Giancarlo Stanton has been on the DL since June, but with the Marlins out of any sort of playoff talks why do we care so much if he returns this season. It is because his loss means that he hasn't been able to set new exit velocity record's for almost three months, and it has shown on the stat cast leader board which has only had one new entry in the top 25 in the past three months, a 116.7 MPH shot by Carlos Gonzalez in July. Stanton still has 8 of the top ten hit speeds, and the only two hits in the top fifty that were hit off of pitches that came in at less than 80 MPH. The reason Stanton so powerful is simply that his swing has so much energy. He swings a 32 ounce bat at around 93 MPH (at the time of contact with the ball. This means that his swing carries 1.6 kilojoules of energy. This means Giancarlo Stanton's swing has enough energy to lift a 350 lb weight over three feet in the air, or recharge almost 9% of an iPhone's battery if it were harnessed in electrical energy.
Now when hitting the energy of a hit comes from the batter's swing and the speed of the pitch. In Giancarlo Stanton's monster hit .19 kilojoules of energy were in the 79 MPH pitch by Mike Bolsinger and 1.6 kilojoules were in Stanton's swing. This means that Stanton's swing was responsible for over 90% of the energy going to the ball which also means that even if he had been hitting off a tee (then there would be no energy supplied by the pitch) his hit still would have gone 109 MPH. This is partially because of his powerful swing but his swing is usually around the same speed and energy. The reason this hit went so much faster than all the others was because it was hit right on the sweet-spot of the bat; about 1/4 of the energy in his swing and the pitch (1.75 kilojoules) went to the ball after the hit (0.43 kilojoules). This may not seem like a lot but when you look at other batters energy conversions the second best on the exit velocity leaderboard is Mike Trout's hardest hit which had a 22.7% energy conversion factor which is substantially lower than stanton's 24.8%. it means that only about 3/4 of the energy went to the bat continuing forward, the heat in the bat, the heat in the ball the vibrations in the bat and the ball, any generated spin on the ball, the sound in the air and any other places where the energy is lost. One final fact to leave you with. The energy transfer and power on that hit was so great that if the hit had been off of an Aroldis Chapman 103 MPH pitch he would have hit it around 132 miles per hour! | |