As with most new features, news that v20 of OOTP was going to have exit velocity included on the game logs brought about mixed reaction. Where would they come from? What would they mean? How accurate would they be.
Given that I’ve got my handy-dandy scripts for parsing game log files, my reaction was a little different—meaning my first thought was “how can I grab the data, and what can I do with it?” The answer to the first question took a little elbow grease but wasn’t too hard. The answer to the second question is more complex.
First, let me take a little digression and point you to the MLB’s statscast site, where you can now see exactly how hard the most hard-hit baseballs in the majors are. If you go there, you’ll see Giancarlo Stanton crushed a baseball to the tune of 120.6 MPH back in March, almost two MPH harder than the next guy—Vlad Guerrero, Jr at 118.9 (and, Stanton himself). Of interest might be that the three most hard-hit baseballs of the year were not homers, but instead have been singles. The sixth most hard-hit ball was a force-out off the bat of Aaron Judge, the only out made in the top twenty hardest-hit balls.
With that, let me step into the BBA, and then take a dalliance into the UMEBA.
Our seasons are early on, of course—only two weeks of games. But I’ve gathers up some information, and it’s interesting enough.
For example, on April 2nd, Yellow Springs’ Rob Thomas stepped up to the plate and drove a double into deepest left-center at Utopia Field, the ball left his bat at 114.4 MPH, tying him with ten other players for the 8th-hardest hit ball of the year. Three guys have hit the ball 115 MPH on the nose—Rockville’s Lorenzo Palacios, Charm City’s Joaquin Hebner, and Calgary’s Ettienne R. Lafitte (with both Hebner and Lafitte’s coming off YS9 pitcher Luis Colon, something that would not seem to bode well for him). Next is Valencia’s Wilton Rivera and Mexico City’s Gipper Kengos, both of whom doubled by blasting line drives that left the bat at 115.6 MPH.
THIS BRINGS US TO THE TWO HARDEST HIT BALLS of the first two weeks of the season at 116.3 MPH. They come in the form of Vancouver’s Domenic Wyatt, who put a fly ball off the wall Edmonton’s massive park, and … wait for it … San Antonio’s Pedro Suarez, who hit a first-pitch grounder past the shortstop on April 7th that went for a base hit.
So, yeah, interesting collection of players, am I right? I’m not sure I see Suarez in that collection, nor Kengos for that matter, though both are strapping young men. But otherwise I suppose I can see it, and to be clear, the season is young—and to be even clear, there’s a TON more work to be done with EV if we want to pretend to “reverse engineer” anything here. Even then, I’m not sure the ultimate value…but the list was fun, and that’s what we’re here for, right?
For completeness sake, I should also note that Seattle’s Sean McGuire and Calgary’s Werner McConnell, JR’s 113.1 MPH fly outs are the hardest hit balls to be turned into outs so far this very young season.
EXIT VELO IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Perhaps of some interest is that exit velocity in the UMEBA is a touch down relative to the BBA.
Beruit’s Jose Gonzalez blasts a line drive off Bucharest’s Kyle Elston at 113.8 MPH to lead the league so far. Four guys have registered 113.1 MPH balls.
EXIT VELO BY RESULT
Something else that’s interesting—again presented on minimal data—but here are the average exit velocity of various results:
| Result | BBA | UMEBA |
|---|---|---|
| Single | 97.3 | 97.6 |
| Double | 102.5 | 101.3 |
| Triple | 104.1 | 101.1 |
| Home Run | 100.0 | 100.2 |
EXIT VELO BY BATTED BALL TYPE
| Result | BBA | UMEBA |
|---|---|---|
| Flyball | 92.3 | 91.8 |
| Groundball | 90.1 | 91.0 |
| Line Drive | 96.3 | 96.8 |
| Popup | 71.6 | 72.0 |
Reminders go here again. Part of the issue is that this is two weeks of data, and mostly I’m just playing around for fun now. As usual, when we get to the end of a month, I’ll try to remember to upload all the files, and you can play with them yourself. Otherwise, I also like to post this kind of stuff so anyone can ask questions or suggest other things to look at that might provide us some information that’s useful.
Until then, though, I figure this is mostly about having a fun little toy to play with.
