We Know Extra Concerning the Swing Now, however What Else Is Lacking?
Baseball

We Know Extra Concerning the Swing Now, however What Else Is Lacking?

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Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports

It’s been a enjoyable couple of weeks seeing all of the work that has been accomplished on account of Statcast’s increasing into bat monitoring. The beauty of this recreation is that there’s at all times extra to be taught. With the addition of bat velocity and swing size, we now have a greater concept of telling the story of a participant’s swing, however there’s nonetheless a lot extra to faucet into.

Back after I was utilizing a Blast Motion bat sensor every day, I used to be uncovered to each element of the swing that you might consider. Bat velocity was one in all them, however that solely scratched the floor. There had been items explaining my path at totally different factors within the swing, how lengthy it took my barrel to satisfy the airplane of the ball, the place in house that occurred, and a lot extra. For some time, the general public knowledge accessible was centered on the result. What was the pitch? What was the consequence? What was the exit velocity and/or launch angle? With this new replace, we’re progressing towards the how. How quick did the participant swing? How lengthy was their swing? We can now tie that in with the consequence, however there are further particulars wanted to grasp the complete scope of how outcomes occurred. That’ll be the main target of this piece.

First, it’s necessary to spotlight the nice work that has already been accomplished explaining the brand new knowledge we now have and what the data tells (and doesn’t inform) us concerning the swing. Ben Clemens defined some functions of the brand new metrics and what their relationship with efficiency is on a macro scale. One factor Ben talked about that resonated with me is considering the brand new (and outdated) data as inputs for us to make use of to grasp efficiency somewhat than the solutions themselves. Each piece works collectively to inform a narrative, whether or not that be league huge or participant particular. Basically, these are items of knowledge that want further context.

Relatedly, Patrick Dubuque and Stephen Sutton-Brown from Baseball Prospectus, supplied an important evaluation of how you can put bat velocity into the context of pitch counts, from the attitude of each the hitter and pitcher. And there’s extra past simply these two, together with Noah Woodward’s Substack publish about bat velocity, swing size, and understanding what they imply and the way they contribute to the swing.

Woodward touched on a couple of parts of the swing that I’ve talked about in earlier work that we nonetheless don’t have complete knowledge on from Statcast: contact level and assault angle. Swing variability, swing adjustability, having A and B swings, and so on. are all extraordinarily necessary to being profitable on the massive league degree. If you might have a gap in your swing, typically talking, pitchers will expose you, so having a number of high-quality swings goes to set you as much as have constant success, simply ask Triston Casas. Swing-by-swing knowledge on assault angle, vertical and horizontal bat angle, and level of contact will all assist the general public understanding of swing variability, or when and the way the swing modifications basically.

Let’s begin with assault angle. This is the angle of the bat path at contact, relative to the bottom. As your bat travels by way of the zone, it creates a trajectory. To optimize your possibilities of hitting the ball within the air, the bat must be on an upward trajectory at contact, that means it’s best to have a optimistic assault angle. One element of swing variability is making a optimistic assault angle at totally different heights, widths, and depths. You just about simply need to have the ability to manipulate your barrel to maneuver upward irrespective of the place the pitch is. To get a greater concept of what assault angle appears to be like like, let’s take a look at a video from David Adler outlining a swing from Oneil Cruz:

While assault angle is formally measured because the angle of the trail at contact, seeing the trail main as much as contact can inform us what sort of depth the hitter creates. In this clip, the angle of the trail modifications because it strikes from behind Cruz’s physique to in entrance of it. This illuminates how assault angle depends on level of contact. In basic, the farther in entrance of the plate your bat is, the simpler it’s to create a optimistic assault angle. However, this thread from Driveline’s Director of Hitting, Tanner Stokey, discusses the significance of making bat velocity deep within the zone. The greatest hitters create their peak speeds in tight home windows. Like all aspects of baseball, swinging is about placing a stability of making excessive ranges of bat velocity and optimistic assault angles. You don’t need to have a one dimensional swing that’s centered on excessive bat velocity whereas ignoring the necessity to create splendid bat angles each deep within the zone and in entrance of the plate.

Depending on the way you begin your swing and enter the zone, it takes time to show your barrel over into an upward slope. For many hitters, the bat must journey a higher distance to create the optimistic assault angle that results in optimum contact. This, in fact, takes extra time. But, as Robert Orr identified final week in his piece on the connection between pulled fly balls and swing size, an extended swing isn’t essentially a nasty factor; it’s actually simply one other knowledge level. With entry to assault angle, we might higher inform the story of how a hitter like Isaac Paredes creates depth in his swing whereas typically making splendid contact far out in entrance of the plate, versus a hitter who makes contact out in entrance with out creating the required depth of their swing to keep away from main holes.

At the identical time, it’s nonetheless doable to create a optimistic assault angle deeper within the hitting zone. To get there, you might want to make actions that aren’t straightforward to do whereas producing bat velocity and controlling your physique. Some hitters with nice mobility use lateral torso bend — they lean towards their again leg proper earlier than contact — to get their barrel on an upward slope deep within the hitting zone. Think of Shohei Ohtani or Edouard Julien:

These two have unorthodox expertise that permit them to launch pitches excessive within the air to the other area. With level of contact and assault angle, we’d be capable of quantify how totally different they are surely from their friends on high of the visible evaluation.

Then there are hitters who create flatter (however nonetheless optimistic) assault angles with a path that stays on an identical airplane all through their swing. They get on airplane with the ball early and don’t do a lot to vary their path all through the swing. It’s almost inconceivable to do that with a steep swing. Juan Soto is a superb instance of this, even when he’s extra highly effective than the opposite hitters with this swing model. Here is a superb angle that illustrates what I’m referencing:

Soto’s vertical entry angle (angle of the bat relative to the bottom originally of the downswing) isn’t far off from his assault angle. You can see how a lot this swing contrasts with that of Cruz, who’s an enormous dude with a slender stance. Because of that, his bat path is vertically oriented, and his bat must journey a higher distance to get on airplane with the ball. With extra detailed data of barrel angles at totally different factors within the swing, we might know extra about how hitters like Soto and Cruz fluctuate from each other on the subject of getting and staying on airplane.

This has been a ton of knowledge all of sudden, so I’ll go away you with one final tidbit. Depending on the hitter, the angle of the trail at contact could be very totally different from the angle of the barrel at contact (relative to the bottom), often known as vertical bat angle. While I’ve cited common vertical bat angle from SwingGraphs on a number of events, I’ve at all times centered on placing the metric into context as a result of it varies primarily based on a number of elements. Luis Arraez and Aaron Judge can have related common vertical bat angles, however that doesn’t inform us something about how totally different their swings are. We know the metric is dependent upon pitch top, however even that alone isn’t sufficient to elucidate why Judge is a launcher and Arraez is a sprayer. As we realized earlier, every knowledge level is an enter and isn’t meant for use alone.

There is not any query groups have been utilizing, monitoring, and making use of these knowledge to scout and develop gamers for years now, however regardless of all of the metrics that we now have, the data on the general public aspect continues to be lagging. Ideally, in future years, we’ll acquire entry to extra swing knowledge in order that we are able to higher perceive the sport we love.

Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com