I like to analyze the situation of individual batsmen for a broader discussion about bats. The story I wrote about Oneil Cruz in January also introduces how unusual it is for a long-time batsman to smash a high ball. Digging Brent Rooker’s 2024 great campaign in December gave me an opportunity to see how batsmen make subtle adjustments to direct the top of the area. Today, the work of brewer second baseman Brice Turang is the best way to improve the speed of the best bat.
It's almost always a good thing for bats to increase bats. It sounds obvious, right? If you swing faster, it can be harder to hit the ball, go for more courts, and have more time to react. There is no argument there.
But when training to increase bat speed, you not only swing some weighted bats, but magically become a better bats. Your goal should be to swing faster while retaining the strength of your swing. Sometimes higher hacks can have unexpected consequences, so hitters and their coaches need to pay attention to how a single swing assembly interacts with all other components. Especially for Turang, it means he has to figure out how to try to swing while keeping his elite contact skills, which comes from his bat angle variability and a brief stroke. With data on bat speed, interception and swing length, we can better understand how Turang is performed in the public domain. But first, let's take a look at Tulan this season than he did in 2024:
Brice Turang's progress
| season | XWOBA | Xwobacon | dessert% | bucket% | Hard % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | .297 | .322 | 32.0 | 2.4 | 29.7 |
| 2025 | .364 | .426 | 36.2 | 9.6 | 48.9 |
Source: Baseball Savant
Yes, somehow, this is the same batsman. Turang's barrel percentage jumped from the third percentage point to the 56th percentile, while his hardships rose from the ninth percentage point to 80. That's ridiculous. Turang is essentially a comprehensive person when it comes to contact quality. Now, he is well above average and has improved without damaging the rest of the game, and I will be in later. He also added a force ceiling, with a maximum exit speed from 33% to 64th percentile.
All these improvements are due to the significantly faster swing of Turang. The average bat speed of no qualified bats exceeded the Turang's increase of 2.8 mph, up from 66.2 mph last year to 69.0 mph in 2025. Watching how the distribution of Tulan's swing speed changes further, this further proves why it is especially crucial to do a hard hack on him:
When Turang is in contact, this visualization is focused specifically on the swing. In 2024, he has about one in ten of his swings under 60 mph, and these swings have a .165 Xwoba. Now, almost all of his swings have exceeded that threshold. He raises the floor by minimizing the frequency of slowly swaying. His swing speed distribution midpoint has exceeded 70 mph – he often gives himself a chance to really hurt, which has not been the case in the past.
Going back to what I mentioned earlier, Turang still retains the rest of his swing, even though he made those gains. His contact point relative to his body is the same. Last year, his interception point (also including no contact swing) was 31 inches higher than the center of his Mass. This year, this has changed, but there are hardly 30.6. This is awesome. To understand why, I need to get some nerds and bring more environments. There are ways to trick the gains of bat speed that can actually be harmful to the batsmen. Yes, I know this is somewhat contrary to my above view, but, this may be true! If the batsman does everything the same and moves his contact point in front of his body (even if suboptimal contact is created), his bat speed will increase!
It comes down to physics. One component of measuring bat velocity is the distance from the bat knob (assuming it is a reference point) to the impact point. If the radius increases, then your bat speed will increase, too, although there is obviously a limit here. This means you can maintain the angular speed (the speed at which the bat rotates) while extending the radius to increase the bat speed. Increased radius is beneficial. If you go beyond it, you will start to tighten all solid contact fouls and if you want to keep the ball fair you have to change the bat angle, which results in suboptimal contact. Like every part of a baseball, balance is needed.
Based on calculations of bat velocity, we can infer that Turang is creating more angled velocities to increase his overall bat velocity without changing his average interception point. very good! With that, Turang's swing length is still elite (this year compared to last year's 100th place, the 90th percentile this year), and now he's more standing behind the box. The former means his swing is still short and sweet, while the latter's adjustment may mean that he has more room to swing to keep the ball fair when he does move the contact point forward. All of these combinations lead to the types of improvements we have seen so far.
Finally, I'll leave some videos with you highlighting how Turang changed his setup compared to last year, which could be one of the main factors driving his bat speed improvement:
2024
2025
His hands were narrower and he started the burden with a thigh kick. This helped him to lower the slower, non-A swing on average while also maintaining the previous contact point, thus allowing him to swing the bat faster on average. For many batsmen, leg kicks are a mechanism of timing, not just a way to set up rotations. I think that's the case with Turang. To make sure that this change does not cause him to lose balance, he pairs it with the master to keep his upper half connected. The process decisions here are very good.
Turang has always been a great benchmark and a great fielder, but he has raised the ceiling and floor due to his offseason achievements. As a result, he is now becoming a valuable everyday player in Milwaukee.
