There is a saying in life that also happens to apply to sports. “Speed kills.”
Well, if you have watched the 2017 version of the Detroit Tigers, you know they have not been doing much “killing” with their speed.
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In fact, according to Baseball Savant, a site dedicated to advanced baseball statistics, the Tigers do not have a single player ranked within the top 49 players in the league in terms of “sprint speed” as shortstop Jose Iglesias is tied for 50th. Iglesias has a sprint speed of 28.2 feet/second, which is well-above the league average of 27.0.
Baseball Savant defines “sprint speed” as the following:
Sprint Speed is Statcast’s foot speed metric, defined as “feet per second in a player’s fastest one-second window.” The Major League average on a “max effort” play is 27 ft/sec, and the max effort range is roughly from 23 ft/sec (poor) to 30 ft/sec (elite). A player must have at least 10 max effort runs to qualify for this leaderboard. Read more about how Sprint Speed works here.
Here is a breakdown of the fastest (and slowest) Detroit Tigers so far in 2017.
As you can see, not surprisingly, Victor Martinez is the slowest player on the Tigers but is he the slowest in the entire league?
Nope. That honor goes to Albert Pujols of the Angels who has a sprint speed of 23.3 feet per second.
The fastest player in Major League Baseball is Billy Hamilton of the Reds who has a speed of 30.1. He is the only player in the league in 2017 to have a sprint speed of over 30.0.
Here is a list of the top 10 sprint speeds in Major League Baseball so far this season.
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