Scouting Explained: The Mysterious Hit Tool, Pt. 2
Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6
As I was learning to evaluate, I was overwhelmed by this challenge of grading the hit tool. I wasn’t advanced enough to notice when hitters seemed uncomfortable as fast as I wanted to notice it and I hadn’t been on the beat long enough to have multiple years of history with players to know how to put what I was seeing in context of their whole careers. The easier part, however, was noticing the raw hitting tools. By the time an evaluator gets good at noticing and grading these, the other stuff tends to follow.
I break hitting into three components, but you could easily break it down further into many more. I saw three basic groupings and put every observation into one, then graded each group on the 20-80 scale, then use those to get to a hit tool grade in a more objective way. Scouts all have different ways that they do it and I’ve tinkered with different methods, but this one works for me and also gives me a guide for what to ask scouts about with hitters I haven’t seen recently.
1. The Tools
This is the easiest one for the casual fan to pick up on quickly. I included a video of Javier Baez since he was the first player that came to mind of a guy who, after one swing in BP, is obviously crazy talented. It’s a little tough to see with BP swings, but that’s what 80 bat speed looks like. Here’s Clint Frazier so you can see it again.
That was fun. This category includes bat speed, raw strength and the basic structure of the swing. Maybe you’d say strength is a part of the power tool, not the hit tool (it is part of both and stop questioning me) and that the swing mechanics aren’t a tool at all, so why call the group The Tools?
The swing path (steep, level, uppercut etc.), the type of hitter (power/contact, flyball/line drive) the load (pre-swing hand movement) and the lower half dictate how much the tools (bat speed and strength) can be used. I initially had these two things separated until I realized one dictates the other with no exceptions, so they might as well be graded together.
Baez and Frazier are both 80 bat speed, at least 60 power guys that are flyball/power hitters. Frazier has a level path with a high finish (this type is prone to upper cutting the ball) and Baez is a steeper bat path guy that starts his hands higher, though this video is from probably the worst and most out-of-control period mechanics-wise of Baez’s pro career.
The best big league hitters tend to be relatively level bat path guys (leaving the bat in the zone a long time for a better chance at contact with more pitches) that are so physically gifted that they can muscle a ball out of the park without much steepness in their bat path and also have some looseness to their swing despite that brawn. This is what you have in guys like Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera. There’s also some like Mark McGwire that have some steepness to their path to create loft but have such compact/efficient mechanics and superior bat speed that they also hit for average and power.
I could break down every possible type of hitter and the good/bad combinations, but there is a basic ideal scouts are looking for: above average bat speed and strength and some version of your typical big league swing. While swings can vary and scouts aren’t looking for every swing to look the same, the general principles in good swings are balance, load hands around the back shoulder, upper and lower halves synced, direct bat path, some loft in the finish.
Any hitter that doesn’t do one of these things can probably be coached to fix it, but not doing a couple of them, or doing one that’s hard to coach away (like loading hands up rather than back like Dilson Herrera) is a mark against you, putting the onus on the hitter to prove that he can make those mechanics work against top level pitching (which Herrera has done).
It takes longer for scouts to get on board with a hitter that does it an unusual way, but scouts will change their tune quickly if the tools are there. Scouts will get on board much less quickly if the tools aren’t there AND it looks a little weird. Sometimes a swing can be “fixed” if there’s a problem, but for the types of players I’ll be writing about (professional players and top amateurs) they often have had the same swing for so long, it’s hard to do more than tweak it.
2. Bat Control
The idea behind bat control (also called “feel for the bat head” and “manipulates the barrel” among other phrases) is the ability to change your swing to match the pitch that’s being thrown. Ichiro and Vladimir Guerrero are examples of 80 bat control and the practical thing you’re looking for is when a hitter can be fooled by an off-speed pitch, be off-balance and still square up those sorts of pitches with regularity.
