What is a Barrel Zone?
It starts out with launch angle which we covered here. Batter would like to see their be in the 10-50 degree range because grounders doesn’t often produce more than an easy out. Using barrels allows us to evaluate who is hitting these balls of value.
Barrel Zone Definition
A Barrel is defined as “a ball with a combination of exit velocity and launch angle that averages at least a .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage.”
Upon further review, this is only the minimum level. Combining the exit velocity with the launch angle for the Brrel Zone.
The higher the exit velocity can allow for the launch angle to be lower to produce a .500 minimum. A batted ball must reach a minimum of 98 mph and have a launch angle within 10-50 to even be classified as barrels.
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Barrels-Why Care About This?
By taking the number of Barrels and dividing by the total number of Batted Ball Events (BBE), we get a percentage that tells us how frequently a player’s batted balls are Barrels.
In 2020 season, Fernando Tatis Jr. led the majors with a 164 BBE which included a 8.7 launch angle and a SwSp%
of 32.7 and and an exit velocity of 113.4 mph. Corey Seager and Juan Soto came in 2nd and 3rd on the season here.
Barrel Zone Conclusion
Few stats have been ale to predict power like barrels. It might be a stat that you would consider looking into if you are a fantasy baseball player.
About the author– Tom Knuppel has been writing about baseball and sports for a few decades. As an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan he began with the blog CardinalsGM. Tom is a member of the United Cardinals Bloggers and the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. He also maintains the History of Cardinals website. More recently he has been busy at KnupSolutions and the primary writer of many sports at KnupSports and adds content at Sports 2.0. Tom is a retired High School English and Speech teacher and has completed over one hundred sportsbook reviews. He also can be followed on Twitter at tknup. Feel free to contact Tom at tknuppel@gmail.com
