Whoa, He’s the Fastest Cub
I love these little side bar details. While it doesn’t mean much on a Chicago Cubs team that’s mostly defunct of speed (kind of like in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king), it does remind me of the old days where we had sprinting races on the playground.
MLB dot com ran an article the other day showing the fastest players on each ballclub. They determined the fastest player using Sprint Speed, a Statcast a metric that measures feet per second. Per Baseball Savant, the fastest players in the league cover more than 30 feet per second and the slowest will run in the low 20 feet per second. The average tends to sit at about 27 feet per second.
Javier Baez is the Cubs clubhouse leader in Sprint Speed, covering 28.9 ft/sec. Next on the list is David Bote, covering 28.1 ft/sec.
Now before we celebrate Javy’s blazing fast speed, he ranks as the 46th fastest player in the game. His 28.9 ft/sec is the same rating as Kris Bryant finished with in 2017, and is just a couple ticks above league average. But his legsi have been a difference maker in 2018, pairing that with his aggressiveness and improved hitting approach it could lead to a very exciting season from Javy.
Photo Source: Joe Sargent/Getty Images North America
