2024-07-15 17:20:02
Trying to decide who has the edge in the T-Mobile Home Run Derby? Here’s a new way to look at the field: with Statcast’s new bat speed leaderboard.
Bat tracking is all new for the 2024 season, and we can use it to see which of the eight sluggers in Monday’s Derby at Globe Life Field have been generating the fastest swings entering the contest.
Why would bat speed matter for the Home Run Derby? Well, higher bat speeds translate to higher exit velocities, and higher exit velocities translate to more distance — assuming the Derby sluggers are all able to square up the ball on the barrel of the bat, which, considering these are elite hitters getting fed batting practice pitching, they probably will. So a little extra bat speed might make the difference in a few extra balls leaving the yard.
By home run totals, the order of the 2024 Home Run Derby contestants goes like this: Gunnar Henderson (28), Marcell Ozuna (26), José Ramírez (23), Teoscar Hernández (19), Pete Alonso (19), Adolis García (17), Bobby Witt Jr. (16) and Alec Bohm (11).
But their bat speed ranks look a little different.
2024 Home Run Derby field ranked by bat speed
MLB average bat speed: 72 mph
Let’s take a closer look. Here are three Home Run Derby bat speed favorites, and one Derby bat speed sleeper.
Season bat speed: 75.8 mph
Fast swing rate (% of swings 75+ mph): 61.4%
Avg. bat speed on HR: 77.2 mph
Henderson is the only player in this year’s Home Run Derby who has a top-10 bat speed in the Majors, period.
He’s in the same top tier of bat speed as Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, his fellow stars at the top of MLB’s home run leaderboard.
Henderson, like Judge and Ohtani, is a master at turning his elite bat speed into dangerous swings. They’re three of the top four hitters in Statcast’s new “blasts” stat — a swing that combines a high bat speed with squared-up contact on the barrel of the bat. A blast is the most likely swing to be a home run. But only Henderson is in the Home Run Derby.
On his home run swings — the type of swing you might expect him to put on the ball pretty consistently in a Home Run Derby — Henderson’s bat speed jumps to 77.2 mph, the highest among the 2024 Derby field.
Here’s his fastest home run swing of the year: 80.8 mph bat speed to take Phillies ace Zack Wheeler deep to left-center. If he can do that against a 97 mph fastball from one of the best pitchers in baseball, imagine what Henderson can do in a Home Run Derby.
Season bat speed: 75.0 mph
Fast swing rate: 51.5%
Avg. bat speed on HR: 76.4 mph
Alonso is a King of the Home Run Derby — he’s a two-time champion, and the all-time leader in Derby home runs with 195. We don’t have bat tracking for Alonso’s Derby wins in 2019 and ’21, but the new data is a pretty strong indication of how Polar Bear Pete has become one of the all-time greats of the event.
Besides Henderson, Alonso is the only 2024 Derby participant whose average swing is a “fast swing,” as he sits right at the 75 mph mark for the season, with over half his swings reaching that threshold.
He’s connected on a few home runs with bat speeds of 80-plus mph, including this blast off Padres ace Dylan Cease at Citi Field, where he had an 80.0 mph swing on the dot.
Season bat speed: 74.6 mph
Fast swing rate: 48.7%
Avg. bat speed on HR: 76.2 mph
The parallels between Henderson and Witt — two of the game’s most exciting young shortstop phenoms — extend to their fast bats.
Witt’s compact swing packs incredible power. He has the shortest swing of any 2024 Derby contestant, 7.1 feet (that’s how far the barrel of the bat travels from the start of his swing to the point of contact), but the third-highest bat speed.
A short swing doesn’t really matter for the Home Run Derby, with its batting-practice pitching, but if Witt really lets it rip on Monday, he might generate even higher bat speeds than usual, and send the baseballs flying even farther.
But even with his typical swing, he’s got the bat speed to win. Witt’s one of eight hitters (along with Henderson) with over 100 “blast” swings this season — none bigger than this 80.7 mph swing he used to crush a 111 mph, 468-foot home run into the fountain at Kauffman Stadium, his fastest home run swing and longest home run of the year.
Ramírez ranks dead last in bat speed among the 2024 Home Run Derby field. But that doesn’t take into account one major factor: He’s a switch-hitter. And his Derby performance could come down to which side of the plate he bats from.
The Guardians star batted righty in the 2022 Home Run Derby (in part due to a right thumb injury that hampered his left-handed swing) and was eliminated in the first round by Juan Soto. So you might expect him to turn around and bat lefty in 2024.
But J-Ram’s bat speed, at least in games, is actually much higher from the right side than it is from the left side. Ramírez as a right-handed hitter actually has upper-tier bat speed.
Ramírez’s bat speed by plate side
Season bat speed as RHB: 74.1 mph (as LHB: 70.3 mph)
Fast swing rate as RHB: 37.8% (as LHB: 9.9%)
Avg. bat speed on HR as RHB: 77.5 mph (as LHB: 72.1 mph)
If you just look at Ramírez as a right-handed hitter only, he’d rank in the top half of the Derby field in bat speed overall, and No. 1 in bat speed on home runs. His four fastest home run swings of the season have all been as a righty, like this 80.6 mph swing to go deep against the Royals:
Ramírez says he’s going to see which side of the plate feels better at Globe Life Field before he makes his Home Run Derby decision — but maybe he should let his bat speed make the decision for him.
