If I asked you which Mariner hits the fastball the best, my guess is you’d say Julio Rodríguez. Maybe some consideration would be given to fellow All-Star Ty France, but if we’re defining “best” as “hardest and farthest,” it’s hard to argue with the Mariners’s rookie phenom. However, according to at least one metric—dynamic hard hit rate—the Mariners’ best fastball hitter is not Julio but his fellow rookie (or, at least rookie-adjacent, for our purposes here), Cal Raleigh.
If you’re new to dynamic hard hit rate (DHH%), here’s a brief explainer, courtesy of Connor Kurcon, who developed this stat in a blog post you can (and should!