Bat control is basically an analog for a loose, athletic swing. The opposite is a grooved or stiff swing, which you hear often with sluggers that are stuck in the minors but often have good numbers (often with fans calling for them to be given a chance in the big leagues). A grooved swing can often be picked out quickly in batting practice. This type of hitter is stiff athletically and the swing has some steepness to it, while also looking exactly the same every time. Having the bat in the zone a long time gives you a chance to hit balls that you don’t time perfectly. A grooved, stiff swing means you have to time the ball perfectly and have it come right into your wheelhouse of the limited areas you can make hard contact. Bat control comes from fluidity of movement and this guy doesn’t have it.
Something that’s important to point out is that there’s traditional athleticism (size, speed, strength: think football combine stuff) then there’s baseball athleticism (looseness of actions and forearm, wrist and hand strength). There’s a surprising amount of guys, with Dan Vogelbach and D.J. Peterson some recent examples, who look physically like non-athletes in the context of world-class athletics. They are both what some scouts call “athletic in the box” meaning their hitting actions look like they belong on a more traditionally athletic body.
A Short Detour: Dan Vogelbach
This is one of the things that makes baseball great. This guy got $1.6 million out of high school and he looked like this back then, too, if not bigger. His career minor league line is .285/.375/.481 and he’s been young for every league he’s been in. Vogelbach has feel to hit, a very good sense of the zone, 60 raw power to all fields and is loose enough to get to all that in games, while former football players all around him could sell a bunch of jeans but can’t hit a fastball down the middle.
It also doesn’t hurt to have a chip on your shoulder (I’m told Vogelbach reads all the things written about him) and to have that chip make you want to say “I told you so” via an epic bat flip every time you put one into orbit.
I explain all that to illustrate that bat control is an analog for baseball athleticism and not traditional athleticism, though often in top prospects (Byron Buxton is a great example) you will find elite versions of both kinds of athleticism in the same player.
3. Plate Discipline
This is the easiest one to understand. There are lots of elements to it, but I think the general fan understands that you need to have an idea at the plate, be able to recognize different types of pitches, get yourself into good counts, lay off the slider in the dirt, etc. For amateur players, you learn the most about this when an elite hitter faces a guy with some feel for throwing around 90 mph, which explains why it’s sometimes hard to suss out this skill before pro ball.
The interesting aspect of this for me is how much plate discipline can be taught. I think you can improve some of the components and some specific situational issues, but I and many of the scouts I’ve talked to think there’s some inherent skill you can’t change, be it genetic or learned so early and pounded into the brain though years of travel/high school games that it’s hard to reprogram.
I did a study for one of the clubs I worked for and the basic takeaway was that, among above average regulars in the big leagues, less than 10% of them materially improved or regressed their plate discipline numbers once they got into pro ball and the more accurate number is probably around 5%. I think much of it is genetic and tied to vision, but how much can be taught, how early it can be taught and if “eye skills” can be taught or better utilized is still very fuzzy and with plenty of exceptions for every supposed rule. I have some theories about what can and can’t be taught in this realm, but I’d need a much bigger budget to actually answer these questions.
Kiley McDaniel has worked as an executive and scout, most recently for the Atlanta Braves, also for the New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates. He's written for ESPN, Fox Sports and Baseball Prospectus. Follow him on twitter.
If plate discipline rarely improves much after a player enters pro ball, that suggests Javier Baez might have some fairly major issues notwithstanding having other aspects of the hit tool in spades.
Agree. And it makes it seem as if this skill would then be your primary clue to long-term success in evaluating blank slate prospects, if it’s the one least teachable.
It may be your primary clue, but given it’s “sometimes hard to suss out this skill before pro ball” you might not have it to go on with a “blank slate” prospect. Which is one of the reasons so many prospects bust.
Damn prospects. Ingrates.
Baez is never gonna be a big plate-discipline guy, probably, but I know Kiley on one of the podcasts talked about how some extremely talented hitters sometimes sell out for power in the minors, especially when they think it’ll help them get better scouting grades (or, presumably, move up faster). Baez had high but reasonable K-rates in A-ball and High-A in 2012-13, and considering how much attention he’s gotten, selling out for power, if he had indeed chosen to do so, would have been a pretty smart move.
