Entering play Sunday, the bat-speed leaderboard mostly contained names you would imagine belong on a bat-speed leaderboard. Rays phenom Junior Caminero swung the fastest in the majors, followed by gifted Cardinals top prospect Jordan Walker, followed by Pirates Statcast-darling Oneil Cruz. Yordan Alvarez ranked fifth, just ahead of Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge.
Narrowly behind the top group, with a swing that is a few ticks shy of Pete Alonso’s and Kyle Schwarber’s and a few ticks quicker than Elly De La Cruz’s and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s, was Brett Baty.
With an average bat speed of 75.6 mph, the Mets’ frustrated and learning infielder ranked 16th in all of baseball.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” co-hitting coach Jeremy Barnes said recently. “We’ve known that he’s a freak athlete and has a tremendous amount of tools for a while now.
