“Exit velocity”

OK, now, I see you cowering under your desk. Oh. And you…you threw your phone into the tub? Listen, exit velocity doesn’t have to be scary. No, really, I promise!

Story time

Let’s back up a minute. Think back to your childhood. Before advanced statistics. Even before radar guns were ubiquitous throughout MLB stadiums. Pitches would make the ball dance and batters would rope line drives or smash grounders on astroturf and race around the bases.

Imagine it’s just after a tough game where your team lost. The next day, in the paper, you read an interview with the manager about your team’s star player. He’d gone 0-for-4 in that loss, the bum. The manager says, “Well, he was lining it all over the field, it just kept finding gloves.” You try to remember if that’s what happened. But, well, that was last night. Line drives for outs look exactly the same in the box scores. So who cares!

The next night, your team wins. Hooray! The scrappy backup infielder had a pair of doubles and and single to help lead the team to victory in one of his rare starts. You were listening to this game and your team’s color analyst remarks after one of those doubles, “Well, it was a little blooper down the line that no one could get to. Still, it looks like a line drive in the box score!”

Sure enough, his box score looks great the next morning when you check the paper again. The backup should probably be the new starter, you figure. Only, he isn’t. The star is back in the field the next night. Months later, when the season ends, the scrappy infielder’s numbers aren’t very good; the star’s are fantastic. What the heck happened?

Exit velocity.

Sure, that’s not what they called it back in the ‘80s, ‘90s, or even ‘00s. But that’s sure as heck what it was. They may not have had the numbers to quantify it, but even back in the 1900s, everyone knew: hitting the ball hard was better than hitting it soft.

The old way of doing things

The concept behind exit velocity isn’t new. All the stat does is actually measure the thing we all already knew, so that our knowledge can be better applied. That includes everyone from MLB managers deciding who to start the next night, to scouts deciding which players should get signed, to people like us drafting our fantasy teams in our underwear at home.

Sure, you might try to argue that measuring exit velocity is why nobody hits .300 anymore, but the sport was always heading in that direction. Do you think it’s a coincidence that no one has hit .400 since Ted Williams in 1941? Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jim Thome, and Rafael Palmeiro were three of the most celebrated hitters of the ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s – steroid allegations aside. Between them, they played in at least parts of 76 seasons. Of those, they had only 10 full seasons with batting averages over .300. No one cared that they weren’t hitting singles; they had the dingers. And they were more valuable to their teams for it.

So, naturally, the sport has been moving in this direction for years. Decades. Especially as hitters got bigger and stronger, even after they were forced to give up their steroids. Exit velocity didn’t do anything to the game, it just let us all put numbers to something we already knew so we could talk about it more openly and honestly.

When someone says Jac Caglianone or Salvador Perez are doing OK because their exit velocities are still high, what they’re saying is simply, “He’s hitting the ball hard, just right at guys.” That has been part of the baseball lexicon for longer than many of us have been alive.

Of course, there’s more to the game than simply hitting the ball hard. It’s also about “hitting it where they ain’t”. But that’s something else advanced statistics can tell us. Groundball rates, flyball rates, infield flyball rates, pull rates, and more can expand our understanding even further. Did you know the Royals have the highest infield fly rate in baseball with runners in scoring position? That’s certainly something the team is looking to address.

None of this guarantees anything, of course. But when we used advanced statistics, they often help guide the way. We may not have the exit velocities for Eric Hosmer, but we all could tell he hit the ball hard. He just happened to hit it stunningly often on the ground; more than half of his batted balls were classified as grounders. Everyone said if he’d hit it in the air more often, he’d have success. And, for a brief period in 2020, he did. That led to his best offensive season outside of 2015. He was on pace to hit 35-40 home runs if he had been able to play a full season like that. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

The implementation

So, yeah, it can seem frustrating when people tell you Salvador Perez is hitting it hard, and we need to be patient with him. I was one of those people, but even I got frustrated enough to give up on it at times. But since May 17, nearly a month ago, until before Sunday’s action, he’s been slashing .284/.326/.481/.807. And wouldn’t you know it? Those numbers are much more in line with the expected numbers you can find on Baseball Savant. They’re good enough to make him a well-above-average hitter over that span.

That doesn’t guarantee that Jac Caglianone is going to eventually meet up with his expected numbers. He could develop a mechanical flaw while he tries to work through his “bad luck” to start his big league career and tank those expected numbers before he ever gets going. But, do you know what might help him keep his process right and find success? That’s right. Knowing his exit velocity and other advanced statistics all say he’s doing things right and should keep it up.

Dayton Moore poisoned the well in Kansas City by insisting that everyone “trust the process.” The thing is, that’s not because it’s a bad philosophy. In baseball, a sport more than any other about failure, it’s not just a good philosophy; it’s necessary. The problem is that Dayton Moore’s processes were too often flawed in disastrous ways.

That said, the Rays’ and Guardians’ ways were never about not spending money or finding weird quirks in the system, like using an opener. It’s about constantly improving your ability to gather and act on data.

Advanced statistics can help you identify if your process is good or bad. That’s how you can best know when to make a change and when to trust that what you’re doing will eventually work. And that is how you eventually find sustained success instead of a brief, if glorious, moment of prosperity such as the Royals saw in the early teens.

Jac Caglianone may or may not find his way to massive success this season. The Royals may or may not find their groove and work their way back into the playoff picture. But the team has shown that they now have better processes. And they have better processes for determining how good their processes are.

The Royals may not succeed this year. But by using advanced statistics, the time between now and their next playoff berth should be far less than has become the norm in Kansas City. And that’s all any of us can ask for.