A Quick Look at Sprint Speed Attrition in MLB

Spring training is just getting underway and, as a result, baseball news is just beginning to pick back up for all 30 teams. There are free agents yet unsigned, position changes being discussed, updates on lingering injury woes and more to cover. Put another way, regularly scheduled programming for February.

Among those various back-at-camp stories is Aaron Judge‘s position change to center field and the Big Man’s Big Toe. That toe’s issues, which appear not to be so exclusively in the rearview mirror as Yankees personnel might hope, has significant implications for Judge’s health as well as the outfield alignment. These pieces of news catalyzed this post given that, taken together — a move to CF and lingering toe/mobility questions — one begins to worry some about Judge’s ability to hold down center field and to stay healthy while doing so. Throwing the fact that he is all of 280 lbs. and going to turn 32 in April, and those thoughts continue to creep.

While Judge was the impetus for what follows, a broader tack was taken here in order to provide context, delve into player speed some, and to better understand Judge’s situation. The focus being to provide a look at Judge through the lens of sprint speed more broadly. Given that, let’s start with a look at sprint speed among all players; Baseball Savant indicates that average MLB sprint speed is 27 ft/sec, but that average varies as we might expect historically from position to position.

No real surprises in the table above. Put as eloquently as possible: center fielders go vroom. Designated hitters, catchers, and first baseman? Not so much. Maybe most interesting is the rather pedestrian median sprint speed among shortstops relative to the “mid defensive spectrum” positions like second base and the outfield corners. Of course, handling shortstop is more nuanced than sprint speed alone, surely, but that’s another topic entirely.

So, center fielders are, on average, the fastest position players in baseball. The good news for Judge is that he has shown himself to be incredibly fast, especially given his size, in the past. The bad news is that time does rude things to the human body, and Judge, like the rest of us, is only getting older.

As you can see, of the nearly 5,000 player seasons recorded by Baseball Savant over the last nine years for sprint speed, there is a clear trend. The data is pretty linear overall, but one might point to those relatively severe dips from players’ median sprint speeds from ages 28 to 29 and from 30 to 31 as particularly cautionary tales.

When applying a simple linear regression model, it’s unsurprising to find age is a significant predictor of sprint speed. Moreover, such a model suggests that with each additional year of age, players lose ~.16 ft/sec. While that may not seem like a huge number, consider that it takes (fast) players roughly 4 seconds to reach first from home plate, so an additional year of age means they are losing more than half a foot of distance in that 4 second timeframe, on average, each season. Taken over a couple seasons and players are losing whole feet, which is disconcerting when playing a so-called game of inches.

Returning to Judge, the median 32 year-old MLB players over the last near-decade runs roughly 26.5 ft/sec. That is both below average when taken in context of the entire league, and significantly below average when compared only to center fielders. Judge, 32 in April, will be working against time when he aims to handle center field and all the surface area therein this coming season.

That said, Judge is anything but an average Major League player. Pulling on this thread, the following chart splits players by their (rounded to the nearest ft/sec) personal season best sprint speed.

While decline is universal across the board, it is relative to players’ high water marks on the speed spectrum. This is a positive point for Judge, whose personal best sprint speed for a season is 28.2ft/sec safely above average among all players and right around average for center fielders. Unfortunately, that speed came from Judge’s age-27 season and was the last time he eclipsed 28ft/sec as measured by Baseball Savant.

More recently, Judge had just a 26.7ft/sec sprint speed in 2023, (right in line for 31-32 year old on average) but that figure very well might have been in part related to the aforementioned toe injury.

With this context, one can make a couple reasonable assertions about Aaron Judge going forward. First, he will likely be a barely average or even slightly below average speed MLB player in 2024. Second, he will absolutely be slow relative to the majority of MLB center fielders. Third, it remains to be seen what exactly this means for his defense and that of the Yankees more generally. On one hand Aaron Judge has a strong arm, proven instincts in the outfield, and otherworldly athleticism to pair with his foot speed; on the other hand, Alex Verdugo (27.3 ft/sec) and Juan Soto (26.7 ft/sec) are not burners either. Whatever the case may be, one might anticipate Trent Grisham getting some important innings on the grass, and often late in games if only to spell Judge’s time as well as to shore up the defense.

Finally, as an aside, the table below offers a look at the biggest swings in sprint speed for individual players, which essentially indicates attrition.

Keeping with the Yankees theme here, the deceleration of Giancarlo Stanton is obviously concerning, and another consideration for the Yankees as they aim to balance and maximize their outfield/DH mix in 2024. Given the single year remaining on Soto’s and Verdugo’s contracts, in tandem with Stanton’s decline and the Yankees commitment to Judge, 2024 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for the Yankees lineup going forward.