Also, it may be easier to coach someone from like 4 standard deviations above the mean in swing rate down to 2 or 3 (I’m guessing at these numbers), compared to moving him from 1 or 2 standard deviations down to 0.
Baez may not need to sell out too much for power, but even if so, he hasn’t been able to reign it back in the majors. He’s K’ing at a very high rate (40%+) albeit in a tiny sample. I’m less concerned with Bryant since he has the walk rate to go with the K rate.
This is all very premature with Baez and I know he is extremely talented, but just something to watch.
You have to keep in mind that many hitting prospects that played collegiate ball, like Kris Bryant did, see a sizable regression in BABIP, AVG, and walks once they hit MLB.
Especially the ones with sky-high strikeouts like Bryant.
Look at Springer, Smoak, Ackley, Wieters, Pedro Alvarez, Duda, Frazier, Longoria, Brad Miller, Zunino, Ethier, Seager, Dozier, et al. All had solid milb numbers and have seen big dips in BABIP, AVG, and walks in MLB. EVERY ONE, without fail.
And only Zunino and Alvarez had bad K issues like Bryant does. They weren’t quite the hitters that Bryant is, but Alvarez had very similar BB/K numbers.
And don’t be fooled by Bryant’s milb BABIP and AVG. His career milb BABIP is .394, career AVG is .327. SURELY you say he will be able to hit for average in MLB… Brad Miller was an excellent hitter in milb, his career milb BABIP was .382 to a .334 AVG (so far .276 career MLB BABIP to .239 AVG). Kyle Seager was an excellent hitter in milb, his career milb BABIP was .367 to a .328 AVG (so far .294 career MLB BABIP to .264 AVG). Neither of those guys had K issues like Bryant, and both saw huge drop offs in walks in MLB. George Springer’s career milb BABIP was .379 to a .302 AVG (so far .291 career MLB BABIP to .231 AVG). See the pattern? All played college and their milb numbers are a mirage.
Bryant projects to be a better version of Mike Zunino/Pedro Alvarez-ish type big leaguers. Bryant will likely be a career .230-.255 hitter in MLB.
Yeah, his AA/AAA stat line is only a little better in every way than what Paul Goldschmidt did in Hi-A at the same age!
Clearly, he was just a product of his high .385 BABIP!
Same goes for Mike Napoli!
Bryant has plenty of room to regress in AVG and BB% and still be a very, very good hitter. The most common comp I’ve seen is Troy Glaus, who was a damn good hitter for 10 years. I don’t think .260/.350/.500 for several years is out of the question at all, and that’s a 140 wRC+ in this run environment.
But then look at what goldy did at AA, cut WAY down on K, walked a TON more, and cut down his BABIP by 54 points and only saw an 8 point drop in average. Dude is smart and willing to make adjustments. Bryant has regressed as he has gone up the chain and has not shown that ability to adjust, which is half of what makes great players great in MLB
And Glaus didn’t have anywhere near the BABIP concerns that Bryant has (Bj Upton and springer come to mind as comps for Bryant in that dept). Glaus isn’t a bad comp though, you see the collegiate regression pattern. I’m not too far off from your .260 avg for Bryant, but it seems like people are counting on him to be a super stud and history combined with the red flags of his batting profile (crazy BABIPs and strikeouts climbing at every level) suggest a +/- .230-.250 hitter, best case scenario
You have to remember that Bryant’s only a year out of being drafted. Really quick moving prospects like Springer and Goldschmidt were over a year older and had spent an extra year in pro ball when they were putting up those numbers.
What he’s doing, even with the Ks, is not normal for an elite prospect, even right out of college. To make the comparisons you’re making, we’d have to look at his stats next year.
If his stats in AA and AAA next year were these, I’d agree with the .245 projection, but I think the .250-.270 range is more realistic when you consider his relative lack of pro experience, rather than just looking at the numbers in a vaccuum.
You have to remember that Bryant’s only a year out of being drafted. Really quick moving prospects like Springer and Goldschmidt were over a year older and had spent an extra year in pro ball when they were putting up those numbers.
