Kyle Schwarber is the fastest Phillie, by a mile. Nearly three miles, actually. No, this isn’t a joke, and it’s not opposite day either. You see, we’re not talking about running speed here. For what Schwarber lacks in speed with his legs (though he’s improving in that regard), he makes up for with a tremendous agility in his arms. That’s something the eye test has been telling anyone who’s watched Schwarber take a few hacks. But now we can quantify it.
This past weekend, MLB officially added data on bat speed to Baseball Savant, their publicly available data repository.