TAA 14 – New Bat Tracking Data and How to Look at New Stats

Nate and Kyle talk about the new Baseball Savant miss distance stats.

Nate Schwartz (@_nateschwartz) and Kyle Bland (@blandalytics) talk about the new miss distance and other bat tracking stats.

There are new leaderboards on Baseball Savant! They talk about what all of these new numbers mean and what they’re actually calculating. There’s miss distance, the distance between bat and ball on a whiff, and there are dimensions to where to bat is in relation to the ball. Is the ball in on the hands of the bat or off the end? Is the bat on time or late? And is the bat over or under the ball? Then, they talk about what they know so far, with differences in certain pitch types and counts leading to different results. The two discuss how they look at new data, getting into what they look for and how they learn. Finally, Kyle talks about where he wants to see these new numbers go and how they can potentially be implemented going forward.

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Nate Schwartz

Nate is currently writing for the Going Deep team at Pitcher List and won the 2025 FSWA Research Article of the Year Award. He is a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals and left-handed changeup fan, though any good baseball brings him joy. You can follow him on X @_nateschwartz and Bluesky @nschwartz.bsky.app.

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