What he’s doing, even with the Ks, is not normal for an elite prospect, even right out of college. To make the comparisons you’re making, we’d have to look at his stats next year.
If his stats in AA and AAA next year were these, I’d agree with the .245 projection, but I think the .250-.270 range is more realistic when you consider his relative lack of pro experience, rather than just looking at the numbers in a vacuum.
damn. double post.
At what point (level in minors, or number of pro years) do you think plate discipline “stabilizes?”
or at what age, maybe
This is the technical answer: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/principles/sample-size/
But if you mean “how many at bats does a minor leaguer need to have so that I can say his minor league K% and BB% are more indicative of his future than what scouts tell you to tell me” the answer is not that often and there’s no way to know until afterwards which players the stats know more about than the scouts.
I think it’s more “what age (or there abouts) should we stop expecting a guy to improve his plate discipline, because he is who he is at this point?”
I think by three years in pro ball, it’s getting close to concrete. One of my theories is that guys that enter pro ball with very little baseball experience (Carl Crawford) have no bad habits so they can get better than what they are on day one in the system. Guys like Delmon Young or Josh Vitters that were known to scouts at age 15 and played year round since puberty….those guys might be concrete when they sign.
Are Latin American guys just a whole different ball game (if you’ll pardon the pun)? They often seem to have the most dramatic improvements, but they also play more and from a younger age than guys like Vitters or Young.
(That might just be selection bias on my part, though).
It’s interesting because Latin guys often don’t play games until they sign (that’s starting to change), then only play games in the summer (DSL) until they’re ready to come stateside. For quick-moving Latin guys, they may have less game experience than the average domestic high school player when they both show up in complex leagues (GCL/AZL).
Kiley, it would be helpful to include video of, say a 60 bat speed guy to see if the untrained eye can tell the difference. This series has been great so far!
What do you think Vogelbach is? That can be an eye test example.
40-50?
Okay, this is a good learning opportunity. 40 or 45 bat speed is what scouts call “slider bat speed” which is usually what you hear with the stiff, grooved swing slugger I mention in the article.
Almost no one with under 50 bat speed is anywhere close to a top 100 prospect list. That would essentially mean you have to “cheat” or guess pitches to hit an average/50 fastball (90-91 mph).
I would call Vogelbach’s 55 bat speed, though I could see some scouts call it a 50 since he’s got a funny body (which affects the perception) and he isn’t a max effort swing type, so you don’t always see all that he can offer.
As a related point to the bat speed/fastball 20-80 grades matching up, an average runner can beat an average defender with an average arm on an average ground ball if there’s a slight hesitation, but a 40 or 45 runner often won’t.
The concept that a 50 bat means.260 batting average (and usually a .320 OBP) is just what the current MLB landscape tells us and that could change with offensive levels. The 20-80 scale being useful for multiple levels, multiple tools and multiple time periods is the beautiful, timeless reason it sticks around.
I was about to ask: is it hard to grade bat speed when some people are “feel” hitters, like Vogelbach, as opposed to guys like Baez, who swing as hard as they can at every pitch?
I suppose. Baez is easy to like in BP and start your 5-game look with a 60 hit grade, then slowly move it down based on some bad ABs. Vogelbach you probably start at 45 after BP and slowly move it up. Maybe more challenging, but both types of hitters take a similar journey to the end grade, you just start the week excited to see Baez and Vogelbach is more of a slowly grows on you type.
Thanks, that is very helpful!
Agreed. Even just a few names would be helpful. We can see what elite bat speed looks like here with Baez and Frazier, but what about plus, average, and fringy bat speed? A similar set of guys for bat control would be useful as well.
With most big leaguers, their batting line and general body type can give you a lot of hints. Most .250-hitting utility infielders or platoon corner guys are fringy or average bat speed types. When you’re looking for the above average or plus guys, it’s either the guy with the “toolsy” tag that’s out of control and doesn’t have good numbers but is “exciting” or, more often, the guys consistently hitting .280+ with 20+ homers.
