Just some statistical data that is REAL in this day and age of hitters wanting to swing up at the ball.
This data was compiled from 2019, the last complete season in the MLB
Of the top 50 highest exit velocities, all but 4 were below 25 degress, which means they were either LINE DRIVES or GROUND BALLS.
The biggest takeaway from that needs to be that they were NOT FLY BALLS.
Further…..
25 of those hits, which is half, were below 10 degrees which means they were GROUND BALLS.
On those GROUND BALLS hitters were 16 for 27.
Players and organizations are feeding the fans a bunch of, at the best, skewed data, at the worst, conplete B.S. on ground balls vs fly balls.
The reasons we hear that players are swinging up is to match the plane of the pitch, keep the barrel in the zone longer etc….
No….its because they are trying to hit fly balls.
Why?
Because…..of all 4 hits in the top 50 of exit velocity, that had a launch angle above 25 degrees, which is considered a fly ball, all 4 hits were homeruns.
So…they swing up because they want to hit homeruns.
That Is the 1 and ONLY reason!
That’s it!
Don’t believe anything else.
Okay…
So….
What does this mean for kids in H.S. or below?
It means that, unless you hit the ball over the fence, you are going to hit below .200 on ALL other FLY BALLS.
Is that worth it?
Of course it isn’t.
There are a million different ways to skin a cat. Meaning, there are 1000’s of different philosophies on swing mechanics. But….as that data shows, Hard Contact is the key to getting hits.
So…if you want to be a good hitter,, find what it is that you can do that allows you to make hard contact the most consistently.
