Americans like big. Whether it’s roller coasters, burgers, super-hoppy IPA’s (yes, I know that a lot of you revile these too), Tom Hanks movies, LL Cool J’s defness, or Dolly Parton’s personality, we love stuff that pushes limits.
If you’re a baseball fan, you probably like numbers as well. As advances in the measurement of the game continue, we’re even able to quantify those elements of the sport that had once been defined only by superlative adjectives. Nothing against “screamer” and “frozen rope,” but I like being able to see exactly what those phrases mean.
Enter exit velocity, a statistic that is gaining popularity quickly as more and more people seek to quantify just what happens when Giancarlo Stanton strikes a baseball.