Baseball statistics have gotten increasingly complicated over time. Once upon a time, people primarily used counting stats like RBIs, home runs and stolen bases. Some of the most complicated statistics were stats like batting average, fielding percentage and ERA basically requiring little more math than average division. Then, there were statistics like FIP, wOBA and WAR. These are difficult to calculate but are reasonably simple to understand. A higher wOBA and WAR is better than a lower one. Now, with data from Statcast and Pitch Fx available to the public, it allows us the creation of new statistics that are difficult to both calculate and understand. One of these metrics is exit velocity.
Exit velocity is a relatively new stat that I believe was introduced with the creation of Statcast. It measures how the speed of a baseball after it is hit by a batter. According to Sports Illustrated
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If the batter with an average exit velocity of 85 generally puts the ball into play with an exit velocity between 80 and 90 mph, then he’s not going to be productive. However, a batter with an average exit velocity of 75 mph but puts a lot of pitches into play with an average exit velocity of over 100 mph or under 40 mph could be extremely useful. Especially if he’s a quick runner and can beat out a tough throw to first. In addition, it’s possible that an acceptable exit velocity depends on the type of pitch thrown and that an ideal exit velocity against a fastball is different than that against a curveball.
Some of the new statistics available to the public are excellent and can help advance our understanding of baseball but don’t necessarily work like statistics have in the past. As a result, we’ll have to use different methodologies to gauge their value and what they’re telling us about baseball