stats & Information Group, using measurements of factors such as the ball’s flight time, the distance and height of its landing spot, the ballpark’s altitude and the weather conditions.

Statcast’s radar technology, however, computed a 113 mph exit velocity on Donaldson’s homer, which didn’t crack the top-50, though it tabulated a distance of 481 feet, the season’s fourth longest.

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When Donaldson was asked whether he generates power from the pitch itself, from the sheer force of his swing, from his lower body or from his upper body, teammate Troy Tulowitzki, who was stretching nearby, interrupted: “Look at his upper body, what do you mean?”

Donaldson conceded, “It’s all lower half.” (Tulowitzki then borrowed a iPad with a list of Donaldson’s hardest-hit contacts and, while looking at the play by play, quipped, “All I know is that you had a lot of solo shots before I came along. It says, ‘Troy scores. Troy scores.’”)

Regardless of the exact velocity and distance for Donaldson’s home run, Tillman’s pitch was an 85-mph changeup.

“The harder the pitch is coming in, the harder it is to probably flush it on the barrel, on the sweet spot,” Donaldson said. “The softer the pitch is coming, the easier it is to hit it on the sweet spot.”

Timing a swing and squaring up the ball on the barrel are of utmost importance for a hard-hit ball, moreso than the pitch’s velocity.

“If I throw 95 and the guy’s 100% on time, it’s probably going to leave the bat harder than a pitch that’s 85 (when he’s) 100% on time, but the chances of being 100% on time at 95 are probably not as good as being 100% on time at 85,” Cleveland Indians starter Trevor Bauer said, without taking a breath.

“It’s also depending on the sequence and where the pitch is and the guy’s swing and the trajectory.”

Having reviewed a large amount of TrackMan data from college and professional players, Olshan said the average exit speed of all fastballs is 88 mph, compared to 85 for each of curves, changeups and sliders.

“That may correlate to the fact that fastballs are often thrown when the count is predictive that it’s going to be a fastball,” Olshan said.

Most hitters wait for fastball counts and seek out fastballs in their preferred part of the strike zone. “That’s what you strive to as hitters, to be good on fastballs,” New York Yankees third baseman Chase Headley said.

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New York Mets outfielder Michael Cuddyer is responsible for one of the hardest-hit balls this year, smacking a 115.1-mph line drive on a 96-mph fastball from St. Louis Cardinals reliever Sam Tuivailala . . . directly into the glove of shortstop Pete Kozma.

“To me, a hit’s a hit,” Cuddyer said. “I don’t care if it’s 30 miles an hour off the bat or 110 miles an hour off the bat. And an out’s an out.”

A couple hitters said, from their experience, squaring up a curve or slider made the baseball travel farther because of the pitch’s spin. A 2003 paper co-published by engineering professors Gregory S. Sawicki and Mont Hubbard of UC Davis and William J. Stronge of Cambridge indeed concluded, “The optimally hit curve ball will travel farther than both the fastball and knuckleball, because of beneficial top-spin on the pitched curve ball that is enhanced during impact with the bat.”

Such discussions matter because of how well exit velocity correlates with high batting averages and high slugging percentages. Taken together, those top 50 contacts resulted in a .740 batting average and 1.420 slugging, with 17 extra-base hits and nine home runs.

d’Arnaud, by the way, knows that the old adage isn’t true.

“When I would say that, my high school coach would tell me that I was wrong,” he said.

Some habits are hard to break, however. Does d’Arnaud still perpetuate the misleading saying by repeating the notion that the harder it comes in, the harder it goes out?

“I still do,” he said with a smile

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