What I Learned Watching Brice Turang's Five Fastest Swings of 2024

Thanks to the latest forward step from Statcast, last season marked the first time that fans could access detailed data about the movement of a hitter's bat when they swung. Baseball Savant offers leaderboards of the players who swung fastest and squared the ball up most often, and using the search tool on the site, one can also pull up hundreds of individual swings for any batter, with their bat speed and swing length on each, plus the usual metrics capturing the quality of the contact they made.

As all of us would have expected, by and large, more bat speed is better. There are exceptions, though, and some of them are as telling and interesting as the insights we gained on the game's fastest swingers. Brice Turang had the 20th-slowest swing in MLB last year, but it was also the second-shortest. The man with both the slowest and the shortest stroke, on average, was Luis Arraez, en route to his third straight batting title. That's a good reminder that swinging slowly can be good, in its own way: a short, slow swing is often much better at generating contact.

Turang isn't an Arraez-caliber contact savant, so he didn't hit for anywhere near the same batting average Arraez produced in 2024. On the other hand, he has more upside than Arraez and other, similarly slow swingers. He ranked 20th-lowest in average swing speed, yes, but he was merely 83rd-lowest in the percentage of his swings that eclipsed 75 miles per hour. Sal Frelick's rate was lower. So were those of Nico Hoerner (2 miles per hour faster, on average) and Brayan Rocchio (3.5 MPH faster). In other words, Turang can swing fast. At least in part, he chooses not to, as part of his approach in the box.

Let's watch his five fastest swings of 2024 together, because I think doing so might help us learn more about this enigmatic, talented, sometimes-frustrating hitter.

Fastest Swing: 79.6 MPH

On a 3-2 pitch, Turang was looking fastball but got a changeup. He got well out on his front foot, but was able to keep his hands back just enough to make contact. Alas, it was harmless contact, despite the speed of his swing, because he hit the very bottom of the ball. The lesson here: sometimes, swing speed comes from that crash of forward energy when one gets out on their front foot. In that case, some of the bat speed tends to be wasted, in one way or another, so such numbers are almost fakeouts. Not every fast swing is a good swing, although this one did at least show admirable hand-eye coordination.

Second-Fastest: 78.9 MPH

This is a fastball more or less down the middle, but in a 2-2 count, Turang had to be cognizant of the risk that Twins hurler Brock Stewart would throw him a slider. He still had the bat speed to catch up to 98 miles per hour, but he was late enough to push a harmless foul ball the other way. This is an example of valuable bat speed, but only indirectly. It kept an at-bat alive, but because he got that speed by going into emergency mode and still got beaten to his ideal contact point, it didn't translate into real production.

Third-Fastest: 78.7 MPH

Pitch type and location manipulate bat speed in a major way. Good hitters, of course, aren't letting pitchers throw off their timing by mixing things up or getting stuck in the rocking chair by variable timing, but the hitter has to adjust to what he sees, and that often means speeding up or slowing down the bat based on what he guessed, what he got, and what his eyes and hands do reflexively when the ball is moving. Here, Turang's barrel sped up enough to get down to a wicked slider diving down and in on him. It's very hard for hitters to speed up their bat going out and away from themselves, but the rotational nature of the swing lets you find some extra acceleration when you (in the argot) drop the head of the bat on a pitch like this. Again, though, it's just a foul ball, and not even a notably well-struck one, because the late adjustment didn't let him square the ball up.

Fourth-Fastest: 78.6 MPH

Finally, bat speed you can see in the box score! This is a well-balanced swing, but a very powerful one. On an 0-1 count, Turang had guessed right, and while his swing plane led to a ball lanced to the opposite field despite being met well in front of home plate, it was a slicing, sizzling line drive, good for two bases. Other hitters don't address this kind of pitch this way. Their bat path is much longer (the swing length of 6.2 feet on this one is the lowest of these five swings, and around Turang's superbly short average), which lets them get the fat part of the bat behind the ball much more consistently and generate more power, especially to the pull field. However, those other hitters also swing and miss on this pitch much more often than Turang does. His approach is geared toward contact and the center of the field, and this is one example of it working to perfection.

Fifth-Fastest: 78.6 MPH

This one combines a lot of the characteristics of the other pitches and swings. It's a breaking ball coming in on him, naturally speeding up his barrel. He actually hits it out in front, a little bit, but the angle of his bat at contact still generates a pop fly twisting foul the other way. It's one more glimpse at the adaptability of Turang's swing, but the fact that he doesn't set out to swing fast unless he has a good reason to. Here, he's defending against the triple-digit heat of Hunter Greene, so he's primed to be quick, but he also gets a bit of the speed from thinking fastball, getting breaking ball, and having his body weight pulling him forward into the ball.

Turang has sensationally smart hands, as a hitter. That much jumped out over and over in this brief study. It's an interesting look at where bat speed comes from, and the mixed blessing it can be. Taken as a whole, these glimpses let us see why Turang would actively choose to swing more slowly much of the time. Simultaneously, it makes you wonder whether there are further adjustments he could and should make, to tap into a bit more of his latent power and reshape his profile as he matures in the majors.