BOSTON
In the parlance of baseball scouts, they say that Royals rookie second baseman Raul Mondesi has “80” speed. On the traditional 20-to-80 scouting scale, this means that, by definition, Mondesi should profile as one of the fastest players in the game.
But in some ways, the “80” tag can be elusive and somewhat nebulous. In the age of Statcast and advanced metrics and electronic timing, speed can be measured to the millisecond. So what exactly does “80” speed look like anyway?
Maybe there is no way to know exactly. But there are moments like Sunday night at Fenway Park.