The future of the MLB is undoubtedly a bright one, and with the 2025 season underway, we get to see some of the league’s next stars make their first impressions in the league.
Debuts are special moments for players and fans alike. Getting to see potentially the next face of your franchise play is exciting. This anticipation can lead to overreactions for many fans no matter if the player performs well or poorly.
We know 25 plate appearances is not enough to get an accurate judgment of how a prospect will perform the rest of the season, let alone in his career. However, specific metrics not tracked in the minor leagues become available to the public when a player transitions to the MLB.
These stats, such as bat speed, are key performance indicators that give more signal even with small sample sizes. In this article, I will evaluate a few of these prospects' starts to their MLB career and explain what takeaways we can have.
Kristian Campbell, Boston Red Sox
The 22-year-old was the 132nd overall draft pick in 2023, but Kristian Campbell has already burst onto the scene.
He quickly climbed the ranks in the Red Sox organization, earning himself the No. 7 spot on MLB’s top 100 prospects list. After a brutal spring training where he hit .167/.305/.271 with a .30.5% K%, Campbell is off to a scorching start in the regular season.
Through 28 plate appearances, Campbell is hitting .417/.500/.833 with a 0.8 BB/K ratio. Now, obviously, Campbell won’t finish the season with a .500 OBP. For reference, Orlando Arcia also had a .500 OBP through 26 plate appearances in 2024, and he the season finished at .271.
These result-reliant metrics are very unreliable with such small sample sizes. However, metrics such as bat speed, whiff rate, or chase rate are solely in control of the hitter and can tell us a lot about the true talent of a player, even through just 20 or so plate appearances.
Bat speed, much like a pitcher’s pitch velocity, becomes sticky after just a couple of swings. Campbell’s bat speed clocks in at 73.8 MPH, putting him in the 80th percentile (better than 80% of big leaguers) according to Baseball Savant.
Bat speed and exit velocities aren’t everything, but a player who can hit the ball extremely hard has a much higher ceiling than one who cannot. Not only does Campbell have elite exit velocity and power potential, but he also has elite plate discipline.
This is a skill Campbell has shown throughout his time in the minors and nothing has changed in the majors. He is walking 14.4% of the time and striking out in just 17.9% of his at-bats. Additionally, he only chases 24.2% of the time (league average is 28.5%). The hype surrounding Campbell is deserved, and the combination of elite power potential and elite plate discipline makes Campbell a must-watch player.
Cam Smith, Houston Astros
The 22-year-old was a first-round pick in last year's draft, but Cam Smith broke the Astros roster out of spring training after being traded to Houston in the Kyle Tucker trade.
At the time, nobody expected to see Smith In the big leagues so soon. However, he did enough in the spring to earn himself a starting job in right field for the big league club. In 43 spring plate appearances, he hit .342/.419/.711 and had a 1.129 OPS.
However, Smith hasn’t experienced the same success through his first 17 plate appearances in the regular season. He has struck out 35.3% of the time and has just 2 hits. These stats are very discouraging, but it has not been all bad for Smith.
His bat speed has clocked in at 73.2 mph which puts him in the top 30% of big league hitters. Likewise, he is hitting the ball hard when he does make contact, with an average exit velocity of 91.9 mph, well above the league average. In addition, he has shown good plate discipline with a scant 20% chase rate thus far.
A potential culprit for why Smith hasn’t gotten the results his exit velocity numbers suggest he should is his ground ball/fly ball ratio. He has a 75% ground ball rate and a 25% fly ball rate with no line drives. Smith wasn't a ground-ball hitter in college, and these ratios will level out with a bigger sample size. Even though Smith’s box score numbers are underwhelming, his raw talent at the plate is already showing. The results will follow soon enough.
Matt Shaw, Chicago Cubs
The Cubs' top prospect found himself as the starter at third base for Chicago after the Cubs traded away Isaac Paredes for Kyle Tucker in the off-season.
He’s a 23-year-old, drafted 13th overall out of Maryland in 2023. Shaw tore up Double-A and Triple-A in 2024. In the time split between the two levels, he hit .284/.379/.488 with a 0.65 BB/K ratio. He hit 21 home runs and stole 31 bases.
Despite experiencing so much success in the minor leagues, he has struggled in spring training and his 45 regular season plate appearances this year. In the 2025 regular season, Shaw is hitting .205/.311/.308 with a 25.6% strikeout rate.
Unfortunately for Shaw and the Cubs, not only have the results not been there, the underlying numbers haven’t either. Shaw’s bat speed is 69 mph, putting him in the bottom 15% of MLB players. This has led to an average exit velocity of just 83 mph for Shaw, 5.5 mph below the league average.
Despite such low bat speed, Shaw can hit the ball hard. In Triple-A last season, he had an average exit velocity of 89.3 mph, which would have been above the MLB average. Shaw just hasn’t demonstrated the same ability at the MLB level. Bat speed and exit velocity aren’t everything. A batter can be very successful with slow bat speed just as a pitcher can be successful with a slower fastball. They have to be elite in other categories to make up for their lack of speed. For a batter, they have to be elite in their bat-to-ball skills.
For example, Mookie Betts’ bat speed in 2024 was just 69.1 mph, but he had a .371 wOBA. Betts generates success by making an awful lot of elite contact. His squared-up rate was 35.8%, in the top 99% of big leaguers, and his plate discipline was elite.
Shaw has been unable to achieve success so far, not just because of a lack of bat speed, but because of a lack of contact. His whiff rate is 36.5% and his squared-up rate is just18.8%. That said, it takes a larger sample size for that latter metric to become meaningful. It is too early to count out Shaw, but we now know he doesn’t have elite bat speed to fall back on when the contact isn’t locked in, which is what we see him experiencing now.
Drake Baldwin, Atlanta Braves
The 2022 third-round draft pick out of Missouri State got the catching job to start the season for the Braves following a rib injury to Sean Murphy.
In Baldwin’s three minor league seasons, he has hit .272/.379/.428 and demonstrated great plate discipline. Through 25 plate appearances this season, he has just 2 hits, and both were singles. This does not do justice to how well Baldwin has hit the ball this season.
He has experienced an unbelievable amount of bad luck to start his career. Just take a look at his Baseball Savant page and you’ll see. He has a bat speed of 75.4 mph and an average exit velocity at 94.3 mph. Velocity numbers like these are worth getting excited about and should stay consistent the rest of the season, while his subpar results will not.
Exit velocity and contact numbers like these should not result in a .091/.200/.091 slash line, but that’s baseball for you. Despite the results, Baldwin is giving us a ton to get excited about for his future. The bat speed demonstrates elite power potential and he combines that with well above-average plate discipline.
The one thing Baldwin could look to improve is his pull AIR% (i.e., batted ball events that result in pulled fly balls). It sits at just 5.9% right now, and looking to pull the ball in the air more with his exit velocity numbers would give him much better results, esepcially in the power department.
These underlying numbers are too good for the hits not to come sooner rather than later. Keep an eye on Baldwin for the rest of this season; his breakout is imminent.