Driveline Baseball Exit Velocity

The data is from a collect of about 100 (mostly collegiate) baseball players. I decided to start simple and examine the relationship between bat speed and exit velocity. Empirical baseball wisdom would tell us that higher bat speed would lead to high exit velocity, and this is confirmed by the data. We can see that for each increase of 10mph in maximum bat speed, we see a resulting increase of about 10mph in exit velocity. 

Again, doing some pretty simple examinations, we see that a player's height has an effect on their exit velocity until about 5'7", at which their exit velocity has pretty consistent variance. However, it is a slightly different story with weight. We find that an increase in weight is followed by an increase in exit velocity as the athlete is able to generate more force, up until around 215 pounds. After 215, we see exit velocity drop down pretty significantly, likely due to restrained mobility due to weight. 

I then looked at Pitch Speed, and how different factors affect it. As expected, younger players have lower pitch speeds, due to a combination of unrefined technique and simple biology. The weight and height graphs closely resemble the age graph, as younger players tend to be shorter and lighter. However, what is interesting here is that the players' pitch speed did not significantly decrease with higher weight like their batting exit velocities did. 

At this time, I am continuing to work with the Driveline Baseball Data, particularly examining how I can predict a pitcher's pitch speed from the angle, velocity, and acceleration of their elbow as well as the resulting force their body exerts onto the mound. 

All data from Driveline Baseball. The data can be accessed here.