Bat Speed vs. Exit Speed?

[FP26]

Former Mizzou coach Earleywine did this. Had a men’s pitcher or two on staff and they hit more live arm pitching in a camp than anywhere else we have been. Anyone that could hit stood OUT.

DD's high school team did some of this. Her high school had a pretty good pitcher 4 years ahead of DD that pitched at a local D2. She would come to practice once in a while to pitch to the team. Unfortunately it did not go well. DD was the only girl on the team that could hit off of her. She was also the only girl on the team with any travel ball experience. Everyone else was completely over matched even when she took something off the pitches. In order to let them hit she had to take so much off that it was little better than one of the coaches throwing.

 

[Westwind]

I can totally picture that. It’s a shame to have a resource like that available and not be able to implement it. That could be a complete game changer for a team.

 

[Bobby Shirer]

This post should be in the hall of fame for the dumbest things I've read on a hitting forum. Congrats. I've been doing this decades, and I have many old posts in the hall of fame, but none recently.

Given the same weight of bat, every player should strive for the fastest bat speed. If I can swing 10 mph faster than the next person, I'll take my chances with the zone.

Now, if you are saying some bats weights are better than others, I'll listen.

Kids at home - and Dads all over America... never stop improving your bat speed. Please.

Since @Work=wins mentioned me, I thought I'd chime in.
Bullet point #2) Does it seem right to you that some really good D1 hitters have bat speed meas by Blast Motion in the upper 50’s lower 60’s?
"Really good" by what measure? Batting avg? OPS? homeruns?
I was dumbfounded by ww's remark and shouldn't have been. He always says dumbass stuff. More time in the zone? Bunt!

Using the q number .1 and the fact that the minimum speed that a perfectly launched (26°) softball gets over a 200' fence is 63mph means with no pitch speed factored in, a 57mph bat speed can get the ball over. Everything else is lagniappe. That being said, you'd better be perfect. And that's what ww is saying. Rather than build in extra bat speed as room for error, spend all your time working on 57mph and being perfect.
Sounds stressful to me.

Here's a question on a real life observation. My dd routinely swung in the 80mpg bat speed range. I noticed when she swung and didn't get all of the ball she had higher bat speed, up to 95mph. I always wondered, cause and effect.
Was the bat speed responsible for the miss hit, or was the miss hit responsible for the bat speed? The bat slows when it transfers energy to the ball. So is it just allowed to accelerate more because of the miss?
Hmmmm?

 

[Westwind]

@Bobby Shirer

There are two possible ww’s here. I’m not w=w but I am the author of bullet point #2. And by “really good”, what I mean is some of the best hitters in good hitting lineups like Arkansas and this years Fresno State.

 

[radness]

Had to think about this a little.

I‘m just not sure that the one metric, by itself, is critical. It’s worth working on but I keep hearing that you shouldn’t chase numbers or get too wrapped up in a single metric. It seems like the current thinking by hitting coaches is that good hitters have some metrics that are good but most won’t have all good metrics all of the time.

Quality of contact was an emphasis for us from January on. We worked on it a variety of ways with 40” pvc skinny pipe bats that are handle weighted, a skinny bat with loose shot that moves from the hands to the end of the bat when the bat head is released, Trey Hannam’s half bats and most of all I bought a Sports Attack I-Hack machine. It has a random speed setting that I use almost every session. I also do a fair amount of two drop ball/two rise ball sequences. (As well as always doing full windmill front toss from behind a screen.) She also hits with a former mens player that can throw with great spin and speed. This does her more good than anything I can do with her because they battle. Sometimes I swear they hate each other. The love comes back when it’s over but it can be pretty icy.

So what results do I see in hitters- mine specifically. In the cage, tighter gap to gap, more up the middle hitting. Dd is a righty that tends to look outer half/outside to get balls to right center and right field. I see her hitting more up the middle. When we hit on an open field, she has shown a lot more power- I agree with you that better contact equals better hits/power.

Sorry To get so long winded. To me everything in hitting is big picture. I can almost never find “one thing” that works.

Good explanation!

Live pitching with hitting excellent tool !!
Agree with your point to much focus on #'s.

Always say
FOCUS ON THE SUCCESS
Many variables facing live pitching!
Many variables with our bodies also!

