The 60 yard dash is garbage. That’s the truth of the matter. It’s an invalid assessment of baseball speed, and believe me I have nothing AGAINST the 60 yard dash, as a matter of fact of on my OWN calling cards as a performance coach is the idea that I “slash 60’s” (which I do help a lot of athletes do by the way). But the truth of the matter is no ballplayer, in a game, is going to run 60 yards in a straight line. Therefore, this becomes an invalid metric OTHER THAN for scouting and recruiting purposes, which is great and for the time being I’ll continue to help my ballplayers master and crush this metric, but for the sake of this blog I want to discuss more in depth another (better) trackable metric of baseball speed and one I HOPE to help drive to the forefront of baseball scouting and recruiting.
Drum roll please, that metric is the 10 yard fly with a 10 yard build (or lead in). Now number one, many in the baseball universe may not even know what this discussed event even IS so let’s start there.
A 10 yard fly is essentially a measure of 10 yards (not from start to finish) of a particular sprint. In this case, the metric I’m making a case for is the 10 yard fly WITH a 10 yard build. So our metric would be the measure of the time it takes the athlete to travel from the 10 yard mark to the 20 yard mark of a 20-30 yard sprint.
So now you know WHAT the 10 yard fly “is” so let’s talk about WHY I think this is a great indicator of baseball specific speed.
This is a distance an athlete will actually travel, IN A STRAIGHT LINE, on the ballfield in regular game situation (every ground ball to the infield as a hitter, from time to time as a middle infielder and / or outfielder on a given defensive play)
This is a time we can test (with the same testing means as being used in a scouting and recruiting service environment) relatively easily AND more frequently than a 60 yard dash.
It’s a time we can relatively compare to CURRENT MAJOR LEAGUE BALLPLAYERS AND THEIR CURRENT OUTPUTS.
First and foremost, biodynamic demand (IE the transferability, as previously mentioned, to the field). We all know bases are 90 feet from one another, which is the equivalent of 30 yards, our 10 yard build to 10 yard fly in question is literally the perfect metric for a hitter who is going to travel that 20 yards on every single hit ball and relatively the entire way in a straight line. Sure not every ball hit is going to have a hitter running straight through the bag (but even a sure fire double will have that fielder getting through the 20 yard mark in a relatively straight line). Making this a NO BRAINER great metric if I want to have an idea on the likelihood of this particular hitter beating out a back hand in the 5-6 hole or how many long singles he’ll stretch into doubles. Coaches, scouts, directors of recruiting services, LET’S GET ON THIS. Ballplayers, make sure - which I’ll say again later - you’re working to improve this metric!
Next up we look at our testability. The shorter the distance, the harder and less reliable the pocket stopwatch becomes, but that’s no worry for MANY because MANY a recruiting service and program (right down to high school teams) have invested in laser or bluetooth timing systems for their athletes. At my facility we actually have both laser timing systems as well as bluetooth timing technology that allows for accurate, reliable, and valid collection of data during testing periods and during actual training sessions.
For the 10 and 10 I personally love to use the FREElap bluetooth timing system. It’s EASY and RELIABLE and required little set-up that can be done on the fly during a training session. IF we ALL move in this direction EVERYONE wlll be collecting great valid and reliable data.
Last but not least we have to discuss the comparison capability of this metric. Baseball (MLB specifically) is AMAZING with current data collection on a plethora of data points. For years we’ve used video analysis of our favorite big leaguer’s in the cages to compare our swings and make improvements, BUT we’ve never used the TIMES of our favorite big leaguers to grade ourselves or set goals. With a metric like the 10 by 10, which MLB collects for active players (special thanks baseballSAVANT.com) we can do just that.
So there you have it, I’ve stated my case: ballplayers start to track and work to IMPROVE this metric, skill coaches - start encouraging your players by collecting this data point and pushing it’s importance, performance coaches - MAKE YOUR GUYS BETTER AT THIS, and finally recruiting and scouting services - the biggest responsibility is on you make the 10 and 10 the NEW 60!
-CJ Appenzeller, MS