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Barreled up: New Statcast metric shows highest-value batted balls
- Updated: September 22, 2016
So far, much of what we’ve reported with Statcast™ data has been about observing — how fast was this, how high was that, etc. That’s all going to lead to exciting new metrics to come out of the Statcast™ lab, and today we can share the first of many to come. Let’s keep it simple: Let’s use exit velocity and launch angle as a pair to find the hitters who just mash the most.
Think about the best thing a Major League hitter can hope to do when he steps to the plate. He obviously wants to hit the ball hard, because the .626 batting average Major League Baseball has on balls hit 100 mph or more in the Statcast™ era is pretty compelling. He wants to hit it at the right angle, too, because a ball hit straight up or down isn’t going to be a hit no matter how hard it’s struck. What he wants to do is hit it hard at an optimal level for success. In the parlance of baseball, he wants to barrel the ball.
For the players themselves, that might be a “you know it when it happens” sort of feeling, but we can do a lot better than that. We can come up with the right combination of velocity and angle to identify those high-value batted balls, and from there, it’s easy enough to make leaderboards that show the best hitters at creating them and the best pitchers at preventing them. Let’s do exactly that, and let’s name those optimally hit balls Barrels.
A “barrel” is defined as a well-struck ball where the combination of exit velocity and launch angle generally leads to a minimum .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage, though it will require a bit more explanation than that. Perhaps the best way to show what kind of batted ball qualifies as a barrel is with this image — the “Barrel Zone” is where barrels live:
As you can see, the “Barrel Zone” is an area that begins at 98 mph between 26 degrees and 30 degrees, and expands outward from there. The higher the speed of the ball, the wider the range of launch angle exists for a ball to be considered a barrel. At 99 mph and up, for example, between 25 degrees and 31 degrees is “barrelled.” At 100 mph and above, batted balls between 24 and 33 degrees will always be considered a barrel, and so on, expanding as balls get hit harder. Those aren’t arbitrary definitions; that’s based on a review of all of those batted-ball types and outlining the area where you get your minimum of “.500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage.”
If you look at the slugging percentage on all combinations of batted-ball velocities and launch angles, you can very clearly see the barrel zone appear in the upper right — that’s where crushed baseballs are. The lighter colored line extending below it also includes some extra-base hits, but mostly the kind of doubles and triples that are bloops, well-placed or generated by speed, which don’t fit the skill we’re looking for.
It’s worth noting that most barreled balls have performance numbers much higher than that minimum. The overall average of any barreled ball yields a batting average of over .800 and a slugging percentage of nearly 3.000, which are extraordinary numbers. Think of it like the quality start, which requires at least six …
