StaTuesday: Brewers' Broxton among fastest players in majors
If as the old saying goes speed kills, then the Milwaukee Brewers' Keon Broxton is one of the most deadly players in Major League Baseball.
On Tuesday, Statcast unveiled the Sprint Speed of MLB players, which measures "feet per second in a player's fastest one-second window." There's a lot more detail on how the stat is measured here, but it revolves around a player using maximum speed around the bases.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the five-fastest players in MLB according to this measurement are center fielders.
Cincinnati's Billy Hamilton tops the list at 30.1 feet/second -- Statcast describes a rate of 30 ft/sec as elite; average is 27.0 ft/sec and poor is 23.0 ft/sec -- with Minnesota's Byron Buxton, who led the league in this category each of the last two years, next at 29.9 ft/sec.
A couple of rookies are next -- Cleveland's Bradley Zimmer is third at 29.8 ft and San Diego's Franchy Cordero is fourth at 29.6 ft/sec.
Broxton, who has been surging offensively in May and June, is fifth at 29.4 ft/sec. Last season, Broxton led Milwaukee in Sprint Speed at 28.9 ft/sec, which was 20th in MLB.
While no other Brewers rank highly overall in the majors in 2017, Eric Thames is third among regular first basemen (the Angels' Jefry Marte is listed above Thames but he has played just 25 games at first this season).
Of the 12 qualifying Brewers (a player needs at least 10 max effort runs), six are above average and six are below average.
| PLAYER | SPEED |
| Keon Broxton | 29.4 |
| Hernan Perez | 27.7 |
| Eric Thames | 27.4 |
| Domingo Santana | 27.2 |
| Jonathan Villar | 27.2 |
| Orlando Arcia | 27.1 |
| Eric Sogard | 26.8 |
| Ryan Braun | 26.7 |
| Travis Shaw | 26.2 |
| Manny Pina | 25.9 |
| Jesus Aguilar | 25.0 |
| Jett Bandy | 24.2 |
Dave Heller is the author of Ken Williams: A Slugger in Ruth's Shadow, Facing Ted Williams - Players From the Golden Age of Baseball Recall the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived and As Good As It Got: The 1944 St. Louis Browns
