10 surprising Statcast facts from 2017 season

November 25th, 2017
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Many times, Statcast™ data confirms what the eye sees: and hit the ball exceptionally hard and far, throws it extremely fast and and fly around the bases at an unparalleled pace.
But as it tracks every movement on the field, Statcast™ also has the power to reveal things that might not be so obvious.
In that spirit, here are 10 surprising Statcast™ facts, with a focus on the 2017 season:
1. On hard-hit balls in 2017 -- that is, batted balls with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher -- Major Leaguers hit .558 and slugged 1.141. Not surprisingly, among the 387 players who put at least 100 balls in play, the top 20 is peppered with names like Judge, , J.D. Martinez and .
Yet fourth on that list -- trailing only Judge, Joey Gallo and -- is catcher Alex Avila, at 51.3 percent. Avila, who batted .202 with a .329 slugging percentage from 2015-16, was one of only three left-handed batters to place in the top 15.

  1. Zack Greinke can do it all. The D-backs' ace enjoyed a rebound season on the mound in 2017, finishing fourth in the National League Cy Young Award race. The right-hander won an NL Gold Glove Award for the fourth straight year, and for the sixth consecutive season, he batted better than .200 at the plate.
    More impressive than the batting average is that Greinke racked up 19 hard-hit balls. That was one shy of his single-season Statcast™ record set in 2015, eight more than any other pitcher in '17 and more than what five NL clubs got from their entire staffs. Greinke's hard-hit rate of 38.8 percent is virtually identical to those posted by high-profile free-agent sluggers , and .
  1. There were 139 pitchers this season who generated at least 300 batted balls. The Cubs' (3.03 ERA) posted the second-lowest average exit velocity allowed, while NL Cy Young Award runner-up (2.31 ERA) finished with the second-lowest hard-hit rate.
    The same pitcher paced both of those categories -- the Mets' . That's the same Montero who compiled a 5.52 ERA over 34 games (18 starts). How? The 46-point gap between his .362 wOBA allowed and his .316 expected wOBA -- based on quality of contact, strikeouts and walks -- was second largest among pitchers with 400-plus batters faced. Montero's .295 opponent average on balls hit at less than 95 mph was second highest of 135 pitchers (minimum 200 at-bats).
  1. There were more than 42,000 base hits across the Majors in 2017, and just 187 of those (0.4 percent) came off pitches 99 mph or faster. The Twins' Joe Mauer and the Rockies' led all players with four.
    Then came the postseason, and Astros shortstop matched them with four hits on pitches 99-plus mph. Incredibly, he did so over just a seven-game span, stretching from Game 4 of the American League Division Series against the Red Sox to Game 6 of the AL Championship Series against the Yankees. Two came in ALCS Game 2, when Correa homered off a 99.3 mph pitch from in the fourth and smacked a walk-off double in the ninth on a 99.3 mph pitch from Chapman in a 2-1 victory.
  1. It's no secret that can mash like no other pitcher, but the degree to which his Statcast™ exploits at the plate have stood out from his team's is stunning. On Opening Day against the D-backs, he not only posted just the ninth multihomer game by a pitcher over the past 32 seasons, but he also recorded exit velocities of 112.1 and 112.5 mph. Those stand as the two hardest-hit homers by a pitcher since Statcast™ debuted.
    But they also stand as the two hardest-hit homers by any Giants player over the past two seasons, and it's not especially close. Next on the list is 's 111.3 mph drive on July 2, 2016, while rookie knocked San Francisco's next-hardest homer of '17 on June 8 (110.6 mph).
  1. Sometimes, speed comes from unexpected places -- or unexpected positions -- the sprint speed metric helped show that in 2017. For example, the Marlins' J.T. Realmuto posted an average of 28.6 feet per second on "max-effort" runs, more than 1 foot per second ahead of any other catcher. He also ranked in the top 50 overall out of 451 qualifiers, just ahead of (28.5).
    No pitcher had enough plays to qualify, but the Padres' -- the first pitcher since 1955 to triple four times in a season -- posted a 29.2 foot per second sprint speed in his limited opportunities. With more qualifying runs, that pace would have tied Perdomo with Nationals speedster (46 stolen bases), who ranked 15th overall.
  1. Typically, a home run trot isn't a max-effort run. Try telling that to . The veteran infielder doesn't go deep too often -- he hit seven combined homers for the A's and D-backs in 2017 -- but when he does, he doesn't stick around to savor the moment.
    On April 22, Rosales broke his own Statcast™ record for over-the-fence homers by circling the bases in 15.90 seconds. Then, on June 25, he broke it again, at 15.88 seconds. This season, there were 18 teams that didn't hit a faster home run, including inside-the-park jobs.
  1. Velocity keeps climbing, but that doesn't mean the heat is evenly distributed across the Majors. Chapman accounted for 34 percent of pitches 100 mph or faster, while the top two teams in that category (Yankees and Red Sox) accounted for 56 percent.
    New York and Boston had 11 pitchers combine to throw 2,736 pitches tracked at 98-plus mph -- more than one-quarter of the MLB total. Meanwhile, on April 8, the Blue Jays' threw pitches of 98.2 and 98.3 mph. Toronto did not throw another pitch that topped the 98-mph threshold all season, finishing with an MLB-low total.
  1. A barrel is a Statcast™ term for a batted ball with an ideal combination of exit velocity and launch angle -- one that typically creates extra-base hits. In 2017, batters posted an .826 average and a 2.889 slugging percentage when connecting for a barrel. In other words, there's a high probability of success.
    But try telling that to the poor Tigers. Thanks in part to their cavernous home stadium, Detroit made 86 outs on barrels (60 of them at Comerica Park), which was 25 more than any other club. and , who ranked first and second, respectively, in most barreled outs, combined for more (33) than the Mets (30) or Reds (26).
  1. In the three seasons Statcast™ has been around, the Mets have slugged 619 home runs, seventh most in the Majors. Just two of those dingers came from , a journeyman outfielder who played in a total of eight games for the club in July and August 2016, between his release from the Rangers and a season-ending shoulder injury.
    Yet one of those two long balls, hit on Aug. 23, 2016, at St. Louis, carried a projected distance of 461 feet. That means that it's Ruggiano -- not , or , to name a few -- who currently owns the Mets' longest homer tracked by Statcast™.
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Andrew Simon is a research analyst for MLB.com. Follow him on Twitter @AndrewSimonMLB