Does Changing Your Batspeed Impact Your Offensive Production?

Photo Credit: Latinweb

In May this year, Statcast released batspeed data, and I've been eagerly waiting for the sample sizes to grow large enough for a meaningful analysis. Now, three months in, we're ready to dive in. In this post, I’ll be examining the batspeed-tracked swings of Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, and Giancarlo Stanton. How do their swing speeds vary depending on the count, and how do these variations impact their performance?

Figure 1 illustrates the average batspeed for Ohtani, Judge, Stanton and Soto for each count.

Figure 1: Batspeed versus count for Ohtani, Judge, Stanton and Soto

As we can see, the highest batspeed occurs on a 3-0 count, followed closely by the favorable hitter’s counts of 2-0 and 3-1. The counts of 1-0, 0-0, 2-1, and 1-1 show average to slightly above-average batspeeds and batspeed significantly declines in the five pitcher’s counts: 3-2, 0-1, 2-2, 1-2, and 0-2.

To quantify the drop in batspeed as the count shifts in the pitcher’s favor, I've assigned each count a number from 1 to 12—where 1 represents a 3-0 count and 12 represents 0-2—with the remaining counts ordered accordingly as shown in Figure 1 above. The regression analysis is illustrated in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Regression analysis of batspeed versus count

Ohtani, Judge, Stanton, and Soto all reduce their swing speed in pitcher’s counts and accelerate it in hitter’s counts. This strategy enables them to maintain power in neutral and hitter-friendly counts while still making contact in pitcher’s counts.

Ohtani, Judge, and Soto reduce their batspeed by between 0.66 and 0.75 mph per count increment as the count moves in favor of the pitcher. Stanton, however, only reduces his batspeed by 0.4 mph per count increment —a 43% smaller reduction in swing speed.

How does the batspeed reduction impact performance?

As we can see in Table 1 below, Stanton struggles tremendously in the five pitcher’s counts because he does not cut down on his swing speed. Stanton is an elite hitter in hitter’s counts, ahead of even Soto in production. He remains well above average in neutral counts, but then sees his production plummet in pitcher’s counts.

Table 1: xwOBA grouped by hitter’s counts, pitcher’s counts, and neutral counts

Conclusion

Batters should be swinging at higher speeds in hitter’s counts and lower speeds in neutral counts. Using the best three hitters in baseball as the gold standard, dropping swing speed by about 0.7 mph per count increment, as the count moves in favor of the pitcher, should allow a batter to maximize his production.