Tearing the cover off the ball: Sox hitters and exit velocity

Savin Hillbilly

loves the secret sauce
SoSH Member
Jul 10, 2007
18,783
The wrong side of the bridge....
I was fiddling around the Statcast leaderboard page and noticed something remarkable: Sox hitters are absolutely crushing the exit velocity column.

There are 208 players in MLB this year with 250 or more batted ball events. That's about seven per team, and sure enough, seven of the 208 are Red Sox. The median average exit velocity for the group is 88.6 mph. Benintendi is exactly at the median. The other six Sox players are all above it. In fact, all six are in the top 40, i.e., the top 20%:

93.0 JDM (T5)
92.2 Mookie (11)
92.1 JBJ (12)
90.9 Devers (T26)
90.9 Moreland (T26)
90.7 Bogaerts (32)

No other team has more than three players in the top quintile (the A's have three in the top 10, but it stops there).

I knew JDM and Mookie were near the top, and that JBJ has been stinging the ball. But I didn't realize just how deep the spheroid-crushing tendency ran in this lineup. Is it as simple as a great collection of talent? Coaching and preparation? Something about Fenway?

EDIT: Oh, one more cool thing: Mookie is #11 in average exit velo -- but is actually below the median (#106) in maximum exit velo. Talk about consistency.
 

Reverend

for king and country
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jan 20, 2007
64,048
This is way better than @KenTremendous 's Why Is the Whole Team Under-Performing This Year? thread. That thread sucked.

Seriously though: What the hell is going on over there?

Sequential statistical aberrations in opposite directions are... well, I dunno what it means. But that's the point: That's where we investigate to see what we learn, right?

Neat find, @Savin Hillbilly .