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Corbin examines the new statcast bat speed metrics on Baseball Savant for pitchers and whether they matter for predicting fantasy baseball pitcher performance.
The new bat speed metrics have been all the rage in the fantasy baseball and real-life baseball community. Since it's fresh and limited to only 2024 data, we want to be cautious about whether it's actionable.
Though we've found a focus on hitters, let's examine the leaders in several categories, covering pitchers with the correlations between the bat speed metrics and other numbers. It's a quick takeaway since the initial numbers cause us to pause.
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Fantasy Baseball Squared Up Per Swing Leaders
Pitchers theoretically want to avoid hitters squaring up the ball to avoid the strong exit velocities on their pitches. However, it might be more complex than pitchers not allowing squared-up batted balls because it's a mixed bag for hitters having high bat speeds and squared-up rates. At first glance, the pitcher leaders with the lowest squared-up rates per swing look like players with high-end stuff.
The highlights on the list include Edward Cabrera, Reed Garrett, Garrett Crochet, Luis Gil, Freddy Peralta, Cole Ragans, and Hunter Greene. There's a weaker correlation among the leaders with the lowest squared-up rates and average bat speed allowed. Like any other metrics, it helps us to dig deeper because there's more to the profile and story.
When we flip the squared-up leaderboard on its head, the notable players involve Framber Valdez, Bailey Falter, Patrick Corbin, Taijuan Walker, Ross Stripling, and Kyle Gibson. Most of the pitchers fall into the deep-league or irrelevant pitchers besides Valdez, who has been struggling in 2024.
Valdez's xERA of 2.99 hints at regression via the luck factors (BABIP, HR/F) and skills. Since Valdez typically generates elite groundball rates at 64 percent in 2024, we expect him to keep the home run rates in check, given his career average of 16 percent. Unfortunately, Valdez is allowing a 29 percent HR/F, mainly via the sinker (40 percent) and changeup (100 percent). That's much worse than the career average on the sinker (21 percent) and changeup (28 percent). Expect the numbers to regress in his favor because the heavy groundball approach typically doesn't align with poor batted ball metrics like hitters squaring up the ball at a high rate.
Fantasy Baseball Blasts Per Swing Leaders
The list of pitchers with the lowest blast rates looks similar to the squared-up rate leaders. That's because Baseball Savant defines blasts as squared-up swings with fast bat speeds, so it combines two optimal metrics into one. As pitchers, we want them to avoid blasts since they'll have lower rates of hitters squaring up the ball and swinging hard.
Several relievers top the list, with starting pitchers Zack Wheeler, Greene, Ragans, Gil, Crochet, Tarik Skubal, Edward Cabrera, Ryan Pepiot, and MacKenzie Gore appear notable. Like the squared-up leaders among pitchers, these pitchers tend to rank as ones with good stuff based on their ability to elicit whiffs and possess above-average movement profiles in their arsenal.
It took a couple of seasons, but Gore's data and results align with the prospect hype of the past. He rocks an above-average strikeout minus walk rate of 19 percent, with a 13.3 percent swinging strike rate. Gore's curveball (13.2 percent) and slider (17.1 percent) have typically led the arsenal in swinging strike rate. However, his changeup looks deadly, with a career-best 19.6 percent swinging strike rate in 2024. Gore bumped up the changeup usage in 2024 to 10.8 percent from under three percent in 2023 as a weapon against right-handed hitters.
Gore's changeup added over an inch of vertical movement while losing 1.5 inches of arm-side fade. Part of the movement change relates to an increase in his vertical release point, while the horizontal release moves closer to the midline of his body.
That indicates Gore's release point moved more over the top than the three-fourths of last season. It explains the movement and the lower spin rate on the changeup of over 200 revolutions per minute (RPM), aligning with the added drop.
With Gore's four-seamer improving the induced vertical break (IVB), the changeup becoming an additional weapon should give us more confidence in Gore's sustainability to avoid blasts and hitters making hard contact.
Fantasy Baseball Whiffs Per Swing Leaders
Baseball defines whiffs as whiffs per swing, which results in a different percentage than the swinging strike rate since the formula includes whiffs per total pitches. Unfortunately, there isn't an inverse relationship between bat speed allowed and whiffs per swing. That indicates a low correlation between the bat speed allowed by pitches and their ability to elicit whiffs per swing.
We've heard some mention pitchers who elicit high whiff rates might have higher bat speeds allowed because hitters will swing hard when fooled. The data for pitchers point toward a low relationship between bat speed and whiff rate, though we're dealing with small samples in 2024. Besides the names mentioned earlier among the pitcher leaders in squared-up and blast rates, we find Jared Jones, Shota Imanaga, and Nick Lodolo most notable among starters. Jones and Imanaga have elite four-seams with above-average skills aligning with the results.
Summary
The bat speed metrics via Baseball Savant might be more relevant for hitters than pitchers. However, an early look at the pitchers aligns with strikeout skill and stuff for several leaders in each category. As someone leaning into the data analysis, we'll need a few years to examine whether there's any validity in the bat speed data. The initial hypothesis of pitchers with high-end stuff might elicit weaker contact and whiffs, but it's only a piece of the puzzle.
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