Slammers Youth Rapsodo Hitting Leaderboards
It's not all about exit velocity. We want to hit the ball hard at good angles.
Part 2 of 3. Next week, we’ll look at Slammers Youth Rapsodo Pitching Leaderboards.
Putting this up top this week: All youth coaches have received all data on their teams, so if there are any immediate curiosities, they should be able to provide the data. All data from youth testing will populate into the Slammers Dashboard in the next month (and all parents / players will gain access to it there as well).
We just wrapped up hitting evals with our youth teams at both North and South and just like last week’s athletic leaderboards, we have a couple hitting leaderboards for you this week. All hitting evals were standardized (pitch velocity and bat size) and all data was captured on a Rapsodo.
The metrics that we want to draw particular attention to for all of our players are Swing Score, Junior Barrel Percentage, and Junior Snowball Count. Much like pitching, it’s natural for the eyes to gravitate towards the speed of the ball (velocity). I would encourage everyone who has made it this far to continue reading about why Swing Score is so much more valuable in dialing in on contact quality during our evaluations.
How Swing Score works in a nutshell: a 90 mph exit velocity on top of the plate may not make it to the shortstop. A 66 mph line drive to leftfield may be a double. The 66 mph line drive will have a higher Swing Score…
Now for the leaderboards…
Swing Score
A quick overview on Swing Score: exit velocity, launch angle, spin direction (back spin is ideal to optimize carry), and spin rate (too much or too little spin can impact optimal ball flight) are the ingredients that go into this fine metric.
Every swing that records on the Rapsodo gets a Swing Score on a 0-10 scale using the above ingredients. The better the ingredients, the higher the Swing Score. This is the same scale that is used for ALL players at Slammers. Over time, players will be able to track improvements in their Swing Score as they get older.
Junior Barrel Percentage
A few questions to answer before we get to the leaderboard here…
What constitutes a Junior Barrel? Any swing that results in a Swing Score of 6 or greater. This metric was specifically created for our younger players (a Barrel is any Swing Score of 8 or higher).
To tally a Junior Barrel, you need to hit it hard, on a line, with the right amount of backspin…
And what is Junior Barrel Percentage? Pretty simple: if a player tallies (2) Junior Barrels during a (10) swing eval on Rapsodo, their Junior Barrel Percentage is (20%) for the session.
Now, who was barreling baseballs during youth hitting evals…
Junior Snowball Count
This section will pay homage to every Slammers youth player that recorded a Junior Snowball during their latest hitting evaluation. Whereas a Junior Barrel is any hit with a Swing Score of 6, a Junior Snowball is any hit with a Swing Score of 7 - a much rarer occurrence for a youth player. But again, this is the big prize we’re chasing when we get in the cage with the Rapsodo on.
Junior Snowball = you need to hit it hard(er), on a line, with the right amount of backspin.
99 youth players tallied at least 1 Junior Snowball during their hitting evaluation session, and Kaden Hopkin (Slammers Crockett Jr. 14U) led the way with a whopping 6!!
49 high school players registered a Snow Ball (Swing Score of 9 or greater last Spring), you can check that out here - if you’re curious. The blog also explains the Snow Ball in greater detail.
Team Hitting Leaderboard
See below for a full list of all Slammers Youth teams that participated in hitting evaluation sessions this winter - listed in order by team average Swing Score. Slammers Bauer 14U’s team average of 4.8 came up just short of the top average score for a youth team in 2023 (Slammers Bozied 14U; 5.1) - but is tied for the second highest average team Swing Score on record for Slammers Youth teams.
Next week, we’ll share Slammers Youth Pitching Testing Leaderboards. All youth coaches have received all data on their teams, so if there are any immediate curiosities, they should be able to provide the data. All data from youth testing will populate into the Slammers Dashboard in the next month (and all parents / players will gain access to it there as well).