![]() As mentioned above, it seems like Taylor traded off a bit of contact for a good amount of power, and given his already strong contact skills and batting eye, it’s probably a trade any player would make-and paid off for him this season. Moving from Kansas to Tennessee was a great opportunity to prove his offensive chops after a standout 2022 season, but instead the SEC competition has only increased concerns about his pitch recognition, swing path and overall bat-to-ball skills. Maui Ahuna was viewed as a first-round talent entering the year, but has fallen out of that range after struggling offensively this spring. His 14.4% strikeout rate is far and away the lowest he’s had in college and has helped catapult him into the first round. Chase Davis had huge contact questions entering the season and did an excellent job addressing that area of his game this spring. We’re not just comparing the 2022 season to the 2023 season here, so all the baggage players entered with is still being carried around. That might not sound like a lot, but our sample here includes their full career’s worth of data. The players above are all the players who moved their overall contact rates up more than a single percentage point. ![]() fail to take a step forward in this category is disappointing because he was expected to add some strength and start to hit the ball a bit harder and has well below-average EV numbers, but he did cut his strikeouts in half and manage the best offensive season of his career, so it’s tough to get too nit-picky over less than one mph change. Wyatt Langford was the overall exit velocity leader on this chart entering the year, and fell from an elite 110 mph range to a still very good 107 mph range and missed a few games after fouling a ball off himself earlier this season. Michael Carico played in just 21 games and dealt with a wrist injury this spring and Jared Dickey has dealt with a number of injuries throughout his college career, including a hand surgery last fall and a shoulder issue this spring. It’s not surprising to see that the top players on this list are also those who have dealt with injuries this spring. He seemed to sacrifice a bit of contact, as you’ll see below, in order to hit the ball harder and totaled a career-best 23 home runs after a previous high of 13. Brayden Taylor is perhaps the most interesting name of this group given his reputation as a pure hitter but a tougher profile as a college third baseman who was critiqued for his impact potential entering the year. ![]() Max Anderson more than doubled his home run production by hitting the ball harder and also upping his fly ball rate, with a greater percentage of those fly falls carrying over the fence this spring. He still doesn’t project for huge power at the next level and his 18 home runs this spring mostly went to the pull side, but the impact he’s shown is a massive jump from a year ago. Luke Keaschall went from one of the softest-hitting players in the field to solidly middle of the pack. If you mouse over individual plot points you can see the specifics for each player.īefore we get into a few specific players, here are the biggest year-over-year movers: 90th Percentile EV Gainers If it’s hard to see a player’s point on the chart ( Michael Carico, Luke Shliger) that means it’s hard for a pitcher to entice them to swing out of the zone.īelow is a chart of the 61 college hitters who currently rank inside the top 200 of our BA draft rankings. Hitters are plotted on the chart below based on their contact rates (x axis) and 90th percentile exit velocities (y axis), with the shading of individual plots representing chase rates-the darker the plot point, the greater the chase rate the lighter the plot point, the lower the chase rate. We’re using all available college data from Synergy for overall contact and chase rates, and 2023 TrackMan data for 90th percentile exit velocities. In today’s chart, we are looking at the three basic elements that make a good hitter: contact ability, impact and swing decisions. Today, we’re revisiting that with updated performance data from the 2023 season. ![]() ![]() Back in February, I took a look at how the top college hitters in the class stacked up in terms of both 90th percentile exit velocity and contact. ![]()
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