You can’t produce at that level for multiple years in the big leagues with average bat speed, with very few exceptions. It goes back to my above comment in this same thread about the 20-80 scale matching up across multiple tools. If so many MLB pitchers have above average fastballs/off-speed pitches/command along with specialists designed to neutralize you specifically…and you have average bat speed…you have to have big raw power and/or a great batting eye and/or great bat control (probably at least 2 of those) to turn average tools against above average stuff into above average hitting numbers.
This is why a plus-plus bat speed guy like Justin Upton seems like a letdown, even though he’s hitting at or above that .280/20 level I’m talking about. If he had above average playability of his hitting tools, he could be an all-timer. The all-time greats have his kind of hitting tools but the instincts and whatnot to get the most out of those tools.
I would also look at guys like Alex Rios or Starling Marte that hit for high averages as everyday players with low walk rates. If these guys were frauds, they league would’ve figured them out by now. These types can be superior bat control guys (and often are) but almost always are also above average bat speed guys, too, since they often have less quality pitches to see given their impatience, so they have to physically (via bat speed and bat control) be able to hit more kinds of pitches than the guy that can patient his way into a meatball down the middle late in an at-bat.
How does Javier Baez have a steep swing in this video? Check out how low his bat head finishes, almost hitting the dirt. The only way for this to happen is with an uppercut swing.
Steeper is what I said, meaning Baez’s entry angle from load, where he’s doing all that hand movement that finishes around the top of his right shoulder before his hands move forward. It’s steeper in comparison but not necessarily steep in the abstract because Frazier loads his hands very low, so a typical angle (which Baez’s is in this video) is steeper than Frazier’s very low angle of entry.
So would a guy like Gary Sheffield be the “Billy Hamilton” of bat speed?
He’s often the example of 90 bat speed, yes.
I hope Vogelbach walked all the way around the basepaths at the pace we see in the bat flip video. Also I hope he does this every time he hits a dinger.
I’d love to see what would come of that trot if McCann were around, or if he tried it in Arizona
Why not film swings with a high-speed camera, then review it in slow motion on a computer and count the frames it takes? Does a player’s swing speed vary much from pitch to pitch or day to day? It would be a fairly small amount of video work to get an objective swing speed average measurement over, say 25 swings.
Well, again, bat speed is just one of many components for the hit tool grade, which doesn’t even take into account OBP skill. Finding out what you think is 50 bat speed is really a 60 may not really change the hit tool grade when you’ve seen a dozen games.
There are some indirect ways to get at this, like Hit f/x and Trackman giving speed off the bat and HR distances and I know some companies offer things you can put on a bat or a body to measure quickness.
That said, teams don’t seem super interested in it for the reasons I state above. If we knew our stopwatch times were inaccurate for catcher pop times or run times, teams would pay for better measures since those times are very close to direct analogs for tool grades…but bat speed isn’t.
I get a little confused when you equate ‘bat speed’ with being able to catch up to a high velocity pitch. Isn’t it possible for a guy to be able to swing really fast, but not be able to catch up to a 98 mph fastball, and conversely, a guy with mediocre bat speed to catch up to those high velocity pitches?
An example of the latter that comes to mind is Nomar Garciaparra – he could hit a 100 mph high fastball, but it didn’t seem like he had 70+ bat speed (I could be wrong). I can’t think of any specific examples of the converse of this – but I’m sure there are examples of power hitters who punish mistakes and perform significantly better against pitchers with mediocre, as opposed to elite velocity guys.
Well, I’m ignoring the guys with no feel to hit. They’re never big leaguers of any consequence.
These big league regulars are getting over 500 plate appearances at about 4 pitches per at bat. That’s over 2000 pitches per season. The reason you can’t have big swing flaws or a terrible approach (without insane tools) in the upper minors is the pitching is so good–you wouldn’t get that far. That goes doubly in the big leagues.
MLB pitchers and hitters both do a ton of tinkering and studying, which is why nearly every time a random non-prospect has a great 100 PA, he disappears by year two. If he’s short on tools, which could mean 50 bat speed/bat control/raw power, pitchers figure out his weakness, throw that more, then he has to cheat to be able to avoid that pitch and also still hit the 95 mph fastball. It’s like purifying metal. Put enough heat for long enough and all the impurities leave.
