Correlation of Bat Speed and Exit Velocity

David Marshall submitted a contribution to the FanGraphs Community Research blog attempting to reverse engineer player swing metrics from the resulting Statcast data. Statcast reports exit velocity and attempts to estimate bat speed. While Statcast’s estimates struggle to accurately represent true bat speed, Blast Motion (the sensor tech used in our advanced camp) has partnered with the MLB to provide accurate readings of barrel speed. In the article, Marshall designed an algorithm that adjusts Statcast’s estimations to provide insight into professional hitters’ bat speeds as they correlate with exit velocity. The results were spot on, and we are happy to say that our youngsters fell into a similar window of output.