HEVD

Hit Exit Velocity Differential 4/16/23

Introducing HEVD (Hit Exit Velocity Differential)

by Drew Duffy 4/16/23

Throughout the analytical revolution in the game of baseball, there has been a lot of attention paid towards velocities. Pitchers in today’s game are throwing the ball harder than ever, and the same is true for batters at the plate. This has created a lot of hype around hard throwers and hard hitters. Some pitchers are consistently recording triple digit fastball velocities, while some sluggers are sending balls back in play (or over the fence) at north of 95 MPH, which constitutes as “hard hit”. I have thought of an idea that looks into the difference between the two for specific hitters and pitchers on different pitches. The entire idea is incredibly simple, though it is one that I have not seen in use explicitly yet. My HEVD merely takes the average velocity of the pitch and compares it to the average exit velocity of the hit. This works for both pitchers and hitters. Baseball Savant's Search function is an easy to use tool to whittle down some of these results. 

•  For pitchers, a positive HEVD would indicate that they are able to generate a higher exit velocity differential, meaning they are able to generate more weak contact and could potentially retire batters more effectively. On the other hand, a negative HEVD would indicate that the pitcher is giving up harder contact, which could be an indication of poor pitch quality or location.

• For hitters, a positive HEVD would indicate that they are hitting the ball harder than the average pitch speed of the pitcher they are facing. While many factors can come into play here, it could be indicative of advanced pitch recognition and adept bat to ball skills. A negative HEVD value could indicate that the hitter is making weaker contact, which could be an indication of slower pitch recognition and delayed bat speed. 

For this experiment, I took a look at pitchers and batters statistics in the 2022 season. I sorted the results by looking only at the Launch Speed and the Pitch Velocity. 

Pitcher Calculation: (Pitch Velocity - Launch Speed) = HEVD 

Hitter Calculation: (Launch Speed - Pitch Velocity) = HEVD

I then sorted the results through three different classifications of pitches. Fastballs, Off-speed, and Breaking for both batters and pitchers. This allows us to see more nuanced results based on the type of pitch. 

Here are the results:

Pitchers HEVD:

While this stat is not perfect or indicative of every situation, it does highlight some of the points I made above on certain players abilities to put the bat on the wall or ones that are inducing weak contact. There are numerous variables that come into the equation with this in terms of velocities in certain events, but I thought this would be an interesting way to decipher between effectiveness in outcomes per pitch type. Thanks for reading!