MLB stars who added bat speed in?2024

Last season, Statcast launched bat tracking data for the first time, which let us see who had the top bat speeds in baseball. (It was, unsurprisingly, hitters like Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani.)

But before the 2025 season begins, we want to have something to compare those hitters' 2024 bat speeds to. So we're releasing something extra: bat tracking data for the second half of the 2023 season.

Statcast's bat tracking actually goes back to the 2023 All-Star break, but that 2023 data wasn't part of the initial leaderboard rollout last year -- it was the first time Statcast had public bat speed stats, and we wanted to start with a clean season to make sure everything went smoothly.

Well, it has, so it's time to add the 2023 data. The 2023 Statcast bat speed leaderboard is now available on Baseball Savant.

And since it is, let's take a look at some of the players who stood out as bat speed gainers from 2023 to '24.

Just in case you were wondering whether these bat speed gains are real, you should know that MLB bat speed overall stayed consistent from the 2023 to the 2024 season. The Major League average bat speed for 2023 (from the All-Star break through the end of the season) was 71.6 mph. The Major League average bat speed for 2024 (the full season) was 71.5 mph. In fact, basically every key Statcast bat tracking metric held constant between the two seasons.

So if a marquee player raised his bat speed from season to season, it's worth taking notice.

Now, a raw bat speed increase isn't always a good thing, because it can mean a hitter's swing is getting too long, and that can mean more trouble making contact. Not every Ruthian hack is a good swing if you can't connect. But there are star players who added bat speed to great success last season, because they didn't just add bat speed, they added it efficiently. They figured out how to do so without their swing getting longer.

Let's take a look at those hitters. The ones who did it right. The ones who increased their bat speed from 2023 to 2024, but without an increase in swing length -- and saw that jump in bat speed pay off.

Here are seven big-name players who are entering the 2025 season with their bat speeds on the rise.

1) Fernando Tatis Jr., Padres
2023 bat speed: 73.0 mph | 2024 bat speed: 74.9 mph (+1.9 mph)

Tatis Jr. had one of the largest increases in bat speed of any qualifying hitter from 2023 to 2024 but the length of his swing stayed exactly the same. Tatis' average swing speed jumped from 73 mph all the way up to nearly 75 mph last season, but his swing length remained at 7.4 feet.

That led to a lot more dangerous contact from the Padres outfielder. Tatis produced a "blast" -- a swing combining both a high bat speed and squared-up contact on the sweet spot of the bat -- on 17.9% of his swings in 2024, up from 12.7% of his swings in 2023. Lo and behold, Tatis was a more dangerous hitter in 2024, with a 130 OPS+ compared to his 110 OPS+ in 2023.

His bat speed also peaked at the most important time, the postseason. Tatis' average bat speed in the 2024 playoffs shot up to 78.0 mph -- third-highest behind only Stanton (81.8 mph) and Kyle Schwarber (78.2 mph) -- and 31.8% of his swings were blasts. No wonder he had a 1.500 OPS and four home runs in seven games.

2) Francisco Lindor, Mets
2023: 71.0 mph | 2024: 72.3 mph (+1.3 mph)

Lindor's resurgence from his early-season slump in 2024 was in large part due to a surge in his bat speed and squared-up contact. That surge was so strong that even if you compare it to 2023 Lindor -- who had a strong second half -- what Lindor did as the 2024 season went on still stands out.

His bat speed gains applied to both sides of the plate, too. Lindor, a switch-hitter, increased his bat speed from 70.9 mph to 72.3 mph as a left-handed hitter, and from 71.2 mph to 72.8 mph as a right-handed hitter.

Meanwhile, he was able to keep his squared-up rate consistent from 2023 to 2024 even when he was swinging faster, and when you put the barrel of the bat on the ball with a faster swing, you get even better results.

3) Willy Adames, Giants
2023: 72.5 mph | 2024: 73.6 mph (+1.1 mph)

Adames enters his first season with the Giants coming off a big bounceback year in 2024. The former Brewers shortstop had a rare below-average season at the plate in 2023 (94 OPS+) but rebounded to a 118 OPS+ last season, as his home run total increased from 24 to a career-high 32 and his hits total increased from 120 to a career-high 153.

