Blast Motion Data (Hitting Lessons)

If you know me, then you know that I've been consistently giving hitting lessons since my freshman year of college. It wasn't till this past fall when I realized that I could implement data with the lessons I was instructing. Which lead me getting the Blast Motion bat sensor that tracks almost every hitting metric that is beneficial to a hitters development (Bat Speed, Plane Efficiency, etc.). Blast also has a very cool feature of viewing a hitters swing path on their 3-D swing tracker. In the 3-D swing tracker you can see when a hitter starts their swing, when the bat is on plane with the ball, and when the bat makes connect with the ball. With all of those metrics it give me the ability to analyze all of my kids swings so I can adjust their lessons to what they need to improve metric-wise, meanwhile improving their approach as young hitters as well. For this blog post I made a lot of graphs from RStudio of my kids (13-14 year olds) metrics and I will go over the meaning of each graph and why are they significant.

In the figure above we are looking at a Bat Speed Distribution graph of every single swing of about 30 lessons with 9 different kids and we can take away from this graph is that majority of time their bat speeds are about 51-52 mph. Which is not bad at all for 8th & 9th grades that either never touch a weight or just started to lift weights. Looking at the image next to the graph shows where your metrics should be at for the given playing levels. Bat speed can increase with the weights, but for majority of these kids they are close to be matured physically which is expected for their age.

This two figures are the same concept as before (bat speed distribution) , but instead of all of the kids data mixed in one this all of their data separated. The figure to the left shows all the kids bat speed distributions all on one graph. The graph may be a little hectic to look at, so that is why I created the figure to the right to have a better idea of what the kids bat speed distribution look individually. From an analysis stand point for the distributions, we as hitters want the highest possible peak with our bat speeds which shows consistency.

This next figure above we are focusing on Attack Angle Distribution for all the swings taken during the lessons. A little background info on attack angle if you have no clue what is, attack angle is the angle of the bat taken to make contact with the ball in respect to the reference line (or horizontal line). The diagram next to the graph is an example of a swing with positive attack angle. For youth hitters it is good to have an attack angle of 0-15 degrees which majority of the time the kids are in that range. According to Blast Motion when you are playing high school varsity a good range to be at is 2-13 degrees and for college players the range is 2-15 degrees. Obviously if you are below the range like having attack angle less than 0 degrees you will be hitting the ball straight to the ground and if you have an above the range with minimal power you will pop the ball up. With professional hitters their attack angle may be in the 15-20 degree range and still have great productive pending on their exit velocity.

Like with the bat speed graphs, I made a graph of the kid's individual attack angle distribution. The concept with attack angle though differs than bat speed, because pending on where the ball is pitched (whether it is front toss or live BP) the attack angle will vary. For example, as a hitter you don't exactly want the same attack angle lower in the zone pitches compared to pitches up in the zone. It is quite trivial to realize that successful attack angle for a pitch up in the zone will be less than what your attack angle should be with a pitch lower in the zone. That is exactly why the range for a successful attack angle is 0-15 degrees for youth players. The ultimate goal is to hit a line drive or a driven fly ball, so my estimated range for pitches up in the zone should vary from 0-7 degrees and pitches down in zone should vary from 8-15 degrees for youth players.

I have done some reading on this and heard from some self-proclaimed "hitting gurus" that swinging hard makes us as hitters less efficient to be on plane with the ball. I do believe that if a hitter is tense and tries to swing hard it will affect his plane efficiency, but that is more about the mental side of the game rather than the physical. When a hitter is relaxed and swings hard there shouldn't be a decrease of plane efficiency. Based off this graph we can see that their is little correlation between bat speed to plane efficiency, so swinging hard does not worsen your plane efficiency as a youth hitter. For those that are not familiar with statistics, when the R-value is between either -.5 to -1 or .5 to 1 means their is a considerable correlation between the x and y values. Since this R-value = -0.27 the correlation is not considerable. So let the kids eat and make them be relaxed and swing HARD.

Now this is a graph shows great correlation between bat speed and power. It is not surprising that the faster your bat speed is then you will have more power. Hitting is not all about getting hits, it's more about hitting the ball hard consistently. Instead of getting kids fixated on getting hits, we should have them focus swinging hard on every pitch in the zone and the results will eventually come. It all about the development for the future rather than being result-oriented in the present. Just remember Bat Speed = Power!