from MLB\u2019s website<\/a> is a little convoluted, but it\u2019s consistent and makes sense. They\u2019re collecting all of the data from batted balls that land for extra-base hits more often than not, and they\u2019re measuring how hard and how high those balls were hit. These are the hardest-hit of the hardest hit. And the Giants have been rotten at hitting baseballs like this so far.<\/p>\n![\"Heliot](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2222992028-1-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Heliot Ramos is one of several key Giants hitters who is struggling to barrel the ball right now. (Chris Coduto \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The actual name of the stat is Barrels per Batted Ball Event (Brls\/BBE%), which doesn\u2019t exactly roll off the tongue, and it\u2019s not always something that correlates with offensive production, because it doesn\u2019t penalize the hitters who swing and miss. Oneil Cruz (.676 OPS) was keeping company with Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge in this statistic last season, so it\u2019s more of a \u201cwill you look at that?\u201d kind of stat.<\/p>\n
The asterisk is another piece of important context. Luis Arraez is a freak. A wonderful, delightful freak. He will show up at the bottom or the top of every list, and you need to find another way to evaluate him. He is Tyler Rogers, an outlier\u2019s outlier, someone screwy enough to mess with the entire team\u2019s statistics.<\/p>\n
Hard hits by percentage of swings taken<\/p>\n
108. Casey Schmitt (15.8)
135. Rafael Devers (14.6)
170. Matt Chapman (13.2)
178. Patrick Bailey (12.7)
179. Willy Adames (12.6)
190. (t) Harrison Bader (12.2)
190. (t) Heliot Ramos (12.2)
195. Jung Hoo Lee (12.0)
258. Luis Arraez (8.5)<\/p>\n
A hard hit is a ball that leaves the bat at 95 miles per hour or faster, and it\u2019s helpful to measure hard hits against swings taken to show us who is swinging the most without doing much damage.<\/p>\n
A quick note: Jung Hoo Lee is not exactly Arraez when it comes to being an outlier, but he\u2019s not not Arraez, either. He\u2019s a hitter who can (and is supposed to, in theory) have success without lighting up the Baseball Savant leaderboards. So don\u2019t freak out when you see him staying down at the bottom of this list throughout the season. That\u2019s where people like him and Arraez and Steven Kwan hang out. It\u2019s a beautiful sport.<\/p>\n
Everyone else, though, usually hits the ball a lot harder. It\u2019s tempting to wonder if this has something to do with an organizational approach, or the failings of an individual or an organization. Fight that temptation and remember the part where we\u2019re talking about less than two weeks of data. All you need to do right now is point at the data and say, \u201cGee whiz, that sure is awful!\u201d<\/p>\n
You can take a moment to do it right now, if you\u2019d like.<\/p>\n
Average exit velocity<\/p>\n
55. Heliot Ramos (92.1 mph)
137. Casey Schmitt (89.7)
142. Harrison Bader (89.6)
143. Willy Adames (89.6)
179. Rafael Devers (87.9)
186. Jung Hoo Lee (87.8)
187. Matt Chapman (87.7)
197. Patrick Bailey (87.4)
231. Luis Arraez (85.9)<\/p>\n
Again, this has nothing to do with Oracle Park. This is just about how the ol\u2019 Giants are whomping the baseball with their whomping sticks. And they\u2019re not really whomping much, it would seem. Three of these hitters \u2014 Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman and Heliot Ramos \u2014 are typically exit-velocity darlings, with Devers often ranking in the top 10. All of them are down here in the basement with the least effective hitters in baseball.<\/p>\n
This is not a prescriptive piece of analysis. There is no solution, no a-ha! moment to explain why the Giants\u2019 best hitters have been unable to hit baseballs hard this season. All we know is that they sure aren\u2019t hitting baseballs hard so far. It\u2019s in the \u201cone of those things\u201d file for now, but it can get escalated to \u201chey, boss, get a look at this\u201d status in a hurry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nobody in their right mind wants to read about how bad the San Francisco Giants\u2019 hitters have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":{"0":"post-669131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-giants","13":"tag-sanfrancisco","14":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-giants","17":"tag-sfgiants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116365627156782728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}