Attack Angle / Attack Angle

Batter

Mean vertical angle of the bat's path at contact, in degrees, over competitive swings; positive is upward. Not a quality axis: the ideal band is 5 to 20 degrees, and both tails are worse than the middle.

Agreement with Savant

Checked nightly. Agreement tolerance: ±109 — in °·swings: the miss times the player's competitive swings, so a 900-swing season is held to a tighter ° than a 150-swing one (runbook §60).

Pitcher

Mean vertical angle of the bat's path at contact, in degrees, over competitive swings against this pitcher; positive is upward. Not a quality axis: the ideal band is 5 to 20 degrees, and both tails are worse than the middle.

Agreement with Savant

Checked nightly. Agreement tolerance: ±98 — in °·swings: the miss times the player's competitive swings, so a 900-swing season is held to a tighter ° than a 150-swing one (runbook §60).

Shown for: batter and pitcher.

Formula

sum(comp_attack_angle_sum) / NULLIF(sum(comp_swings), 0) — mean attack angle over competitive swings, degrees, positive upward.

Inputs

pitches.attack_angle
pitches.bat_speed
plate_appearances.comp_attack_angle_sum
plate_appearances.comp_swings

Era caveats

Bat tracking begins 2023-07-14

Savant's bat-tracking fields -- bat speed, swing length, attack angle, attack direction and swing tilt -- are on the wire from 2023-07-14. Every bat-tracking column is empty for 2015-2022, 2023 covers the second half of the season only, and a span that starts earlier counts only the swings from that date. Parity is unaffected: Savant's own 2023 boards carry the same partial season, and the six closed season-sides reconcile to the player. (runbook §59)

Version history

2026-09-13 — Facts and aggregates added (M4 S3). (runbook §59)
2026-09-13 — Parity-enforced nightly against the swing-path leaderboard, swing-weighted, within 109 °·swings for batters and 98 for pitchers. (runbook §60)
2026-09-16 — Added to the Explorer and the rolling chart (M4 S5). (runbook §61)