Snyder’s Soapbox: Statistics like exit velocity and launch angle are data points, not MLB’s bogeymen

Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate weekly on topics related to Major League Baseball. Some of the topics will be urgent matters, some may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this site is that it is free and you can click to leave. If you stay, you will become smarter. This is a money back guarantee. Let’s go.

Recently, on social media, a clip of prominent sports personality complaining about “exit velocity” made the rounds. The personality in question, “Pardon the Interruption” co-host Michael Wilbon, said the focus on this is “ruining” the sport of baseball for him. He is not alone. There are legions of people who go unnecessarily crazy when they hear the terms “exit velocity” and “launch angle.”

Why?

Well, my best guess is that people fear change and these are new terms. These are also things that haven’t been measured for a long time. We didn’t have that ability for a while and then for a while it was just pitches that were measured with a radar gun.

Then there are those people who love to bemoan anything that is modern and can be called “analysis”. You see, all these nerds who have never played the game are ruining it by inventing all these new ways to judge the players. We’ve all heard this many times.

The concepts of exit velocity and launch angle are absolutely not new, and that’s where I’m so confused by all the hate.

Who among us has never heard and/or said something like “hit hard somewhere”. That’s the exit velocity! It simply measures exactly how hard the ball was hit. How is this offensive? You can also ignore the exact number if you wish. On the other hand, if you didn’t watch a game and just saw the box score, 0 for 4 with four weakly hit balls vs. 0 for 4 with four burners right on defenders looks exactly the same. If you dig deeper into the exit velocity readings, you’ll see that the last player was better that day and was unlucky with his batted balls.

In fact, having these reads makes scouting players much easier. Scouts should never just look at numbers and need to see players in person to get the full picture, but it is impossible for any scout to see every player in large enough samples to judge them properly. Data points like exit speed readings are just more information.

Regarding launch angle, you know we’ve all heard “just throw the ball in the air” many times, especially from power hitters. Launch angle simply measures how high a player is hitting the ball. The most important point here remains the same: if you don’t want to hear the number, ignore it. It’s very easy, I promise. I have been successfully ignoring spin rate for a decade.

There’s simply no reason to be offended by “just hit it hard somewhere” or “throw the ball in the air,” which means you shouldn’t be offended by exit velocity or launch angle. Numbers can’t hurt you.

It’s about time someone came out and lamented the lack of good batsmiths these days. We will often hear names like Tony Gwynn and Rod Carew. Well, this current generation also has Luis Arraez and Steven Kwan. I know their existence undermines the strawman argument that today’s teams would ignore Gwynn and Carew (because of exit velocity!), but it’s crazy to believe that there aren’t just average players or that they wouldn’t be valued this time. Plus, there’s a reason Carew and Gwynn still get mentioned: They were special players. I’m sure people like Christopher Morel and Javier Báez would love to be like Gwynn and Carew. They simply aren’t and that’s not a crime. None of us are.

The reason MLB is hitting just .241 as a league this season because the pitching and defense are incredible. Pitchers have never thrown so hard with such a wide variety of dirty pitches. Meanwhile, infielders’ arms are stronger than ever, allowing them to throw deeper and achieve greater range. In fact, it’s amazing that anyone can get it right and we should discuss the possibility of moving the mound back at some point, but that’s a topic for another day.

It’s easy to go viral complaining about launch angle and exit velocity, but measuring them has absolutely nothing to do with the state of the MLB offense in 2024. These things are not new concepts. They have generations: just hit the ball hard in the air. That’s all exit velocity and launch angle are. They are not the bogeymen. If you’re letting measurement ruin the game for you, that’s your problem, not MLB’s problem.