PITTSBURGH – Exit velocity seems to be a bit of a buzzword around baseball these days. You can’t walk around a ballpark without hearing someone chirp about launch angle or spin rate.
Exit velocity is just a more precise way to evaluate whether a player is striking the ball well. But without other pieces of contextual data, it isn’t too helpful. And let’s just say, the average ballplayer certainly doesn’t rush back to the dugout to check out his exit velo after he crushed a ball.
So when Jason Heyward was asked about his exit velocity after hitting his third home run of the season in his 19th game – it took until his team’s 56th game to do that in 2016 – he chuckled at the specificity of the question before answering.