MLB Prospects That Gained The Most Exit Velocity In 2023

Image credit: Cubs OF Owen Caissie (Photo by Chris Bernacchi/Diamond Images via Getty Images)

The advent of publicly available Statcast data has allowed advanced data and measurements to become a larger part of the conversation around the game of baseball. The ability to measure a variety of traits around a hitter or pitcher’s abilities gives us a better idea of their true talent level. 

Exit velocity measures in particular have become as common in baseball conversation and content as batting average or on-base percentage. The ability to measure a player’s average exit velocity gives us a good idea of how hard a player hits the ball. Hitting the ball hard has proven to correlate directly with slugging and production in general. 

We look at a variety of exit velocity metrics including average exit velocity, 90th percentile exit velocity and max exit velocity. Average exit velocity captures the consistency of hard contact and gives us a good idea of how hard a player hits the ball. 

90th percentile exit velocity goes a step further looking at the top 10% exit velocities. This gives us a measure of a player’s high-end power and has proven to be more predictive of power in following seasons than average exit velocity.

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Access to exit velocity data in the public space is more limited when dealing with minor leaguers. Baseball America has gained access to MiLB batted ball data over the last few seasons through the help of sources. This has allowed us to study trends in batted ball data among minor leaguers on a micro and macro level. 

We’ve learned that players on average add four mph to their average exit velocity between the ages of 18 (82.4 mph) and 22 (85.9 mph). There’s a similar progression in 90th percentile exit velocity, which jumps an average of 3.4 mph between 18 (98.1 mph) and 22 (101.5 mph). Both metrics grow the most for players over that four-year period and begin to stabilize after 22 years of age, with little to no gains after.

Some of this is because many of the best hitters and power hitters graduating from prospects to big leaguers after age 22. This would likely account for a number of prodigious hitters being removed from the sample before age 23 and many of those hitters likely possess the best power tools. 

There is rapid progression between those ages, but an average jump of mph is expected. So what does it tell us when a player sees a jump of several mph year over year?

When dealing with prospects, you’re dealing with rapidly progressing human beings that make physical and skill-based gains in small periods of time.

Today we’ll examine the biggest exit velocity gainers in 2023, using average exit velocity and 90th percentile exit velocity to look at who gained the most power year over year. In order to make sure we’re looking at a similar sample size for each season we set the plate appearance minimum to 300 or more PAs in each of the last two seasons. This also helped to eliminate a large number of complex level hitters who tend to see the largest jumps year over year.