What Bat Speed Says About Young Hitters

Right now, the Major League level seems about as full of young talent as it ever has been. High-profile prospects are more prepared than ever to make the leap, skipping past the slow grind of the minor leagues to make an immediate impact at the big-league level. This season, Kevin McGonigle and JJ Wetherholt have proven it: the former made the All-Star roster, and the latter absolutely should have been included.

Of course, bat speed is not a guarantee of success. The two examples I gave, McGonigle and Wetherholt, have both had great success without elite bat speed, sitting right around league average in the metric. But as indicators go, it can be a useful one. As we can see from the top end of this chart, bat speed can give you a strong platform to build on.

That’s where the other two layers come in. Squared-Contact rate, on the vertical axis, shows how well each hitter actually applies that bat speed, and the dot colors track chase rate as a read on plate discipline. In the tooltip that appears when you hover over a dot, I have included plate appearances and wRC+ so you can see the sample and overall production. But for the most part, I was more interested in the swing mechanics and bat tracking data to build the piece around.

But the driver of the chart is bat speed, as I wanted to investigate how much it can tell us about success for young hitters, and whether there are any under-the-radar fantasy names to consider. 

This won’t be a rundown of every name on this chart, but I will look to group some interesting names together based on their bat speeds, contact, and overall track record.

Why Bat Speed Matters

While these names do not need to be spent on too long, you cannot help but notice the success of these young hitters when looking at the top of this list.

The top five names for bat speed under the age of 25 are Junior Caminero, Jordan Walker, Nick Kurtz, Cam Smith, and Jac Caglianone.

Junior Caminero and Nick Kurtz will both go into the All-Star break with an OPS likely to be above .900, are having statistically the best seasons of their young careers, and already rank among the most productive offensive players in baseball. Jordan Walker is not far behind in terms of offensive output in 2026 and is having a breakout year in St. Louis.

Jac Caglianone and Cam Smith, two high-profile picks from the first round of the 2024 draft, are well behind the likes of Kurtz and Caminero, but Caglianone in particular seems to be getting going, putting up a 1.036 OPS in June. Smith has been below average so far in 2026, but his elite bat speed gives you something to bet on from a fantasy perspective moving forward, given he’s only 23.

James Wood appears a couple of places below at 76.6 mph and looks like one of the premier fantasy assets for years to come, putting up one of the best offensive seasons in the league. The top of this list is a useful reminder of the ceiling that elite bat speed can unlock, which is why looking down the list could be a useful indicator of finding value.

The +75 MPH Club

If we next look at the rest of the hitters that clear the threshold of 75 mph bat speed, they split up rather conveniently. The two high-profile names that stand out are obviously Konnor Griffin and Roman Anthony, two high-profile names of the league already.

The tier down is much more fascinating for the purposes of this article, and that is the two names sandwiching Wood in the seventh spot: Henry Bolte and Colson Montgomery. Their statistical profiles are remarkably similar. Montgomery 116 wRC+ / .339 wOBA / .792 OPS, Bolte 115 wRC+ / .341 wOBA / .758 OPS. It is worth noting right off the bat that Montgomery has roughly double the plate appearances.

Montgomery’s game has a more stable foundation. His power approach shows up in a .265 ISO and 23 homers in 360 PA, but it comes with a .221 average, a 31.1% strikeout rate, and a .258 BABIP. His name sits pretty low on the chart at 24.4% squared-up, which shows he’s below average at squaring the baseball up, but with his bat speed, when he does, it leaves the yard. He was a great sleeper pick before the season and has validated those who went with him so far in 2026.

Bolte’s profile is much more unsustainable; his .396 BABIP will regress, and his xwOBA of .314 sits well below his wOBA at .341, which says he’s already overperforming the batted-ball quality. The average will come down. What’s real is the speed, so his value is the 11 steals, not the offensive output, so far at least. But it’s worth noting that while he is squaring the ball up 30% of the time, which gives him a different kind of floor. 

The next three above 75 mph are ones to watch rather than own right now, but could equally disprove this bat speed theory rather than validate it. Yohendrick Piñango is the pick of the group, a 103 wRC+ backed by a .267 average and a manageable 23.1% strikeout rate, so the contact is closer to catching up to the bat speed than the 26.5% squared-up mark suggests. Agustín Ramírez was sent back to Triple-A in May, but he keeps the upside long term. The Marlins are in no need to rush him, given their depth at the catching position. Coby Mayo has the loudest raw profile of the three, yet the worst results so far, a 76 wRC+ and a 32.9% strikeout rate. He still has a lot to prove, and already the jury may be out on Mayo.

Swing Twins

There is a lot to unpack from the rest of the under-25 group, enough that it warrants a second part next week, but an interesting pair of bats stood out when I was building the chart.

The first iteration of this chart had two names that were literally stacked on top of each other: Samuel Basallo and Esmerlyn Valdez. A small drop in Valdez’s squared-up rate has since moved them apart, but digging into the swing data underneath turned up a fascinating look at the mechanical profiles of two high-upside fantasy assets.

What caught my attention is that mechanically, they are almost identical. Basallo averages 74.7 mph of bat speed, Valdez 74.8, both a couple of ticks above average. They put a fast swing on nearly half their cuts, 48.2% and 48.6%, close to double the U25 median of 24.4%. Their swings run to similar lengths, 7.6 feet and 7.9. Looking into the swing-path data, they stay locked together: near-identical tilt, the same attack angle, the same attack direction, and both land in the ideal attack angle zone about 53% of the time.

That similarity translates in two ways in the output. Basallo squares up more, 22.7% of swings to Valdez’s 19.0%, and posts a 113 wRC+ across 285 plate appearances. Valdez blasts more, 23.1% of his contact to Basallo’s 18.6%, and sits at a 157 wRC+, but on 87 plate appearances and 142 competitive swings against Basallo’s 498. His 72.5% Z-contact trails Basallo’s 85.3%, and his chase is lower, 29.1% to 43.0%. Two almost identical swings, two different but viable production profiles.

I am not sure how much value this kind of information has for fantasy, yet just from a pure data and mechanical standpoint, it is such an intriguing insight into two young bats having breakout seasons in different ways, but with the same swing.

My next piece will go further into the Blast-Contact side of this, which I think can be a useful separator for how a swing translates into power, and a look at how we might be able to value at the other end of the chart.