T-18. Mookie Betts, Boston Red Sox, 76.1 mph
The American League’s Most Valuable Player enjoyed a league-leading .346 batting average and .640 slugging average in 2018. Not surprisingly for a hitter of Betts’s reputation, he posted 92.3 mph average exit velocity.
The World Series champs’ lineup is chock full of impressive exit velocities; Mookie Betts trails J.D. Martinez (93 mph) on his own team, and four other projected 2019 starters – Mitch Moreland, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley, Jr., and Rafael Devers – topped 90 mph.
In terms of Exit Velocity Per At Bat, the difference between Betts and his teammates lay in his ability to put the ball in play.
Compared with the American League’s 24.4 percent strikeout average, the Red Sox did well in that respect, fanning just 22 percent of the time. But Betts was better yet, with a 17.5 percent strikeout rate. He was the only full-time Red Sox starter to whiff fewer than 100 times.
Betts’s exit velocity marked about a three mph step up from his previous seasonal averages, all of which were in the 89 mph range. He coupled that with a 14.1 percent barrel contact rate, one of the top performances in that measurement in the American League. Those numbers may provide the simplest explanation for why Mookie had such a fine season; he hit the ball harder and more consistently.