Stoeten, curious why you are looking at average EV. And I think you've mentioned Max EV in other posts. Neither are, as I understand it, good stats. But don't take my word for it. Here's Ben Clemens:
"In a given year, 15.8% of batters see their average exit velocity improve or decline by at least a standard deviation. It’s a noisy statistic, in other words; you might think that you can tell the difference between two hitters based on their average exit velocities, but there’s a decent chance that you’re being deceived by variance. Hitters change their average exit velocities by a whole standard deviation four times as frequently as they change their top-end power. One year’s data point could easily be a mirage."
"maximum exit velocity is too noisy; 13% of hitters changed theirs by at least a standard deviation from year to year. I think that’s a measurement issue, as it’s easier to crush one batted ball than to crush enough to move up your 95th-percentile mark."
Finally, is average EV and Max EV the loud tools that have you and Nick intrigued by Barger's potential? Davy Andrews went through different exit velo stats to try and figure out which might be the best at predicting future performance of young players based on small sample sizes.
Interesting read, and he settled on Best Speed, which is categorized as EV50 on Statcast's "Exit Velocity & Barrels Leaderboard." Andrews notes that the average Best Speed / EV50 is about 100mph. Barger's Best Speed/EV50 was 100.6mph in 2024 after 149 batted balls.
This year, he's up to 102.5 but after just 27 batted balls. Last summer I got real bored (was I was supposed to watch the Jays limp along?) and crunched the numbers to try and recreate Andrews's research. Think I managed it. But most importantly, I think the standard deviation for Best Speed / EV50 is 2.4mph, with the average actually 99.6 mph. So if Barger can keep this up, that's a real improvement and make him an above average hitter when he makes contact. But big if since as Andrews notes:
"Best speed[/EV50] also tends to be sticky from year to year. There have been 1,080 cases where a player had at least 100 tracked batted balls in two consecutive years, and those players have changed their best speed by more than one standard deviation just 6.6% of the time."
Sorry for the delay man, great question and a ton of great stuff here! Honestly, not to be glib about it, but I just used it here because it's 25 swings and it seemed like a good enough shorthand for the fact that he's been striking the ball hard, and easy to pull from a Savant page. Laziness, one might say. MaxEV, to my understanding, is better, but obviously doesn't give the whole picture either. Will definitely try to be more cognizant of these better stats you're bringing up going forward!
No worries and thanks for the reply. I assumed it was mostly trying to find some possible bright spots among the early data but wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed a recent rethinking on EV stats.
Bit off topic from this post (which is great, thanks), but one thing I've always remembered from your early days of doing the podcast with Nick was a comment he made in early 2022 about who the Jays should be extending. While the discussion was about Bo and Vlad, NIck argued that the person he'd be prioritising in the short-term for an extension was Teoscar.
Certainly not the way that fans will think about it, but I think the fact that he had a poor year in Seattle and then had to settle for a one-year deal reflects pretty well on Ross not giving him a huge extension at the time and instead getting a nice return (especially when you including the cost saving), even if clearly they should had a better understanding how valuable he could be. And, of course, it also wasn't just vibes--there had been so much talk about needing better L-R balance in the lineup, and fewer guys with such a similar profile.
Sucks to see him being so much fun for another fan base though, that's for sure.
Stoeten, curious why you are looking at average EV. And I think you've mentioned Max EV in other posts. Neither are, as I understand it, good stats. But don't take my word for it. Here's Ben Clemens:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/you-cant-fake-exit-velocity/
"In a given year, 15.8% of batters see their average exit velocity improve or decline by at least a standard deviation. It’s a noisy statistic, in other words; you might think that you can tell the difference between two hitters based on their average exit velocities, but there’s a decent chance that you’re being deceived by variance. Hitters change their average exit velocities by a whole standard deviation four times as frequently as they change their top-end power. One year’s data point could easily be a mirage."
"maximum exit velocity is too noisy; 13% of hitters changed theirs by at least a standard deviation from year to year. I think that’s a measurement issue, as it’s easier to crush one batted ball than to crush enough to move up your 95th-percentile mark."
Finally, is average EV and Max EV the loud tools that have you and Nick intrigued by Barger's potential? Davy Andrews went through different exit velo stats to try and figure out which might be the best at predicting future performance of young players based on small sample sizes.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-doomed-search-for-a-perfect-way-to-interpret-exit-velocity-data/
Interesting read, and he settled on Best Speed, which is categorized as EV50 on Statcast's "Exit Velocity & Barrels Leaderboard." Andrews notes that the average Best Speed / EV50 is about 100mph. Barger's Best Speed/EV50 was 100.6mph in 2024 after 149 batted balls.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast?type=batter&year=2024&position=&team=141&min=100&sort=avg_best_speed&sortDir=desc
This year, he's up to 102.5 but after just 27 batted balls. Last summer I got real bored (was I was supposed to watch the Jays limp along?) and crunched the numbers to try and recreate Andrews's research. Think I managed it. But most importantly, I think the standard deviation for Best Speed / EV50 is 2.4mph, with the average actually 99.6 mph. So if Barger can keep this up, that's a real improvement and make him an above average hitter when he makes contact. But big if since as Andrews notes:
"Best speed[/EV50] also tends to be sticky from year to year. There have been 1,080 cases where a player had at least 100 tracked batted balls in two consecutive years, and those players have changed their best speed by more than one standard deviation just 6.6% of the time."
Sorry for the delay man, great question and a ton of great stuff here! Honestly, not to be glib about it, but I just used it here because it's 25 swings and it seemed like a good enough shorthand for the fact that he's been striking the ball hard, and easy to pull from a Savant page. Laziness, one might say. MaxEV, to my understanding, is better, but obviously doesn't give the whole picture either. Will definitely try to be more cognizant of these better stats you're bringing up going forward!
No worries and thanks for the reply. I assumed it was mostly trying to find some possible bright spots among the early data but wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed a recent rethinking on EV stats.
Great post, thanks for the work in this.
Bit off topic from this post (which is great, thanks), but one thing I've always remembered from your early days of doing the podcast with Nick was a comment he made in early 2022 about who the Jays should be extending. While the discussion was about Bo and Vlad, NIck argued that the person he'd be prioritising in the short-term for an extension was Teoscar.
I wonder where we'd be if they had.
Nick for GM.
Ugh, trading Teo was a bad move. They wanted to change the vibes but they went too far. Moving One off him and Gurriel made sense, but not both.
Certainly not the way that fans will think about it, but I think the fact that he had a poor year in Seattle and then had to settle for a one-year deal reflects pretty well on Ross not giving him a huge extension at the time and instead getting a nice return (especially when you including the cost saving), even if clearly they should had a better understanding how valuable he could be. And, of course, it also wasn't just vibes--there had been so much talk about needing better L-R balance in the lineup, and fewer guys with such a similar profile.
Sucks to see him being so much fun for another fan base though, that's for sure.
Yeah, fair enough. I thought they would’ve been in on him after the down year in Seattle. Would’ve been ideal. It’s much easier to say in hindsight.