New baseball data shows what Brewers' Brice Turang does better than almost anyone in MLB

To the naked eye, it’s evident what Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Brice Turang has been doing at the plate this season to spark a breakout sophomore campaign. He’s shortening up and trying to pepper a line drive up the middle with a compact bat path.

“Short and direct, that’s what I’m trying to be every swing I take,” Turang said. “Short to it, long through it.”

Now, there’s public data to back this up, and it shows just how good Turang has been at executing his plan.

Turang, according to Statcast’s new bat-tracking data released Monday, has the second-shortest swing in baseball.

Swing length measures the length of a batter’s swing from start of swing to contact point (or, on a miss, closest contact point).

At an average length of 6.0 feet, Turang is behind only two-time batting champion Luis Arraez. Turang and Arraez are well clear of the third-shortest swing in baseball, Alex Verdugo.

Now, unlike some of the other bat tracking metrics released by Statcast on Monday, swing length is less about generating power with a swing and more about different styles of hitting. (You can view all of the new metrics and play around with the leaderboards here.)

Shorter swings tend to lead to more contact than longer ones but at the expense of some power.

“For me it’s more efficient to the ball, being more accurate to the ball,” Turang said. “Being directly to the ball and not coming off, stuff like that. It’s something that you have to practice. Even in the games, you’ll catch yourself casting or getting around it, and it’s just knowing what it feels like and understanding how to fix it.”

Turang is batting .301 with a 126 OPS+ thanks to his approach of leaning all the way into contact.

Those numbers are a leap – perhaps even a quantum one – from where he was last year as a rookie, when he hit .218 with a 61 OPS+.

Part of the issue for Turang’s struggles, he said, was his swing got way too long, way too often last year. He was trying to do too much damage with his swings when that isn’t his game.

“Hitting line drives up the middle,” is what Turang said tells him his bat path is compact like he wants. “Being able to stay inside the ball. In games, if guys throw a fastball up and in but you’re able to hit it up the middle. Maybe you don’t always smoke it, but you’re taking the right swing at it if that happens.”

Oliver Dunn also jumps off the page

Of the metrics Statcast released, average bat speed is likely going to be met with the most interest. And in that category is a possibly surprising leader on the Brewers: Oliver Dunn.

Dunn is in the 96th percentile for bat speed with an average of 75.3 mph. Of 431 players with at least 25 “competitive” swings measured this year, Dunn ranks 25th. But it isn’t a surprise to Dunn, who’s been told by the Brewers about his bat speed.

“I don’t know where I’d rank,” Dunn said Sunday. “Depending on how high, maybe it could catch me off guard, but I’m not surprised I’d be high. I’ve heard that from the (Brewers). I’ve been aware of that for a little while.”

Bat speed has a direct correlation with exit velocity and power. The MLB average is 72 mph, but swings with 80+ mph bat speed lead to a batting average of .321 and slugging percentage of .665.

And as Dunn also points out, bat speed is just a minor part of the equation when it comes to solving how to hit.

“Bat speed’s a small part of hitting, but it’s cool,” Dunn said. “It’s cool there’s data that shows it.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What Brewers' Brice Turang does better than almost anyone in baseball