On any one pitch, a 20 bat speed guy could square up 98, but the relentless onslaught of highly skilled pitchers and catchers will exploit any weakness over time. If you go to the plate a couple thousand times and you’re no better than average at any of the skills we’re talking about, you will get exposed as a role player at best. Just a matter of when.
Garciaparra, from watching some not so great Youtube video, was a plus bat speed guy, which is what I remember him as. From 1997-2004, he hit 133 OPS+ in over 4000 PA, averaging .324 BA and 30 HR per 162 games in that stretch. That is unbelievably impossible to accomplish with average hitting tools. He was a 60+ bat speed, raw power and bat control guy.
Glad you brought up “baseball athleticism.” The first time I watched D.J. Peterson in the on-deck circle, and then stride to the box and dig in, I was reminded of Sean Casey. A little knock-kneed, slightly rounded back/shoulders. My initial reaction was, “This is D.J. Peterson?” Then he dropped the barrel on an outside fastball and drove it into the RCF gap. It wasn’t the result that was impressive – it was the sudden transformation from non-athletic looking guy to athletic-looking hitter.
Really great article.
I’m curious to know what theories you may have regarding the “plate discipline” component of hitting.
One thing that surprises me is how much writers (including scouts), fans, and even coaches focus on the eye and not the brain. The majority of perceptual processing occurs on two visual pathways; one travels from the visual system towards the motor system (the “dorsal” pathway), the other travels from the visual system along the bottom of the cortical sheet (the “ventral” pathway). Roughly speaking, the “dorsal” pathway plays more of a role in processing moving objects, while the “ventral” pathway plays more of a role in processing still objects. Routinely measured visual acuity has little to do with this processing.
I would contend that hitters with better “plate discipline” are processing information more efficiently along the dorsal pathway, but the efficiency at processing moving information depends on a lot of factors, which can be measured and modeled via behavior. For example, information near the fovea (i.e. close to the center of your vision) is processed quicker by the visual system than peripheral information. Therefore, where the eyes are fixated may affect the ability to recognize pitches. One would have to do an eye-tracking study in a simulated environment to see whether better hitters simply “look” at different points during an at-bat than weaker hitters.
On the other hand, some people may simply be better at processing moving objects, independent of where they look. Such an ability could be measured psychophysically, by determining thresholds for detecting motion (e.g. using stimulus sets such as cycling gabor patches).
Wow! Thanks Kiley! Very nice article and informative…and I really love all the extra overtime in the comments discussion…very informative and thought provoking.
Agreed. These are very informative.
Vogelbach’s numbers nosedived – and have stayed down – once he reached High A. Kiley, what do you think accounts for that?
The Florida State League. The heavy swamp air helps that league skew pretty dramatically towards pitchers. Vogelbach finished 6th in the league in OPS and, perhaps most impressively, tied for 5th in dingers while registering the 10th best BB/K mark. It was actually a sneaky impressive statistical season for him despite the pedestrian look of his numbers at first glance.
This is a good series, thanks for doing it. Very educational. Keep it up, and welcome to the club.
Kiley– these are quite informative. I’ve seen varied explanations of a ‘long swing.’ Is the difference between a long and short swing just a matter of how efficiently the hands work to move the bat through the zone? I would assume that elite bat speed can compensate for a long swing? I’ve seen plenty of prospect reports noting that someone’s swing is ‘a little’ long– how detrimental is this?
Yes, that’s a good way to succinctly describe a long swing. There’s a lot of ways for it to happen, but all it is is when the hand path from load to contact takes longer than it needs to. Long swings often create lift via a “loop”, or initial downward move, so extra bat speed would help that hitter make more contact and the loop would make the ball go farther. It’s a sliding scale where the 60 bat speed guy can do it and still be an everyday guy and the 50 bat speed guy really cant…while the 70 bat speed guy can do some really weird stuff and still hit .260.