Paving the way for that improvement was a quicker bat. Adames added over a full mph of bat speed, and his swing, though it's long in general, actually got slightly shorter, going from 8.2 feet to 8.1 feet. In 2023, less than a quarter of his swings qualified as "fast swings" by Statcast's 75-plus mph bat speed threshold. In 2024, over a third of his swings were fast swings. Those faster, shorter swings made it easier for him to connect, and connect for power.

4) Matt Chapman, Giants
2023: 75.5 mph | 2024: 76.6 mph (+1.1 mph)

Chapman already had a fast bat in 2023. But in 2024, it got even faster. In 2023, the Giants third baseman was tied for 23rd in MLB in average bat speed. In 2024, he ranked sixth overall -- and he had one of the shortest swings of any hitter with top-10 bat speed, 7.5 feet.

Specifically, Chapman was able to upgrade a lot of swings hovering right around the 75-plus mph fast-swing threshold into swings that reached the extreme end of bat speed, around 80 mph or higher.

The result of those extreme-speed swings was that Chapman traded a little bit of "contact" swings (he had a slight drop in squared-up rate) for a few more "power" swings (he had an increase in blast rate). That helps explain Chapman's double-digit home run increase from 17 in 2023 with the Blue Jays to 27 in 2024 with San Francisco.

Chapman's bat speed gains took a little while to kick in, as he had a slow start to the season due to some bad luck (early on, his results were worse than his expected stats based on his quality of contact). But once they kicked in, they really kicked in -- Chapman took off as the season went on, with a .548 slugging percentage and .890 OPS in the second half of 2024.

5) William Contreras, Brewers
2023: 73.8 mph | 2024: 74.7 mph (+0.9 mph)

Contreras was a breakout star for the Brewers in 2023, and he got even better in 2024, finishing fifth in National League MVP voting. His bat speed certainly contributes to his success at the plate.

The young catcher sat just below the 75 mph mark for bat speed last season, but over half his competitive swings broke that fast-swing threshold. And he simply had slow swings a lot less often, which might indicate that his improvement in bat speed was a reflection of him recognizing pitches better and putting aggressive swings on the ball more consistently.

Contreras also did a great job in connecting the sweet spot of the bat to the baseball on his fast swings, finishing in the top 10 in MLB in blasts in 2024. That was a step up from the second half of 2023, when he was still very good, but ranked 14th on the MLB blasts leaderboard.

6) Gunnar Henderson, Orioles
2023: 75.4 mph | 2024: 76.3 mph (+0.9 mph)

We're going to wrap up with two of the best hitters in baseball. The first is Henderson, who went from "Rookie of the Year" level in 2023 to "MVP contender" level in 2024.

As Henderson went from star to superstar, his bat speed leveled up, too. He went from top-25 in baseball in '23 to top-10 in baseball in '24.

Henderson has averaged at or above the 75 mph fast-swing benchmark in every month of Statcast bat tracking. And his average swing length over that entire time has been 7.2 feet, just a little shorter than the Major League average of 7.3 feet.

Of the top 10 hitters on the 2024 bat speed leaderboard, none had a more compact swing than Henderson.

7) Juan Soto, Mets
2023: 74.6 mph | 2024: 75.5 mph (+0.9 mph)

Last but not least is Soto, whose elite bat speed lets him make later swing decisions, fight off pitchers' pitches and rip the baseball when he gets the pitch he wants.

Soto is always one of the best hitters on the planet. But 2024 might have been his best season yet. And wouldn't you know, he had even better bat speed.

Soto's average bat speed went from just below the fast-swing threshold in 2023 with the Padres to just above the fast-swing threshold in 2024 with the Yankees. And Soto is a one-of-a-kind hitter who has elite bat speed and is elite at squaring up the baseball on the barrel of the bat. Combine those two factors, and by the end of the 2024 season, only NL MVP Shohei Ohtani, whose Dodgers outlasted Soto's Yankees to win the World Series, had more "blast" swings than Soto -- who ended up with a career-best 45 home runs between the regular season and playoffs.

Soto's bat speed was at its best in the postseason, when he absolutely raked for the Bronx Bombers, batting .327 with an 1.102 OPS and four home runs. Soto averaged a 76.5 mph bat speed during the 2024 playoffs, higher than he had in any regular season month for the 2023 or '24 season. And his swing was the same beautifully short but violent swing it always is.

At 26 years old, Soto is only gaining bat speed. That's just one more plus for the Mets as they await his debut for them in 2025.