Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Photos
I like to investigate what’s occurring with particular person batters as a solution to have a broader dialogue about hitting. The story I wrote about Oneil Cruz again in January additionally lined how uncommon it’s for long-limbed hitters to crush excessive pitches. Digging into Brent Rooker’s wonderful 2024 marketing campaign in December provided me a possibility to take a look at how batters could make delicate changes to command the highest of the zone. And immediately’s piece on Brewers second baseman Brice Take doubles as a primer on one of the simplest ways to make bat velocity features.
It’s nearly at all times an excellent factor for hitters to extend their bat velocity. That sounds apparent, proper? If you happen to swing sooner, you may hit the ball more durable, get to extra pitches, and have extra time to react. No arguments there.
However when coaching to extend your bat velocity, you don’t simply swing some weighted bats round and magically grow to be a greater hitter. Your objective needs to be to swing sooner whereas preserving the strengths of your swing. Typically higher-effort hacks can have unintended penalties, so hitters and their coaches want to concentrate to how particular person swing elements work together with all of the others. For Turang particularly, this meant he had to determine the best way to swing more durable whereas sustaining his elite contact abilities, which come from his bat angle variability and brief stroke. With bat velocity, intercept, and swing size information now within the public sphere, we are able to higher perceive how Turang is doing this. However first, let’s check out how a lot better Turang has been this season than he was in 2024:
Brice Turang’s Development
Season
xwOBA
xwOBACON
Candy-Spot%
Barrel%
Arduous-Hit%
2024
.297
.322
32.0
2.4
29.7
2025
.364
.426
36.2
9.6
48.9
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Sure, one way or the other, this is identical hitter. Turang’s Barrel% has jumped from the third percentile to the 56th, whereas his Arduous-Hit% surged from the ninth percentile to the eightieth. That’s ridiculous. Turang was primarily a bottom-decile man throughout the board when it got here to contact high quality. Now, he’s nicely above common, and he’s improved with out compromising the opposite elements of his recreation, which I’ll get into later. He’s additionally elevated his energy ceiling, along with his max exit velocity climbing from the thirty third to the sixty fourth percentile.
All these enhancements are resulting from the truth that Turang is swinging considerably sooner. No certified hitter has elevated his common bat velocity greater than the two.8 mph that Turang has added, from 66.2 mph final yr to 69.0 mph in 2025. That’s essential when you think about that final yr batters posted a .164 xwOBA on swings beneath 66 mph. how the distribution of Turang’s swing speeds has modified additional demonstrates why it was particularly essential for him to take more durable hacks:
This visualization particularly focuses on swings when Turang made contact. In 2024, a few tenth of his swings have been at or beneath 60 mph, and people swings yielded a .165 xwOBA. Now, almost all of his swings have a velocity above that threshold. He has raised his ground a ton by minimizing how usually he swings that slowly. The midpoint of his swing velocity distribution has shifted past 70 mph – most of the time he’s giving himself an opportunity to do actual harm, and that simply wasn’t the case prior to now.
Going again to what I discussed earlier, Turang has saved different elements of his swing nearly precisely the identical whilst he’s made these features. His level of contact relative to his physique is identical. Final yr, his intercept level (which additionally contains swings with out contact) was 31 inches versus his heart of mass. This yr, that’s shifted, however barely, 30.6. That is unbelievable. To know why, I have to get somewhat nerdy and usher in some extra context. There are methods to cheat bat velocity features that may truly be detrimental to a hitter. Sure, I do know that’s a bit opposite to my earlier level, nevertheless, it may be true! If a hitter does the whole lot the identical and shifts his level of contact additional out in entrance of his physique (even when that creates suboptimal contact) his bat velocity will improve!
It comes all the way down to physics. One element of measuring bat velocity is the space from the bat’s knob (assuming that’s the reference level) to the purpose of affect. If that radius will increase, so will your bat velocity, although clearly there’s a restrict right here. Meaning you can hold your angular velocity (how rapidly the bat rotates) the identical whereas lengthening your radius to extend your bat velocity. There’s a candy spot for that radius improve to be helpful. If you happen to exceed it, you’ll begin to yank all of your strong contact foul, and if you wish to hold the ball honest, you’ll have to change your bat angles, which results in suboptimal contact. Like with each a part of baseball, stability is required.
Primarily based on this calculation of bat velocity, we are able to deduce that Turang is creating extra angular velocity as a way to improve his general bat velocity with out altering his common intercept level a lot. Superb! Together with that, Turang’s swing size remains to be elite (ninetieth percentile this yr in comparison with a centesimal final yr), and he’s now standing extra towards the again of the field. The previous means his swing remains to be brief and candy, and the latter adjustment would possibly imply that when he does shift his level of contact farther out in entrance, he has extra wiggle room to maintain the ball honest. All this mixed results in the kind of enhancements we’ve seen to this point.
Lastly, I’ll depart with you some video highlighting how Turang has drastically modified his setup in comparison with final yr, which doubtless is among the foremost elements driving his bat velocity features:
2024
2025
He stands extra slender along with his arms larger and begins his load with a giant leg kick. This has helped him swing the bat sooner on common by chopping down on his slower, non-A swings whereas additionally sustaining his earlier level of contact. For a lot of hitters, the leg kick is a timing mechanism and never only a solution to arrange their rotation. I believe that is the case for Turang. And to ensure this modification wouldn’t depart him off stability, he has paired it with larger arms to maintain his higher and decrease halves linked. Actually good course of selections right here.
Turang has at all times been an incredible baserunner and a very good fielder, however due to the features he made throughout the offseason, he has elevated each his ceiling and his ground. And because of this, he’s now rising as a precious on a regular basis participant for Milwaukee.