Ike Davis was someone who was called a long swing guy, and/or with a hitch, coming up. He had obvious raw power, and for a time in game power, but pitchers seemed to figure him out. His adjustment back seems to have cut the K’d down but also caused him to lose the power. Apropos of the post above about adjustments pitchers and catchers make over hundreds of at bats.
Baez from my eye has a long swing but elite bat speed. That would explain why he struggles making contact with fastballs.
Is there a correlation between bat speed and discipline in your experience?
How about Scooter Gennett’s hit tool? Here’s a guy for whom it seems to have clicked in the majors. Sure, some of it is likely luck, but the babip is partially explained by his near 25% line drive rate. Above average contact ability. And in 659 plate appearances in his career, about a season’s worth for leadoff or 2nd place in the batting order, 15 homers, 41 doubles and 5 triples. I don’t know where is his bat speed would rank, but really seems to have maxed out for his tools.
How would you breka down the bat speed / bat control / discipline of Jose Altuve?
Kiley, I’ve seen guys mention “vision” skills in past scouting and analysis articles (when talking about plate discipline). As a neuroscientist, I have a couple of thoughts about this. It seems to me that your really talking about visual perception, visual reaction time, visual-spatial pattern recognition and visual processing speed. I’m saying this, because in my world, this has nothing to do with “vision.” You can take a random sample of people with perfect “vision” (as in 20/20 vision, normal depth perception and normal peripheral vision) and they differ wildly on the variables I mentioned above (most succinctly, “vision” just refers to the basic signal from the retina to the brain – what I’m referring to is what/how that information is processed thereafter – which seems much more important to actual hitting). We actually have norms for these as well (but we use them clinically to diagnose neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions). We can even cognitively measure visual impulse control (which I imagine might correlate roughly with the ability to withhold responding to a pitch in the dirt). I would be surprised if there aren’t people in my (or related) fields doing some research on this already. Have you seen anything in this regard actually used or being worked on? I ask because it kills me each time I read an article that talks about “vision” skills; and similarly when I hear a hitter talk about how getting new contacts is going to actually result in something meaningful. Most often its not – simply because its the “vision” post-processing that is likely more meaningful.
Well, if a guy’s getting contacts, he likely literally can’t see the ball as well as he normally can.
I agree that “having a good eye” usually amounts to how quickly your brain processes the information relayed to it by the eyes, but a guy getting contacts likely has a legitimate vision problem.
All true. I’m thinking of Josh Hamilton and Mike Olt, both of who recently complained of vision problems. I recall Olt talking about getting contacts, Hamilton vaguely referring to dry eye. My recall might be off, but my main point is that it’s visual “post-processing” that is more important. This of course depends entirely on accurate signal being conveyed from the retina to occipital lobe first – but I’d imagine that for the vast majority, any problems with “vision” are really a cognitive/information processing issues. Again, I’d love to hear from Kiley if teams are actually teaming with cognitive neuroscientists, even on a small scale, to more closely investigate these variables; in part because their seems to be a plausible rationale that some cognitive tests might be able to measure the inherent cognitive capacities and how they relate to real-world outcomes (again, I would imagine that visual reaction time, combined with visual impulse control – both variables we can objectively measure and are fairly innate skills that are not necessarily modifiable – would correlate with some of the plate discipline numbers and observations. Also, to Erick above, I hadn’t read your reply when i quickly sent mine – but we’re thinking similarly here I think. You’re correct that hitting is likely entirely dorsal stream dependent – as would be almost all action sports – and taking it a step further, how dorsal stream information is then integrated with cerebellar and basal ganglia motor adjustments would also be something interesting to think about (though I’m sure most reading this site might not be as interested 🙂 ).
Olt is definitely a neurology thing, IMO, because the issues really started after he got a massive concussion. I never thought he’d crack .260 in the majors, but he used to walk.
Not sure about Hamilton.
Wow, Vogelbach runs just like Babe Ruth as he heads out of the box (on his balls in play, not the bat flip HR gif).
You posted what elite bat speed looks like. What does 50 bat speed look like? Thanks!