A few years ago Coach Mike Stith (Batbusters) shared with me this story.
He said he was working with this hitter who was really tremendous. Very powerful. High batting average. Over the course of a few months he was noticing something she was doing that he kept trying to address,
trying to fix it.
One day Gary Hanning, also Batbusters,
said to him...
"She's exceptional Mike, why do you want to change what she's doing?!"
Coach Mike Stith said
"You're right."
And stopped picking on it.
That player went on to be one of the top hitters in the nation.
Still known for the records she set.

 

[Westwind]

“Recruit .400 hitters and don’t tell them how to swing”. -Warren Buffett.

 

[Bobby Shirer]

Of course bat speed is important but it needs to be controlled and directed to a moving pitch..

Bat speed only becomes important when and if you hit the ball. Otherwise, nobody cares. That's why we measure exit velocity.
That said, many of us can't afford a $$$ Hit Trax, so how do you measure results without having to pick up balls on a field? Bat speed sensors in the batting cage!
Or..... Map out the field, foul line to foul line, where's second base, where's the fence, in the batting cage. Then figure out launch angles.
At the faculty we use, I mapped it out and had land marks for the different spots. We knew that if a ball looked like it might go into the top half of the wall at the far end of the building 185ft away, it was going over a 200foot fence. And any ball that hit the back of the cage, in all likelihood, wasn't getting out of the infield.....might be a hit, but only good for 1 base.

 

[_MIA_]

Bat speed only becomes important when and if you hit the ball. Otherwise, nobody cares. That's why we measure exit velocity.
That said, many of us can't afford a $$$ Hit Trax, so how do you measure results without having to pick up balls on a field? Bat speed sensors in the batting cage!
Or..... Map out the field, foul line to foul line, where's second base, where's the fence, in the batting cage. Then figure out launch angles.
At the faculty we use, I mapped it out and had land marks for the different spots. We knew that if a ball looked like it might go into the top half of the wall at the far end of the building 185ft away, it was going over a 200foot fence. And any ball that hit the back of the cage, in all likelihood, wasn't getting out of the infield.....might be a hit, but only good for 1 base.

More fun to hit on the field ..we have 60 balls so I only need to shag once or twice (notice I said I..DD is allergic to shagging..) At the moment anything more than 100 or so swings and my 85 lb soaking wet DD gets gassed anyway..

 

[radness]

I use my eye's !
Teach/Learn what to look for on our own!

Find this to be a very important teaching and training point.
That the student should understand what a great goal is on the field.

Unfortunetly can be mis-represented by gadgets.

 

[Work=wins]

A while back I posted a chart which had the offensive WAR leaders for 2019 with their average exit velocities and launch angles. If I remember correctly, there wasn't a great correlation between WAR and exit velocity/launch angle.. What this tells me is that basing a hitting theory on the swing/batted ball metrics of HL hitters is probably not the best of ideas..not that you are necessarily doing this. I do agree that chasing bat speed at the expense of all else is probably not a good idea.

I really just try to use common sense and my eyes and what the pros say. Of course we want ‘fast enough’. I have never seen or heard a pro saying ‘I’m trying to create as much bat speed as I can’. NEVER. But 100% of players I see that try to be max intent start creating longer swings with longer times to contact, weak direction and less control. I see pros work diligently on being short, direct and staying within themselves.

a lot of the clips you see of HRs being hit are usually because the pitcher left it fat or the hitter anticipated what was coming really well. Basically no adjustments really needed.

Yes creating force is important. But trying to create force in small timing windows is king. As you go up in levels, it becomes the most important.

As a college coach if I were to see a kid hitting the type of pitching she is going to be facing in college I wouldn't need to see anything else. Now I guess with camps being so prevalent I guess the numbers could be used to get on somebodies radar but tbh I would rather just watch them take BP and then hit live. Of course I am just some dumb professor so wth do I know I am still stuck in the days where a scout would show up to see somebody else and then some skinny 140 lb 14 YO SS makes a few nice plays and hits a few line drives and gets on somebodies radar that way...doesn't work that way anymore (that was much cheaper though...lol)

I did it this way myself. We didn’t go hunting down coaches or sending emails. My DD played and caught their attention. I told her ‘ if your good enough, they will find you’. She liked the thought of that. I heard Mike Candrea say that years ago. I believe it to be very true. Let your game speak for you. Oh yeah, MJ said that as well. Geez all these HOF quotes !? This should probably be a HOF post !! Whatcha think ? if you’re saying you’re a HOF anything, you probably aren’t. LOL