THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BATTER’S EYES CHARACTERISTICS, THE HITTING PROCESS AND HIT QUALITY AMONG MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYERS

Abstract

Because there are no rules on how MLB stadiums are to be designed, there end up being a variety of differences between the stadiums. This includes the batter’s eye. This study seeks to see if there are differences in hit quality i.e. exit velocity and launch angle, that can be attributed to these differences. This descriptive correlational study looked at pitch level data at the major league level from 2017-2018. In this study, we found that there are significant differences between several key features of the batter’s eye. These differences have been found to affect the batter’s decision to swing or not, the exit velocity of the ball coming off the bat and the deviation from the mean launch angle. The relationship of these hit quality metrics to runs scored were also studied so that differences in batter’s eyes could be attributed to a certain number of runs gained or lost throughout a season.